'I am glad the snuff and Pipos books please. _Goody Two Shoes_ is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery, and the shop-man at Newberry's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf when Mary asked for them. Mrs. Barbauld's and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. Barbauld's books convey, it seems must come to a child in the _shape of knowledge_, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such like--instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child.' Canon Ainger's six volumes are not very big. They take up but little room. They demand no great leisure. But they cannot fail to give immense pleasure to generations to come, to purify tastes, to soften hearts, to sweeten discourse. AUTHORS IN COURT There is always something a little ludicrous about the spectacle of an author in pursuit of his legal remedies. It is hard to say why, but like a sailor on horseback, or a Quaker at the play, it suggests that incongruity which is the soul of things humorous. The courts are of course as much open to authors as to the really deserving members of the community; and, to do the writing fraternity justice, they have seldom shown any indisposition to enter into them--though if they have done so joyfully, it must be attributed to their natural temperament, which (so we read) is easy, rather than to the mirthful character of legal process. To write a history of the litigations in which great authors have been engaged would indeed be _renovare dolorem_, and is no intention of mine; though the subject is not destitute of human interest--indeed, quite the opposite.