Some time back the _Times_ attempted to persuade us that our cheap shilling volumes were doing us a world of harm. It was grievously shocked to find that the people bought and read them, instead of its healthy and stimulating columns. It thought we were really getting into a very undesirable state. The _Times_ told us as proof, that we have now translations of French trashy novels. We admit we have; but is that anything new? Have we not always had a large class of readers of trashy novels, French or otherwise? and even here have we not proof of progress? Have not those very trashy novels lost the indecency which was their characteristic at any earlier time? If we remember aright, Sir Walter Scott states that a lady told him, in looking over some of the novels which were fashionable in her youth she was utterly shocked at the grossness which pervaded them, and that in that respect a most decided improvement had taken place; and is this nothing? is this not a sign of good? Nor is this the only sign; our sterling writers—the classics of our land—are all published in a cheap form, so as to suit the pockets of the people. The literature of the rail even is not so very bad after all. Much of it is light and superficial, undoubtedly; nor is this to be wondered at: the traveller must have something light, or he cannot read at all. The book that requires thought is not for the rail, but the quiet study. Your grave scholars, your most painful divines, now and then put by the dictionary or the commentary, and read, it may be, the _Times_. In both the same law operates. There are occasions when reading for relaxation is a necessity: that necessity the railway literature of the day supplies. But why should the _Times_ grow doleful when it records the fact?—or rather the half-fact—for the whole truth is more cheering. The whole truth is, that light reading spreads side by side with reading of real merit—that the popular scientific discourse, or history, circulates equally with the novel—not often so trashy after all—for a cheap book must be a good book or it will not pay; and that the more readers of light literature you have, the wider is the circle of readers of better books. A cheap copy of Burns’ Poem’s might be sold at a profit; we fear a cheap copy of poems by the critic in the _Times_ would produce a very different result. To write for the people, a man must write well. The trashy novel, published in three volumes, with a limited sale will pay; it would not published in a cheap form. Only a large sale will remunerate; and a large sale is only the result of some kind of merit.