But now I want Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Colburn to tell me what good it will do English authors and publishers for you to imitate in this respect the injustice and folly of your transatlantic cousins. Because "literature is in a depressed state," which Sir Edward asserts to be a fact--and because Mr. Colburn cannot afford to give one hundred pounds for a book for which once he would have given £1000--they propose, if I understand them, to have recourse to an unlimited pirating of American literature. I should think (if your British pride will tolerate the expression of my opinion) that the true remedy would be to give a stringent copyright to American authors. Pray which injured the English book-market most--Mr. Colburn's issue of a few hundreds of "Lady Alice" at a guinea and a half, or Mr. Bohn's issue of as many thousands of Mayo's "Kaloolah" at a shilling? Or do they think, as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton seems to imply, that, except Cooper and Irving, we have no authors whose works are readable in Britain? "Typee," and "The Scarlet Letter," and "The Reveries of a Bachelor," and the two works above mentioned, tell a different story. Who can deny the genius and artistic power of Hawthorne, or the clear English simplicity of his style? And if Ik Marvel falls much behind Geoffrey Crayon, we, their countrymen, are no judges--although it is true that the former has fallen upon an affected age. I admit our deterioration. Or is it supposed that we shall cease producing if the possibility of English copyright is taken away? That would be a great mistake. Men who have a vocation for it will write, well or ill, even if they starve, as London garrets can testify. And there is no danger of our starving absolutely. Successful books pay their authors, not adequately, but enough to keep soul and body together. In light literature (so-called, perhaps, because it demands entire devotion and unceasing toil to arrive at excellence in it)--in light literature, which pays best here as well as elsewhere, there is a distinct demand for native works, which all the competition of the cheap pamphlet novels of the Harpers cannot wholly extinguish, and it is by the feeble, but real aid of this national taste that we exist. For my part, I feel a sort of Coriolanus pride in having got nothing, as I may say, for a book which had an unprecedented run; and if my countrymen object, as some of them do, to its principles, I tell them fairly that beggars cannot be choosers. I can live, thank Heaven, in many ways. I could not, indeed, keep school--as my countrymen, I believe, think every literary man should, the better to amuse them at his own expense. Two such drains on the cerebro-nervous system would soon lay me beneath the sod. But I can invest what remains of my patrimony in wild land, till it for my bread, and write a tale every winter, in defiance of the buccaneers.