rival reprint. Yet, if I import a copy, to save my eyesight, I must pay for refusing this. Thus every time an American buys a foreign book--and such books are bought by thousands--he is paying for the broad privilege of booksellers to make the books they import; a privilege which they do not in general care to use, except in the case of new and chiefly ephemeral works. Cheap books are now furnished, because the manufacturers dread competition; but better books, for the same money, will be readily supplied when the publisher has the market to himself, and fears no competitor. You remember the article on Copyright, which appeared in _Blackwood_ in January 1842, in which it is noticed that Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope" sells at a shilling; that Moore, Wordsworth, and Southey, are handsomely published at three shillings and sixpence a volume; and that such a work as "Hallam's Middle Ages," is as cheap in the London market as books can be made: yet all these pay their authors, and are published in cheap editions, because they find it for their interest. Under a community of copyright, the plates of these very editions would be sent to New York, and the works would be in the market at a slight advance upon the cost of press-work and paper--the latter item being much less expensive here than in England. But the nation pays for its cheap books more dearly still, when you consider the effect of its present system upon its literary men. It forces this class of its citizens to "make brick without straw." For the reasons I have shown, the books from which authors collect their materials are not to be found at home, and can only be imported at an aggravated expense, and often with great delays and trouble. Think of my waiting ninety days in New York, to procure a work like "Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion!" Now, I hazard nothing in saying that many an American author has given up projected works of great importance, from the discouragement of similar delays; whilst proofs are manifold, that the chief defects of valuable works actually produced in America may be traced to such inconveniences. The patient author often confesses as much in his preface, without seeming to know that his country, in stimulating the almost exclusive, publication of trash, and taxing him to support such publications, is the fostering patron to which he owes his difficulties. Thus does America nip her young genius in the bud; and when it perchance comes to flower and fruit, she is not behind-hand with a blight. The unknown production of the American author is brought into a depressing competition with works which have been tried in England, and found certain of success in America. The popular British author, whom the public have long demanded, is furnished at the lowest price--while the yet unheard-of native aspirant, who can only hope for a limited patronage, an cannot dispense with his copyright, must of course be paid more. Whilst all