It is a common complaint that the publishers make large fortunes and leave the authors to starve--that they are, in fact, a kind of moral vampire, sucking the best blood of genius, and destroying others to support themselves. A great deal of very unhealthy, one-sided cant has been written upon this subject. Doubtless, there is much to be said on both sides. That publishers look at a manuscript very much as a corn-dealer looks at sample of wheat, with an eye to its selling qualities, is not to be denied. If books are not written only to be sold, they are printed only to be sold. Publishers must pay their printers and their paper-merchants; and they can not compel the public to purchase their printed paper. When benevolent printers shall be found eager to print gratuitously works of unsalable genius, and benevolent paper-merchants to supply paper for the same, publishers may afford to think less of a manuscript as an article of sale--may reject with less freedom unlikely manuscripts, and haggle less savagely about the price of likely ones. An obvious common-place this, and said a thousand times before, but not yet recognized by the world of writers at large. Publishing is a trade, and, like all other trades, undertaken with the one object of making money by it. The profits are not ordinarily large; they are, indeed, very uncertain--so uncertain that a large proportion of those who embark in the publishing business some time or other find their way into the Gazette. When a publishing firm is ruined by printing unsalable books, authors seldom or never have any sympathy with a member of it. They have, on the other hand, an idea that he is justly punished for his offenses; and so perhaps he is, but not in the sense understood by the majority of those who contemplate his downfall as a retributive dispensation. The fact is, that reckless publishing is more injurious to the literary profession than any thing in the world beside. The cautious publisher is the author's best friend. If a house publish at their own risk a number of works which they can not sell, they must either go into the Gazette at last, or make large sums of money by works which they _can_ sell. When a publisher loses money by a work, an injury is inflicted upon the literary profession. The more money he can make by publishing, the more he can afford to pay for authorship. It is often said that the authors of successful works are inadequately rewarded in proportion to their success; that publishers make their thousands, while authors only make their hundreds. But it is forgotten that the profits of the one successful work are often only a set-off to the losses incurred by the publication of half a dozen unsuccessful ones. If a publisher purchase a manuscript for £500, and the work prove to be a "palpable hit" worth £5000, it may seem hard that the publisher does not share his gains more equitably with the author. With regard to this it