looking at the quality of the paper and print, we doubt if the American booksellers could afford a volume of similar quality at the price charged by Mr. Bohn for his reprints. Any plan is, however, better than that suggested at the late meeting, of becoming pirates ourselves to cure our neighbors of their buccaneering propensities. The comparatively small number of works of mark which are now produced in America (there have been no prose writers of any very great eminence since the heyday of the literary lives of Irving, Cooper, and Channing, if we except Mr. Prescott) goes far to show that national literature is all but annihilated in that country, and that the evil must eventually, in a great measure, correct itself. In a recent American newspaper it is stated that protection is not refused in that country to any British author who will go through the necessary forms by which he becomes qualified for the privilege. Our readers will smile to hear that one of these conditions consists of an oath, by which the candidate for copyright in America is required to "renounce for ever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereign, whatever, and particularly _to the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland!"_ The late Captain Marryat declined to comply with these terms, although another English author, of undeniable reputation, has, it is affirmed, not scrupled to bolt this denationalizing pill. We have not heard if he has turned his privilege to any account. From Fraser's Magazine. A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN AT HOME. BY C. ASTOR BRISTED. It was a lovely October day; the temperature perfectly Elysian--not half a degree too hot or too cold--and the air moister than is usual in the dry climate of the Northern States, altogether reminding one of Florence in early autumn, only less enervating. Ashburner and the Harry Bensons were gliding up the Hudson in a 'floating palace,' which is American penny-a-liner for a northriver steamboat. Gerard Ludlow was on board, handsome and _distingué_ as ever, but a little thinned and worn by numberless polkas. He had got rid of his wife by a mighty effort, and was going to play _le Mari à la Campagne_--not at Ravenswood, however, but with some of the Van Hornes who lived higher up the river. While the young exquisite was rattling on in a sort of Macaronic French to Mrs. Benson about the mountains of Switzerland and the pictures of Italy, the ascent of the Nile and "that glorious _Clos-Vougeot Blanc Mousseux_ at the _Anglais_"--every topic, in short, that had not the least connection with America--Ashburner was witnessing for the third time, with unabated admiration, the magnificent scenery of the classic American river--for classic it is to a New-Yorker since Washington Irving has immortalized its legends.