"I 'm sure I 'm wery much obliged, Captain, and I 'll take your adwice when

we come to port, and if the weather still looks wacillating, I won't wenter

ashore. It would n't be worth while to risk my goods,--some of 'em welwets,

too, of great walue!"

"The keepin' on 'em aboard sha'n't cost you nothin'," says John, "if that

'll be any object to you."

He wished to convey the idea, that, to a person of her fabulous wealth,

dealing in velvets and the like, a fare more or less could not possibly be

an object, and at the same time to show a magnanimous disposition on his

own part.

"Money is money," says the milliner, "there is no denying of that; and it

has its adwantages, on account o' which I set a certain walue upon it; but

just for its own sake I can't say that I do walue it,--not over and above!"

"I hev n't hed no great on 't," says John, "but I 've hed enough, sense I

've come into business, to know that if I hed to keep it a-chinkin' into my

pocket I should n't value it much."

Then he corrected himself, and said _walue_.

"I 'll tell you how money is waluable to me," says the milliner, "if I may

wenter so far?"

"Most certainly!" exclaimed John. "You could n't venter nothin' that would

n't be to your credit,--I 'll vouch a fippenny bit on that!"

Then he repeated himself, substituting _wenter_, and _wouch_, in the places

of the words previously used.

"Dear me! I should become wain o' myself if I thought your compliment was

walid," says the milliner, dropping her eyes; but the next moment she gives

her bonnet-strings a little flirt, and goes on in the sprightliest way

about a hundred trifles,--one of which had no connection with another.

"You 've forgot what you sot out on!" says John, interrupting her at last;

"and you kerried me away so, I was a-forgittin' on 't too. Howsever, it 's

no odds, as I know on,--you make whatever you touch so interestin'!"

"O Captain! how you do warnish me up! I shall certainly wacate the premises

when we come to port, if you don't stop sich things!--that is, if there's a

single westige o' clear sky. But we were talking of the walue of money, was

n't we?" She cast down her eyes again, and spoke with a sweet seriousness.

"I walue money," she says, "when I see I can make another happy with it."

And then she says her lot in life has been a wery lonely and sad

one,--wersatile, but on the whole lonely, sometimes to the wery werge of

despair!

"You don't say?" says John. "I certainly should n't 'a' thought it

possible! Why, you don't mean to say you 've allers been alone in the

world?"

Then she tells him how she thought she fell in love, at seventeen, with a

green-grocer that turned out to be a miserable wagabond, inwesting all her

earnings in whiskey and rum, and drinking them himself.

"The villain!" cried John;--and then, finding that he had not done justice

to his feelings, he repeated, with great stress of indignation, "The

willain! the black-hearted willain! But he never dared to lay

violent--wiolent, I mean--hands onto you!"

"Dear me, how my heart wibrates!" says the woman,--"not so much with the

memory of what I have suffered as that--that anybody should manifest such

a--such a wery kind feeling toward me now!"

"How anybody that seen you should 'a' helpt from doin' on 't," says the

boatman, "is awful curus to me!"

"Law mercy, how selfish I am, never offering you a seat all this while!"

says the artful woman. And she hitched along, and smoothed out the jacket.

"Well, whatever your trouble 's been," says John, "I hope your red on 't!"

It was an ingenious method of saying he hoped the vagabond was out of the

way.

He turned toward her as he spoke, and the wind once more fluttered the gay

ribbons in his face. She lifted her hand to draw them back. "Don't you be

a-mindin' on 'em," says John; "they're just as sweet as rose-leaves, and I

like to hev em a-blowin' over me so."

You may smile, reader, if you will, but you would not smile if you had seen

the soul yearning in the eyes of the man, if you had heard the pleading in

the sad sincerity of his tone. He was fifty years old now, and I dare say a

woman's ribbon had never touched him till then. He was wrinkled and gray,

and old to look upon, but his heart in its tender sentiment was as fresh

and young as a boy's.

So, with the ribbons fluttering on his cheek, and his boat drifting as it

would, John Chidlaw listened to the story of the woman's life, and as

Desdemona loved the Moor for the dangers he had passed, so he loved her for

the sorrows she had borne.

"Yes, Captain," she says, "my troubles is over now, pretty much. I've been

a widder this ten year,"--(he hitched a little closer,)--"I 've been a

widder, and I 've had peace o' mind, and I 've laid up money; but, law me

when a body has nobody to lay up for, what 's the use?"

"Sure enough, what is the use on 't?" says John.

"Why, it's no use," she answers; "it's wanity and wexation! that's what it

is!"

"Wanity and wexation!" he repeats.

And then she says, if anybody had ever showed a warm heart toward her, she

'd 'a' been a different woman to what she is.

"A different woman!" says John. "How different to what you be?" He could

not conceive of the possibility of a difference for the better.

"Why, I would 'a' been ten year younger and ten year smarter," says the

widow, "and then may be somebody might 'a' took a notion to me! Who knows?

We women never cease to hope, you know!"

"And hev n't they, as 't is?" says John, eagerly bending toward her.

"What a saucy Captain you are, to ask me such questions!"--and she put him

gently back with her white hand. "But here we are almost ashore!"--and she

began gathering up her band-boxes and paper parcels with great energy.

"I thought you said you was a-goin' to take my advice?" says John, with a

soft reproach in his voice.

"Did I? O, then I will!" she answers, with the most innocent air possible,

and leaning quite across his knee to replace one of her boxes. "What is

your adwice, now? But you must bear in mind the walue of the welwets. I 've

one bonnet in the lot, of a wermilion color, that's worth a wast deal; and

you know welwet, when it 's once wet, looks just like a drownded cat. No

dressing can make anything of it. Some ladies wears it, but _my_ ladies

does n't."

"I never knew clouds look like them," says John, "when it did n't pour;

and, if you take my adwice, you 'll stay just where you be."

"I 'll take your adwice," says the widow, touching his hand lightly with

her soft fingers, and smiling upon him with that unpremeditated coquetry

that always makes a woman charming. It was especially charming to this

man, for no woman had ever smiled upon him like that; and then to think

she had asked and accepted his advice, withal! It was enough to turn his

head, and it did.

"I'll take your adwice, Captain," she says, "and keep the welwets dry, for

it would cost a pretty penny to replace that wermilion, to be sure! I shall

lose some time by it; and time is money. But what 's money but wanity and

wexation, when nobody has a warm heart toward us?"

John Chidlaw sighed a long, long sigh, and then he turned his boat about

and they sailed back again. By and by, as if to push him toward his fate,

there flashed down a few big drops of rain. The sun was shining all the

while, but he bestirred himself, and worked with a will, and the widow lent

her little hindering help, and directly the canvas was spread and securely

drawn down, and they were sitting beneath it, side by side, cosey as could

be. She became more communicative now, and told him in what street she was

born and who her father was.

"What! not ---- Street, of our town here? And your father's name Peter

Rollins, too?"

"Yes, Peter Rollins, coffin-maker, satin-lined and silver-screwed! The wery

tiptop. None but quality come to him. When I was a little girl, I used to

get into 'em, when we played hide and seek. Why, if you believe me, I 've

been into many a hundred-dollar one, and had my head into the satin piller

of it! That's the way I happened to cultiwate a taste for satins and

welwets and the like, I guess."

She did not heed the intimation of her companion that he had known her

father, but went on for half an hour without once stopping to take breath.

"Ah, Captain," she says, "I 've been dethroned in the world! I was born to

riches and a proud position, but I married beneath me, a poor green-grocer

that turned out a wagabond; and in my trials with him, I lost all my good

looks; for I may say, without wanity, that I was good-looking in my

girlish days, and lost all my wiwacity, and come to be the sober, staid

old woman you see me."

"Old woman, to be sure!" says John. "Why, nobody would think o' callin' you

old. You look a'most like a girl o' sixteen to me!"

"O Captain!" says the widow; and then she says his sight must be failing,

though his eyes do look so uncommon bright; and then she says, with a

little sigh, that she is upwards of forty.

She had observed John's wrinkled face, and her confession was not without

method, though she might have added five to the forty years, if she had

chosen to be very accurate.

"Up'ards o' forty!" says John, charmed alike with her sincerity and her

well-preserved beauty. "Why, I snum, you might marry a man o' twenty-five

any day, if you had a mind."

"Ah, Captain, but I have n't the mind. I want a man--that is, if I ever

wenter to marry agin--who is older than myself,--say from ten to fifteen

year older. I would n't be so wery particular." And then she says to

John,--for a possibility crosses her mind,--"Does your family live

hereabouts?"

John blushed up to his eyes. "Family!" says he. "I never was so fortinate

as to hev one."

"Not even a wife, to be sure?"

"No, miss." And then he says he never expects to hev one.

"Law, Captain, why? if I may wenter."

"Cause nobody 'd hev me, miss; and to say truth, I never thought on 't much

till sense we 've been a-takin' this voyage"; and he glanced at her slyly,

and touched the ends of her ribbon.

"And what could 'a' put it into your head now, Captain Chidlaw?"

"Can you ask me that in airnest?" says John, still holding the ribbons as

for dear life. "Then I must tell you to just look into the glass, and you

'll see what."

"O Captain, you ought to be ashamed to plague a poor lone woman like me

that way; it 's wery bad of you, wery, and I 've a great mind to box your

ears!" and she put out her little hand to him in a sweetly menacing manner.

John seized the hand and kissed it, and then, frightened at himself, ran to

the other end of the boat and looked hard at the clouds.

"O, come back! come back!" screamed the widow; "the boat 'll upset, with me

at one end and you at the other!"

"Sure enough!" says John, and he went sheepishly back, and again seated

himself by her side.

She gave him a little tap on the ear, and asked him if he would promise

never to run away and frighten her so again.

John said he would promise her anything in the world that was in his power

to grant; and he looked at her with such adoration that the woman overcame

the coquette, or the coquette the woman,--which shall I say?--and she went

as far from the "dangerous edge of things" as possible, and told him

demurely that the only promise she exacted was, that he should listen to

the long and techin' story of her life. It all came back upon her, and she

felt as if she must tell it to somebody. "May be, though, you don't want to

hear it?" says she.

"May be I don't want to hear it! How can you?" says John, edging up. And

she began:--

"I told you, Captain, that I had been dethroned, and I have,--wilely

dethroned, and brought low, by my own woluntary act."

"Dear heart!" says John, "so much the worse, if it was woluntary, so few

pities you."

"Ah, that 's it," says the widow; "nobody pities me,--nobody in the wide

world has got a warm heart toward me." She broke quite down, and the tears

came to her eyes.

"What may your name be?" says John, seizing both her hands and gazing

tenderly in her face.

"Why do you ask? I 'm but a transient wisitor to your boat; you can't have

no interest in me; and, besides, my name is hateful to me."

"But I must call you somethin'!"

"Well, then, inwent a name. My maiden name reminds me of the royal hours

when my father's position gave me rank, and before the wicissitudes of

fortune brought me low; I cannot therefore consent to be called by that;

and my married name is the name of a wagabond, and I despise it. O sir,

inwent a name, for mercy's sake!"

"I 'll inwent it for love's sake," says John, slipping his arm round her

waist, and drawing her close to him; "and I 'll call you my dove, coz you

see you 've got all the timidity and gentleness o' that lovely bird, and

your voice is sweeter than the turtle's, I 'm sure."

"O Captain, my woice is n't a nice woice now-a-days,--my woice went with

the rest of my attractions when I was dethroned. I had a nice woice once.

If we could have met then!"

"My dove!" says John, "whatever your woice hes ben, I would n't hev it no

sweeter than what it is now; it kerries me back to the years that hed hope

in 'em,--the years when I was a boy, and in love."

"Say no more," says the widow; "my heart already tells me that you love

another,"--and she began to pout.

"Lord bless us!" says John; "our boat is aground. I was so took up with

you, Rose, that I did n't see she was driftin' down stream, and here we be,

high and dry, and a storm a-comin' on; but you can't blame me so ha'shly,

my dear Rose, as what I blame myself. Can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you?" cries the widow, reproachfully. "Can you forget that I am an

undertaker's daughter?"

This speech did not convey any very clear meaning to the mind of John

Chidlaw; but he attributed that to his own dulness, and as this struck him

as being very great, somehow or other, though he could not tell how, he

bowed his head in shamefaced silence.

In spite of what he had said about being in love in his youth, the widow

took great courage. He had said "our boat" instead of "my boat," and he

had called her Rose,--her real name,--how should he know that? She could

not tell, but somehow she augured favorably from it; besides, they were

aground, and must wait for the rising of the tide, and in the intervening

time who knew what might be done? She would tell all her story; and its

pathos, she fancied, must subjugate the most obdurate heart.

"Yes," she renewed, "I am, or rather was, an undertaker's daughter, with

the most brilliant prospects before me that ever allured a wile wagabond of

a fortune-hunter, for such he was who stole me from the satin pillers my

young head had played among, and give me a piller of husks, and cold

wittles, and wulgar lodgings."

"The wretch!" cries John. "The wile wretch! if he yet lived, I would wow

myself to wengeance!" And, like Jacob of old, he lifted up his voice and

wept.

"Don't take on so," says the widow. "I would not cause you a moment's

sorrow for the world."

"To think any man should have abused the like o' you!" says John. "But

surely he never laid wiolent hands ont' you? I think I shall lose my senses

if you say that."

"Then I won't say it," says the widow, tenderly stroking his hand.

"That touch is wivifying," says John; "so, dear Rose, you may go on and

tell the wust on 't."

Then the widow came to the worst; for after all the trials she had with the

old wagabond, she said, she could have put up with him but for one nasty

habit,--he walked into his sleep! "And now a man that walks into his

sleep," says she, "is a trial and a torment to his wife which there is no

tongue can tell it."

"Ah, to be sure," says John, "you ought to hev been divorced, and to have

recovered big damages into the bargain. To think that the willain dared to

walk into his sleep, and frighten a poor timid dove like you! But the

hearts o' some does seem manufactured o' flints, and his'n was one on 'em,

I guess."

"Yes, as you say wisely, some is flint," says the widow; "but then some is

n't!" And she dropped her eyes, and gave his hand a confiding little

squeeze. And then she says that, once married, diworce is n't got for the

asking,--"you are tied for good and all." And then she says, that brings

her to the p'int.

"To be dethroned was bad enough," says she; "and then to see my royal

dowery conwerted into whiskey, which it was dewoured by him, the same being

took continual; but what was most intolerable of all was that he walked

into his sleep! I tried every way to contrawene the wile habit that could

be inwented. I coaxed and I scolded, and I got up late, and I give him hot

winegar with a little whiskey into it,--he would swaller anything that had

a drop of whiskey into it,--and I prewailed on him to sing psalms, and,

that failing, I prewailed onto him to inwest into a wiolin and play onto

that till late into the midnight, thinking by that means his witality would

be exhausted, and he would lie into his bed like any other man; but lo and

behold! he inwested into the wiolin a-Monday, and a-Monday night he played

till along towards ten o'clock, and I got clean wore out, and, says I, 'Do

leave off playing onto that wiolin,' says I, 'for my head aches like all

possess'; and with that he up and went to bed, and after a while I hears

something fingering the latch, and I riz onto my elbow, and says, in a

whisper, 'Dan'l, there 's a man a-trying to break in, as sure as you 're

alive!' He did n't answer, and thinks says I, the wiolin has done it, and

he is a-sleeping with a wengeance, and then I feels along, and says I,

'Dan'l, Dan'l!' but still no answer; then I felt for the piller, and there

was no head onto it, and I scraped a match, and it went out, and I scraped

another, and it went out, and I scraped another, and a leetle blue flame

just started and flickered, and before I could see what it was a-fumbling

at the door, _it_ went out. Thinks says I, I 'll make sure work now; and I

took two of the nasty things into my hand and scraped so hard I crushed

them all up together, and they flashed out and seared my finger-ends and

burnt a hole into my nightgownd-sleeve, and, seeing I was like to burn up,

I slapped my arm with all my might, and at last I slapped the flame down,

and at last, by persewerance, I slapped it out; and yet I had n't seen a

thing, but I could feel the hole into my nightgownd-sleeve, and my arm all

burnt into a light blister. 'Dan'l!' says I again; but Dan'l did n't

answer, and then I was full sure it was him, and I scraped with a steadier

hand, and the match--it was one of them nasty lucifers, may be you know--"

"Yes, I 've heerd tell on 'em," says John.

And the wretched woman went on: "It was one of them nasty lucifers, and it

choked me so I could not find the candle; and though I could just see a

ghostly object at the door, I could not tell at all whether it was Dan'l or

not, for he never looked like himself when he walked into his sleep; and

the match--they are nothing but splinters, you know--was burning closer and

closer to my fingers, and I just dabs it wiolently into the washbowl, and

puts it out. And then says I, 'Dan'l! Dan'l!' again; and this time he

answers, and says he, 'You wixen,' says he, 'shut up your mouth!'

"There was no mistaking that, and all in the dark I wentered after him, and

grabbed and ketched him by the end of his neck-tie, and hild with all my

might; and at that he began to wociferate at the top of his woice, and,

thinks says I, better than rouse all the neighbors and have them broke o'

their rest, I 'll just let him go and walk into his sleep till he 's

satisfied. I took the key out of the door, and then I tried to find my way

back, for, thinks says I, I 'll retire and take my rest anyhow, and, if you

believe it, I was so turned round I could n't find the piller! So I went

feeling here and there, and every minute I come back to him, and every time

I touched him he wociferated at the top of his woice; and then I 'd say,

'Dan'l, it was n't woluntary!' and then I 'd feel and feel by the chairs

and the wall, and by one thing and another, as a body will when they can't

see, and the first thing I 'd know I 'd be right back to him agin. My

blistered arm, meantime, was a-burning like fire, but, thinks says I, it 's

no use, I can 't find the water-pitcher, I 'm so turned round; and I just

sot down where I was, and there I sot till daylight, blowing all my breath

away onto my arm, and the minute I could see I made for the pitcher; but,

happening to take it by the snout instead of the handle, away it went, and

spilt all the water, and broke the pitcher past all mending,--and a fine

pitcher, too!--one that my own father give me in cholera times, when his

business was at the best."

"I declare," says John Chidlaw, "it 's enough to make a body's blood run

cold!" And then he says he does n't wonder she 's agin matrimony!

Now the widow had said nothing of the sort, and stoutly protested that she

had not, but that, on the contrary, she thought it an adwantage to any

woman to be married, prowided she could find an indiwidual that had a warm

heart toward her; to which John replied that she had found such a one; and

she answered, "How you do go on!" and resumed her story.

"Well, a-Tuesday night he took to the wiolin again, and played and played

and played and played all the old dancing tunes in creation, and I sot by

and never said a word till 'leven o'clock come, and then till twelve

o'clock come, and then till one o'clock come, and then till two o'clock

come, and at last, thinks says I, my brain will go wild, and says I,

'Dan'l, I ain't a bit sleepy, but I do feel some as if I could go to sleep

if you 'd just keep on a-playing; I 've got kind o' used to it, and I don't

believe I can go to sleep without it.' With this he flung the wiolin into

the cradle,--my father had presented me with a cradle that he had made out

of some boards that had been used once and rejected on account of knots,

but just as good, you know,--and then he flounced into bed, and he never

walked into his sleep that night!"

"You cunnin' little thing!" cries John, overcome with her smartness, and

hugging her close. "Who but you would ever 'a' thought on 't? Such a sleek

deception!"

"Well, a-Wednesday night he would n't touch his wiolin, and that night, or

rather along towards morning, he walked into his sleep, and a-Thursday

night he would n't play a stroke agin; in wain I put the wiolin into his

sight; and that night he just dewoted himself to walking,--making himself

wisible to the neighbors, even. So thinks says I, this won't do; and

a-Friday night, says I, I says to him, says I, 'I hate the old wiolin,'

says I; 'and I 've a good notion to burn it up!'

"'You just wenter!' says he, and he takes it up and slants it agin his

shoulder, and turns his head kind a sideways, all the time a-keeping his

eye onto me, and he seesaws and seesaws till I falls asleep into my chair,

and then he seesaws and seesaws till I wakes and rubs my eyes, and still

his head is kind a sideways, and his wiolin agin his shoulder, aslant like,

just as if he had n't moved; and then I pertends to sleep, and I pertends

and pertends and pertends, and at last pertence is clear wore out, and I

wakes up like, and I says, says I, 'Dan'l, it must be a'most ten o'clock,

ain't it?'--I knew it was daylight. And all at once his wisage changed, and

the wiolin fairly dropt from his shoulder, and he hild up his head that had

been kind a sideways all that while, and went to bed peaceable as a lamb,

he did, and for the rest of the night he did n't walk into his sleep at

all!"

"You angel!" says John,--"to get round him so."

"Just wait," says the widow; "there's something a-coming that 'll make you

open your eyes. A-Saturday night says I, 'I feel like dancing,' says I;

'so, Dan'l, give us one of your liveliest tunes!' and with that I began to

hop about like a lark. Of course he was took in, and the wiolin was n't

touched; but O how he did walk into his sleep! Wisible to everybody! In

wain I argued that walking into sleep was wulgar, in wain I coaxed, and in

wain I cried,--though tears will sometimes prewail when nothing else will,

that is, if they ain't too woluntary. Some women seems to shed 'em

woluntary, and then they are not so prewailing, which it was never my case,

Captain, never! I cried for sheer spite and for nothing else; it was always

the way with me, especially after I was dethroned; and when tears did n't

prewail, thinks says I, I must take adwice, which I took it,--adwice here

and adwice there,--and one adwised one thing and one another; but the

adwice I took was adwice that it liked to have landed me where I never

should have seen the light of this blessed day, nor seen, nor seen, nor

seen--you!"

John put both arms round her instead of one, and held her fast, lest she

might vanish like a phantom.

"You seem so like a sweet wision of the night!" he said. And then he asked

her what was the wicious adwice.

"I do feel as if I 'd wanish, sure enough," says the widow, "if it was n't

for your wine-like arms a-holding me up so nice, for I never can repeat

this part of my sufferings without being quite wanquished,--just a leetle

closer, if you please; now your shoulder, so that it will catch my head if

it should happen to fall. You have wisely called the adwice which I was

adwised to wicious," says she; "but what will you say when you hear the

adwice which I was adwised? Nerve yourself up, Captain, but don't let go of

me, not the least bit, I am so liable to be wanquished by my feelings.

There, that 'll do,--the dear knows it 's all because of my fear. Well,

the adwice I was adwised was, as you wisely said, wicious,--indeed it was

wery wicious,--and yet the woman that she adwised the adwice was a woman of

wast experience,--the wife of a wiolent drinker, and the mother of fourteen

children. More than this, her father had been constable once, and she wore

French thread-lace altogether! Would you suppose, Captain, considering her

adwantages, especially as regards her father and her laces, that she could

have adwised me with adwice that it was unadwisable?"

"No, I should n't a-dreampt on 't," says the Captain; "but what was the

adwice that she adwised you that warn't adwisable?"

"I really can't get my consent to tell," says the widow, "now that I 've

sot out, for I never expected to reweal it to anybody, unless it was

to--well, to some one that either was, or was like to be, my husband. Dear

me, I've undertook too much!"

"There," says the enraptured lover; "now can't you go on?"

"I don't know," says the widow, blushing, but not withdrawing her cheek.

"Try, for my sake!" says the Captain, "it 's so interestin'. You 've

undertook a good deal, but whatever consarns you consarns me."

"Well, I won't wacillate no more,--not if it plagues you!" And the widow

looked fondly in his face, and then, quite supporting herself upon his arm,

she drooped her eyelids modestly and resumed.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

There is an American lady living at Hartford, in Connecticut, whom the

United States has permitted to be robbed by foreigners of $200,000. Her

name is Harriet Beecher Stowe. By no disloyal act has she or her family

forfeited their right to the protection of the government of the United

States. She pays her taxes, keeps the peace, and earns her livelihood by

honest industry; she has reared children for the service of the

Commonwealth; she was warm and active for her country when many around her

were cold or hostile;--in a word, she is a good citizen.

More than that: she is an illustrious citizen. The United States stands

higher to-day in the regard of every civilized being in Christendom because

she lives in the United States. She is the only woman yet produced on the

continent of America to whom the world assigns equal rank in literature

with the great authoresses of Europe. If, in addition to the admirable

talents with which she is endowed, she had chanced to possess one more,

namely, the excellent gift of plodding, she had been a consummate artist,

and had produced immortal works. All else she has,--the seeing eye, the

discriminating intelligence, the sympathetic mind, the fluent word, the

sure and happy touch; and these gifts enabled her to render her country the

precise service which it needed most. Others talked about slavery: she made

us _see_ it. She showed it to us in its fairest and in its foulest aspect;

she revealed its average and ordinary working. There never was a fairer nor

a kinder book than "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; for the entire odium of the

revelation fell upon the Thing, not upon the unhappy mortals who were born

and reared under its shadow. The reader felt that Legree was not less, but

far more, the victim of slavery than Uncle Tom, and the effect of the book

was to concentrate wrath upon the system which tortured the slave's body

and damned the master's soul. Wonderful magic of genius! The hovels and

cotton-fields which this authoress scarcely saw she made all the world see,

and see more vividly and more truly than the busy world can ever see remote

objects with its own unassisted eyes. We are very dull and stupid in what

does not immediately concern us, until we are roused and enlightened by

such as she. Those whom we call "the intelligent," or "the educated," are

merely the one in ten of the human family who by some chance learned to

read, and thus came under the influence of the class whom Mrs. Stowe

represents.

It is not possible to state the amount of good which this book has done, is

doing, and is to do. Mr. Eugene Schuyler, in the preface to the Russian

novel which he has recently done the public the service to translate,

informs us that the publication of a little book in Russia contributed

powerfully to the emancipation of the Russian serfs. The book was merely a

collection of sketches, entitled "The Memoirs of a Sportsman"; but it

revealed serfdom to the men who had lived in the midst of it all their

lives without ever seeing it. Nothing is ever _seen_ in this world, till

the searching eye of a sympathetic genius falls upon it. This Russian

nobleman, Turgenef, noble in every sense, saw serfdom, and showed it to his

countrymen. His volume was read by the present Emperor, and _he_ saw

serfdom; and he has since declared that the reading of that little book was

"one of the first incitements to the decree which gave freedom to thirty

millions of serfs." All the reading public of Russia read it, and _they_

saw serfdom; and thus a public opinion was created, without the support of

which not even the absolute Czar of all the Russias would have dared to

issue a decree so sweeping and radical.

We cannot say as much for "Uncle Tom's Cabin," because the public opinion

of the United States which permitted the emancipation of the slaves was of

longer growth, and was the result of a thousand influences. But when we

consider that the United States only just escaped dismemberment and

dissolution in the late war, and that two great powers of Europe were only

prevented from active interference on behalf of the Rebellion by that

public opinion which "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had recently revived and

intensified, we may at least believe, that, if the whole influence of that

work could have been annihilated, the final triumph of the United States

might have been deferred, and come only after a series of wars. That book,

we may almost say, went into every household in the civilized world which

contained one person capable of reading it. And it was not an essay; it was

a vivid exhibition;--it was not read from a sense of duty, nor from a

desire to get knowledge; it was read with passion; it was devoured; people

sat up all night reading it; those who could read read it to those who

could not; and hundreds of thousands who would never have read it saw it

played upon the stage. Who shall presume to say how many soldiers that book

added to the Union army? Who shall estimate its influence in hastening

emancipation in Brazil, and in preparing the amiable Cubans for a similar

measure? Both in Cuba and Brazil the work has been read with the most

passionate interest.

If it is impossible to measure the political effect of this work, we may at

least assert that it gave a thrilling pleasure to ten millions of human

beings,--an innocent pleasure, too, and one of many hours' duration. We may

also say, that, while enjoying that long delight, each of those ten

millions was made to see, with more or less clearness, the great truth that

man is not fit to be trusted with arbitrary power over his fellow. The

person who afforded this great pleasure, and who brought home this

fundamental truth to so many minds, was Harriet Beecher Stowe, of Hartford,

in the State of Connecticut, where she keeps house, educates her children,

has a book at the grocery, and invites her friends to tea. To that American

woman every person on earth who read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" incurred a

personal obligation. Every individual who became possessed of a copy of the

book, and every one who saw the story played in a theatre, was bound, in

natural justice, to pay money to her for service rendered, unless she

expressly and formally relinquished her right,--which she has never done.

What can be clearer than this? Mrs. Stowe, in the exercise of her vocation,

the vocation by which she lives, performs a professional service to ten

millions of people. The service is great and lasting. The work done is

satisfactory to the customer. What can annul the obligation resting upon

each to render his portion of an equivalent, except the consent of the

authoress "first had and obtained"? If Mrs. Stowe, instead of creating for

our delight and instruction a glorious work of fiction, had contracted her

fine powers to the point of inventing a nutcracker or a match-safe, a

rolling-pin or a needle-threader, every individual purchaser could have

been compelled to pay money for the use of her ingenuity, and everybody

would have thought it the most natural and proper thing in the world so to

do. There are fifty American inventions now in use in Europe from which the

inventors derive revenue. _Revenue!_--not a sum of money which, once spent,

is gone forever, but that most solid and respectable of material blessings,

a sum per annum! Thus we reward those who light our matches. It is

otherwise that we compensate those who kindle our souls.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin," like every other novelty in literature, was the

late-maturing fruit of generations. Two centuries of wrong had to pass,

before the Subject was complete for the Artist's hand, and the Artist

herself was a flower of an ancient and gifted family. The Autobiography of

Lyman Beecher has made known this remarkable family to the public. We can

all see for ourselves how slowly and painfully this beautiful genius was

nourished,--what a narrow escape it had from being crushed and extinguished

amid the horrors of theology and the poverty of a Connecticut

parsonage,--how it was saved, and even nurtured, by that extraordinary old

father, that most strange and interesting character of New England, who

could come home, after preaching a sermon that appalled the galleries, and

play the fiddle and riot with his children till bedtime. A piano found its

way into the house, and the old man, whose geniality was of such abounding

force that forty years of theology could not lessen it, let his children

read Ivanhoe and the other novels of Sir Walter Scott. Partly by chance,

partly by stealth, chiefly by the force of her own cravings, this daughter

of the Puritans obtained the scanty nutriment which kept her genius from

starving. By and by, on the banks of the Ohio, within sight of a slave

State, the Subject and the Artist met, and there, from the lips of sore and

panting fugitives, she gained, in the course of years, the knowledge which

she revealed to mankind in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

When she had done the work, the United States stood by and saw her deprived

of three fourths of her just and legitimate wages, without stirring a

finger for her protection. The book sold to the extent of two millions of

copies, and the story was played in most of the theatres in which the

English language is spoken, and in many French and German theatres. In one

theatre in New York it was played eight times a week for twelve months.

Considerable fortunes have been gained by its performance, and it is still

a source of revenue to actors and managers. We believe that there are at

least three persons in the United States, connected with theatres, who have

gained more money from "Uncle Tom's Cabin" than Mrs. Stowe. Of all the

immense sums which the exhibition of this story upon the stage has

produced, the authoress has received nothing. When Dumas or Victor Hugo

publishes a novel, the sale of the right to perform it as a play yields him

from eighty thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand francs. These

authors receive a share of the receipts of the theatre,--the only fair

arrangement,--and this share, we believe, is usually one tenth; which is

also the usual percentage paid to authors upon the sale of their books. If

a French author had written "Uncle Tom's Cabin," he would have enjoyed,--1.

A part of the price of every copy sold in France; 2. A share of the

receipts of every theatre in France in which he permitted it to be played;

3. A sum of money for the right of translation into English; 4. A sum of

money for the right of translation into German. We believe we are far

within the truth when we say, that a literary success achieved by a French

author equal to that of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" would have yielded that author

half a million dollars in gold; and that, too, in spite of the lamentable

fact, that America would have stolen the product of his genius, instead of

buying it.

Mrs. Stowe received for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" the usual percentage upon the

sale of the American edition; which may have consisted of some three

hundred thousand copies. This percentage, with some other trifling sums,

may have amounted to forty thousand dollars. From the theatre she has

received nothing; from foreign countries nothing, or next to nothing. This

poor forty thousand dollars--about enough to build a comfortable house in

the country, and lay out an acre or two of grounds--was the product of the

supreme literary success of all times! A _corresponding_ success in sugar,

in stocks, in tobacco, in cotton, in invention, in real estate, would have

yielded millions upon millions to the lucky operator. To say that Mrs.

Stowe, through our cruel and shameful indifference with regard to the

rights of authors, native and foreign, has been kept out of two hundred

thousand dollars, honestly hers, is a most moderate and safe statement.

This money was due to her as entirely as the sum named upon a bill of

exchange is due to the rightful owner of the same. It was for "value

received." A permanently attractive book, moreover, would naturally be more

than a sum of money; it would be an estate; it would be an income. This

wrong, therefore, continues to the present moment, and will go on longer

than the life of the authoress. While we are writing this sentence,

probably, some German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, or English

bookseller is dropping into his "till" the price of a copy of "Uncle Tom's

Cabin," the whole of which he will keep, instead of sending ten per cent of

it to Hartford on the 1st of January next.

We have had another literary success in these years,--Mr. Motley's

Histories of the Dutch Republic and of the United Netherlands. As there are

fifteen persons in the world who can enjoy fiction to one that will read

much of any other kind of literary production, the writers of fiction

usually receive some compensation for their labors. Not a fair nor an

adequate compensation, but _some_. This compensation will never be fair nor

adequate until every man or woman in the whole world who buys a copy of a

novel, or sees it played, shall, in so doing, contribute a certain

stipulated sum to the author. Nevertheless, the writers of fiction do get a

little money, and a few of them are able to live almost as well as a

retired grocer. Now and then we hear of an author who gets almost as much

money for a novel that enthralls and enchants two or three nations for many

months, as a beardless operator in stocks sometimes wins between one and

two P. M. It is not so with the heroes of research, like Motley, Buckle,

Bancroft, and Carlyle. Upon this point we are ready to make a sweeping

assertion, and it is this. No well-executed work, involving original

research, can pay expenses, unless the author is protected in his right to

the market of the world. This is one of the points to which we particularly

wish to call attention. Give us international copyright, and it immediately

becomes possible in the United States for a man who is not rich to devote

his existence to the production of works of permanent and universal value.

Continue to withhold international copyright, and this privilege remains

the almost exclusive portion of men of wealth. For, in the United States,

there is scarcely any such thing as honest leisure in connection with

business or a salaried office.

Now, with regard to Mr. Motley, whose five massive volumes of Dutch History

are addressed to the educated class of all nations,--before that author

could write the first sentence of his work he must have been familiar with

six languages, English, Latin, Dutch, French, German, and Spanish, besides

possessing that general knowledge of history, literature, and science which

constitutes what is called culture. He must also have spent five laborious

years in gaining an intimate knowledge of his subject, in the course of

which he must have travelled in more than one country, and expended large

sums in the purchase of books and documents, and for copies of manuscripts.

Living in the cheap capitals of Continental Europe, and managing his

affairs with economy, he may have accomplished his preparatory studies at

an expenditure of ten thousand dollars,--two thousand dollars a year. The

volumes contain in all about three thousand five hundred large pages. At

two pages a day, which would be very rapid work, and probably twice as fast

as he did work, he could have executed the five volumes, and got them

through the press (a year's hard labor in itself), in seven years. Here are

twelve years' labor, and twenty-four thousand dollars' necessary

expenditure. Mr. Motley probably expended more than twelve years, and twice

twenty-four thousand dollars; but we choose to estimate the work at its

necessary cost. Two other items must be also considered:--1. The talents

of the author, which, employed in another profession, would have brought

large returns in money and honor; 2. The intense and exhausting nature of

the labor. The production of a work which demands strict fidelity to truth,

as well as excellence in composition,--which obliges the author, first, to

know all, and, after that, to impart the essence of his knowledge in an

agreeable and striking manner,--is the hardest continuous work ever done by

man. It is at times a fierce and passionate joy; it is at times a harrowing

anxiety; it is at times a vast despair; but it is always very hard labor.

The search after a fact is sometimes as arduous as the chase after a deer,

and it may last six weeks, and, after all, there may be no such fact, or it

may be valueless. And when all is done,--when the mountain of manuscript

lies before the author ready for the press,--he cannot for the life of him

tell whether his work is trash or treasure. As poor Charlotte Bronte said,

when she had finished Jane Eyre, "I only know that the story has interested

_me_." Finally comes the anguish of having the work judged by persons whose

only knowledge of the subject is derived from the work itself.

No matter for all that: we are speaking of money. This work, we repeat,

cost the author twenty-four thousand dollars to produce. Messrs. Harper

sell it at fifteen dollars a copy. The usual allowance to the author is ten

per cent of the retail price, and, as a rule, it ought not to be more. Upon

works of that magnitude, however, it often is more. Suppose, then, that Mr.

Motley receives two dollars for every copy of his work sold by his American

publishers. A meritorious work of general interest, i. e. a book not

addressed to any class, sect, or profession, that costs fifteen dollars, is

considered successful in the United States if it sells three thousand

copies. Five thousand is decided success. Seven thousand is brilliant

success. Ten thousand copies, sold in the lifetime of the author, is all

the success that can be hoped for. Ten thousand copies would yield to the

author twenty thousand dollars, which is four thousand dollars less than it

cost him.

But Mr. Motley's work is of universal interest. It does not concern the

people of the United States any more than it does the people of England,

France, and Germany, nor as much as it does the people of Spain and

Holland. Wherever, in the whole world, there is an intelligent, educated

human being, there is a person who would like to read and possess Motley's

Histories, which relate events of undying interest to all the few in every

land who are capable of comprehending their significance. Give this author

the market of the world, and he is compensated for his labor. Deny him this

right, and it is impossible he should be. England buys a greater number of

fifteen-dollar books than the United States, because, in England, rich men

are generally educated men, and in the United States the class who most

want such books cannot buy them. Our clergy are poor; our students are

generally poor; our lawyers and doctors are not rich, as a class; our

professors and schoolmasters are generally very poor; our men of business,

as a class, read little but the daily paper; and our men of leisure are too

few to be of any account. Nor have we yet that universal system of town and

village self-sustaining libraries, which will, by and by, abundantly atone

for the ignorance and indifference of the rich, and make the best market

for books the world has ever seen. England would readily "take" ten

thousand copies of a three-guinea book of first-rate merit and universal

interest. A French translation of the same would sell five thousand in

France, and, probably three thousand more in other Continental countries. A

German translation would place it within the reach of nations of readers,

and a few hundreds in each of those nations would become possessors of the

work. Or, in other words, an International Copyright would multiply the

gains of an author like Mr. Motley by three, possibly by four. 20,000 x 3

= 60,000.

We are far from thinking that sixty thousand dollars would be a

compensation for such work as Mr. Motley has done. We merely say, that the

reasonable prospect of even such a partial recompense as that would make it

possible for persons not rich to produce in the United States works of

universal and permanent value. The question is, Are we prepared to say that

such works shall be attempted here only by rich men, or by men like Noah

Webster, who lived upon a Spelling-Book while he wrote his Dictionary?

Generally, the acquisition of an independent income is the work of a

lifetime, and it ought to be. But the production of a masterpiece,

involving original research, is also the work of a lifetime. Not one man in

a thousand millions can do both. Give us International Copyright, and there

are already five publishers in the United States who are able and willing

to give an author the equivalent of Gibbon's sixteen hundred pounds a year,

or of Noah Webster's Spelling-Book, or Prescott's thousand dollars a month;

i. e. maintenance while he is doing that part of his work which requires

exclusive devotion to it. Besides, a man intent upon the execution of a

great work can contrive, in many ways, to exist--just exist--for ten years,

provided he has a reasonable prospect of moderate reward when his task is

done. There are fifty men in New England alone who would deem it an honor

and a privilege "to invest" in such an enterprise.

Mr. Bancroft's is another case in point. Mr. Buckle remarks, that there is

no knowledge until there is a class who have conquered leisure, and that,

although most of this class will always employ their leisure in the pursuit

of pleasure, yet a few will devote it to the acquisition of knowledge.

These few are the flower of their species,--its ornaments and

benefactors,--for the flower issues in most precious fruit, which finally

nourishes and exalts the whole. We are such idle and pleasure-loving

creatures, and civilization places so many alluring delights within the

reach of a rich man, that it must ever be accounted a merit in one of this

class if he devotes himself to generous toil for the public good. George

Bancroft has spent thirty years in such toil. His History of the United

States has stood to him in the place of a profession. His house is filled

with the most costly material, the spoils of foreign archives and of

domestic chests, the pick of auction sales, the hidden treasure of ancient

bookstores, and the chance discoveries of dusty garrets. His work has been

eminently "successful," and he has received for it about as much as his

material cost, and perhaps half a dollar a day for his labor. When the

third volume of the work was about to appear, a London publisher offered

three hundred pounds for the advance sheets, which were furnished, and the

money was paid. The same sum was offered and paid for the advance sheets of

the fourth volume. Then the London publisher discovered that "the courtesy

of the trade" would suffice for his purpose, and he forbore to pay for that

which he could get for nothing. Six hundred pounds, therefore, is all that

this American author has received from foreign countries for thirty years'

labor. His work has been translated into two or three foreign languages,

and it is found in all European libraries of any completeness, whether

public or private; but this little sum is all that has come back to _him_.

Surely, there cannot be one reader of this periodical so insensible to

moral distinctions as not to feel that this is wrong. The happy accident of

Mr. Bancroft's not needing the money has nothing to do with the right and

wrong of the matter. No man is so rich that he does not like to receive

money which he has honestly earned; for money honestly earned is honor as

well as reward, and it is not for _us_, the benefited party, to withhold

his right from a man because he has been generous to us. And the question

again occurs, Shall we sit down content with an arrangement which obliges

us to wait for works of permanent and universal interest until the accident

occurs of a rich man willing and able to execute them? It is not an

accident, but a most rare conjunction of accidents. First, the man must be

competent; secondly, he must be willing; thirdly, he must be rich. This

fortunate combination is so little likely to occur in a new country, that

it must be accounted honorable to the United States that in the same

generation we have had three such men,--Bancroft, Motley, and Prescott. Is

it _such_ persons that should be singled out from the mass of their

fellow-citizens to be deprived of their honest gains? Besides, riches take

to themselves wings. A case has occurred among us of a rich man devoting

the flower of his days to the production of excellent works, and then

losing his property.

It will be of no avail to adduce the instance of Dr. J. W. Draper. We have

had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Draper relate the history of his average

day. Up at six. Breakfast at seven. An hour's ride to the city. Busy at the

New York University from nine to one. Home in cars to dinner at three. At

four P. M. _begins_ his day's literary work, and keeps steadily on till

eleven. Then, bed. Not one man in many millions could endure such a life,

and no man, perhaps, ought to endure it. Dr. Draper happens to possess a

most sound and easy-working constitution of body and mind, and he has

acquired a knowledge of the laws which relate to its well-being. But, even

in his case, it is questionable whether it is well, or even right, to

devote so large a part of his existence to labor. It is probable, too, that

an International Copyright would, ere this, have released him from the

necessity of it, or the temptation to it.

Few of us are aware of the extent to which American works are now reprinted

in England. We noticed, the other day, in an English publication, a page of

advertisements containing the titles of thirteen volumes announced to be

sold at "1_s._" or "1_s._ 6_d._" Twelve of the thirteen were American.

Among them, we remember, were Mrs. Stowe's "Little Foxes," Dr. Holmes's

"Humorous Poems," and Mr. Lowell's "Biglow Papers." The cheap publication

stores of Great Britain are heaped with such reprints, the sale of which

yields nothing to the authors. We have even seen in England a series of

school writing-books, the invention of a Philadelphia writing-master, the

English copies of which betrayed no trace of their origin. Nor have we been

able, after much inquiry, to hear of one instance in which an English

publisher has paid an American author, resident in America, for anything

except advance sheets. Mr. Longfellow, whose works are as popular in

England as in America, and as salable, has derived, we believe,

considerable sums for advance sheets of his works; but, unless we are

grossly misinformed, even he receives no percentage upon the annual sale of

his works in Great Britain.

And the aggravating circumstance of all this spoliation of the men and

women who are the country's ornament and boast is, that it is wholly our

fault. We force the European publishers to steal. England is more than

willing, France is more than willing, Germany is quite willing, Sweden,

Denmark, and Russia are willing, to come at once into an international

arrangement which shall render literary property as sacred and as safe in

all civilized lands as tobacco and whiskey. All the countries we have named

are now obliged to steal it, and do steal it. Who would have expected to

find the Essays of Mr. Emerson a topic in the interior of Russia? We find

them, however, familiarly alluded to in the Russian novel "Fathers and

Sons," recently translated. If authors had their rights, a rill of Russian

silver would come trickling into Concord, while a broad and brimming river

of it would inundate a certain cottage in Hartford. How many modest and

straitened American homes would have new parlor carpets this year, if

henceforth, on the first days of January and July, drafts to their address

were to be dropped in the mail in every capital of the world which the

work done in those homes instructs or cheers! Nor would new carpets be all.

Many authors would be instantly delivered from the fatal necessity of

over-production,--the vice that threatens literature with annihilation.

There is another aggravating circumstance,--most aggravating. The want of

an International Copyright chiefly robs our best and brightest! A dull book

protects itself; no foreigner wants it. An honest drudge, who compiles

timely works of utility, or works which appease a transient curiosity, and

which thousands of "agents" put under the nose of the whole population, can

make a fortune by one or two lucky hits. There are respectable gentlemen

not far off, who, with pen and scissors, in four months, manufactured

pieces of merchandise, labelled "Life of Abraham Lincoln," of which a

hundred thousand copies each were sold in half a year, and which yielded

the manufacturer thirty thousand dollars. This sum is probably more than

twice as great as the sum total of Mr. Emerson's receipts from his

published works,--the fruit of forty years of study and meditation. It is

chiefly our dear Immortals and our best Ephemerals who need this protection

from their country's justice. It is our Emersons, our Hawthornes, our

Longfellows, our Lowells, our Holmeses, our Bryants, our Curtises, our

Beechers, our Mrs. Stowes, our Motleys, our Bancrofts, our Prescotts, whom

we permit all the world to plunder. We harmless drudges and book-makers are

protected by our own dulness. We are panoplied in our insignificance. The

stupidest set of school-books we ever looked into has yielded, for many

years, an annual profit of one hundred thousand dollars, and is now

enriching its third set of proprietors. No one, therefore, need feel any

concern for _us_. _We _can do pretty well if only we are stupid enough, and

"study to please." But, O honorable members, spare the few who redeem and

exalt the country's name, and who keep alive the all but extinguished

celestial fire! If American property abroad must be robbed, let cotton and

tobacco take a turn, and see how _they_ like it. Invite Manchester to come

to the Liverpool Docks and help itself. Let there be free smoking in

Europe. Summon the merchants of London to a scramble for American bills of

exchange. Select for spoliation anything but the country's literature.

The worst remains to be told. It is bad to have your pocket picked; but

there is something infinitely worse,--it is to pick a pocket. Who would not

rather be stolen from, than steal? Who would not rather be murdered, than

be a murderer? Nevertheless, in depriving foreign authors of their rights,

it is still ourselves whom we injure most. The great damage to America, and

to American literature, from the want of an international copyright law, is

not the thousands of dollars per annum which authors lose. This is, in

fact, the smallest item that enters into the huge sum total of our loss.

It maims or kills seven tenths of the contemporary literature that must be

translated before it is available for publication here. Charles Reade, in

that gallant and brilliant little book of his, "The Eighth Commandment,"

quotes from a letter written in Cologne, in 1851, the following passage:--

"About thirty years ago the first translations from English were brought to

the German market. The Waverley Novels were extensively circulated, and

read with avidity by all classes. Next came Bulwer, and after him Dickens

and other writers. Rival editions of the same works sprang up by the

half-dozen; the profits decreased, and the publishers were obliged to cut

down the pay of the translators. I know that a translation-monger at Grimm

pays about L6 for a three-volume novel.

"These works, got up in a hurry, and printed with bad type on wretched

paper, are completely flooding the market; and, as they are much cheaper

than original works, they are a serious obstacle to our national

literature. Thus much for our share in the miseries of free trade[2] in

translations.

"Now for yours. There are able men in Germany, who, were it made worth

their while, could and would put the master works of your novelists and

historians into a decent German garb. But under the present system these

men are elbowed out of the field."

Change a few names in this passage, and it describes, with considerable

exactness, the state of the translation market in the United States. Works,

which in France charm the _boudoir_ and amuse the whole of the educated

class, sink, under the handling of hasty translators and enterprising

publishers, into what we call "Yellow-Covered Literature," which is to be

found chiefly upon the wharves. Respectable publishers have a well-founded

terror of French and German translations; since, after incurring the

expense of translation, they have no protection against the publication of

another version except "the courtesy of the trade,"--a code of laws which

has not much force in the regions from which the literature of the Yellow

Cover emanates. We are not getting half the good we ought from the

contemporary literature of France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Holland, Italy,

and we never shall, until American publishers can acquire property in it by

fair purchase, which the law will protect. The business of furnishing the

American public with good translations from the French would of itself

maintain two or three great publishing houses. There is a mine of wealth

there waiting for the removal of the squatters and the recognition of the

rightful title-deeds. What would California have been worth to us, or to

itself, or to anybody, if its treasures had been _left_ to the hurried

scratchings over the surface of uncapitalled prospecters? Capital and skill

wait until the title is clear. Then they go in, with their ponderous

engines, and pound the rocks till the gold glitters all over the heap.

Messrs. Appleton, of New York, have recently ventured to publish good

translations and good editions of Madame Muehlbach's historical novels. The

name of this lady being new to America, the enterprise was a risk,--a risk

of many thousand dollars,--a risk which only a wealthy house would be

justified in assuming. The _great_ expense of such an undertaking is

incurred in making the new name known, in advertising it, in shouting it

into the ears of a public deafened with a thousand outcries. An enormous

sum of money may easily be spent in this way, when advertising costs from

twenty cents to two dollars a line. Suppose the efforts of the publishers

are successful, see how beautifully the present system works! The more

successful they are, the more perilous their property becomes! It is safe

only as long as it is worthless. Just as soon as they have, by the

expenditure of unknown thousands, created for the works of this German lady

a steady demand, which promises to recompense them, they are open to the

inroads of the Knights of the Yellow Cover! See, too, the effects upon the

Berlin authoress. Playing such a dangerous and costly game as this, the

American publisher dare not, cannot treat with her in the only proper and

honorable way,--open a fair bargain, so much for so much. Messrs. Appleton

did themselves the honor, the other day, to send her a thousand dollars,

gold, which was an act as wise as it was right. We enjoyed an exquisite

pleasure in looking upon the lovely document, duly stamped and

authenticated, which has ere this given her a claim upon a Berlin banker;

and we have also a prodigious happiness in committing the impropriety of

making the fact public. Nevertheless, it is not thus that authors should be

paid for their own. All we can say of it is, that it is better than nothing

to her, and the best a publisher can do under the circumstances.

This business of publishing books is the most difficult one carried on in

the world. It demands qualities so seldom found in the same individual,

that there has scarcely ever been an eminent and stable publishing house

which did not consist of several active and able men. Failure is the rule,

success the rare exception. The shores of the business world are strewn

thick with the wrecks of ventures in this line that gave every promise of

bringing back a large return. It has been proved a task beyond the wisdom

of mortals, to decide with any positive degree of certainty whether a heap

of blotted manuscript is the most precious or the most worthless of all the

productions of human industry. Young publishers think they can tell: old

publishers know they cannot. This is so true, that for a publisher to have

a knowledge of the commodity in which he deals is generally a point against

his success as a publisher; and it will certainly ruin him, unless he has a

remarkably sound judgment, or a good, solid, unlearned partner, whose

intuitive sense of what the public wants is unbiased by tastes of his own.

It is this terrible uncertainty as to the value of the commodity purchased,

which renders publishing a business so difficult, precarious, and

unprofitable; and the higher the character of the literature, the greater

the difficulty becomes. Publishers who confine themselves chiefly to works

of utility and necessity, or to works professional and sectarian, have an

easy task to perform, compared with that of a publisher who aims to supply

the public with pure science and high literature. If any business can claim

favorable consideration from those who have in charge the distribution of

the public burdens, surely it is this. If in any way its perils can be

justly diminished by law, surely that protection ought not to be withheld.

We believe it could be shown that the business of publishing what the trade

calls "miscellaneous books," i. e. books which depend solely upon their

intrinsic interest or merit, yields a smaller return for the capital and

talent invested in it than any other. The Harpers have a grand

establishment,--one of the wonders of America. Any one going over that

assemblage of enormous edifices, and observing the multitude of men and

women employed in them, the vast and far-reaching enterprises going

forward,--some of which involve a large expenditure for years before any

return is possible,--the great numbers of men of ability, learning, and

experience who are superintending the various departments, and the amazing

quantities of merchandise produced, the mere catalogue of which is a large

volume,--any one, we say, observing these things, would naturally conclude,

that the proprietors must be in the receipt of Vanderbiltian incomes. The

same amount of capital, force, experience, and talent employed in any other

branch of business could not fail to put the incomes of the proprietors

high up among those which require six figures for their expression. Compare

the returns of these monarchs of the "trade" with those of our dry-goods

magnates, and our mighty men in cotton, tobacco, and railroads. A dealer in

dry-goods in the city of New York has returned as the _income_ of a single

year a sum half as large as the whole capital invested in the establishment

of the Harpers. If the _signal_ successes of publishing--successes which

are the result of the rarest conjunctions of talent, capital, experience,

and opportunity--are represented by incomes of twenty and thirty thousand

paper dollars a year, what must be the general condition of the trade? But

it is the difficulty of conducting the business at all, not the slenderness

of its profits, upon which we now desire the reader to reflect. That

difficulty, we repeat, arises from the fact that a publisher buys his pig

in a poke. He generally knows not, and cannot know, whether what he buys is

worth much, little, or nothing.

But there is one branch of his business which does not present this

difficulty,--the reprinting of works previously published in a foreign

country. He has the advantage of holding in his hand the precise article

which he proposes to reproduce,--a printed volume, which he can read with

ease and rapidity; and this is nearly as great an advantage as a manager

has who sees a play performed before buying it. He has the still greater

advantage of a public verdict upon the book. It has been tried upon a

public; and it is a rule almost without exception, that a book which sells

largely in one country will not fail in another. Dickens, Thackeray, Reade,

Miss Mulock, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Dumas, Hugo, George Sand, have

in all foreign countries a popularity which bears a certain proportion to

that which they enjoy in their own; and even the Chinese novel published

some years ago in England was a safe speculation, because it was

universally popular in China. The Russian novel before alluded to was a

prudent enterprise, because Russia had previously tasted and enjoyed it.

Literature of high character is always pervaded with the essence of the

nationality which produced it, but it is, for that very reason, the more

interesting to other nations. Don Quixote has more Spain in it than all the

histories of Spain; but in the library of the German collector of

Cervantes, whose death has been recently announced, there were more than

twice as many foreign editions as Spanish. According to the Pall Mall

Gazette, there were 400 editions in Spanish, 168 in French, 200 in English,

87 in Portuguese, 96 in Italian, 70 in German, 4 in Russian, 4 in Greek, 8

in Polish, 6 in Danish, 13 in Swedish, and 5 in Latin. Poor Cervantes! How

eloquently this list pleads for International Copyright!

It is, then, in the republication of foreign works that our publishers

ought to find an element of certainty, which cannot appertain to the

publication of original and untried productions. But it is precisely here

that chaos reigns. In the issue of native works, there is but a single

uncertainty; in the republication of foreign, there are many. No man knows

what his rights are; nor whether he has any rights; nor whether there

_are_ any rights; nor, if he has rights, whether they will be respected.

This chaos has taken to itself the pleasant and delusive name of "Courtesy

of the Trade." Before the "reign of law" is established in any province of

human affairs, we generally see men feeling their way to it, trying to find

something else that will answer the purpose, endeavoring to reduce the

chaos of conflicting claims to some kind of rule. The publishers of the

United States have been doing this for many years, and the result is the

unwritten code called the Courtesy of the Trade,--a code defective in

itself, with neither judge to expound it, jury to decide upon it, nor

sheriff to execute it. This code consisted at first of one rule,--If a

publisher issues a foreign work, no other American publisher shall issue

it. But it often happened that two or three publishers began or desired to

begin the printing of the same book. To meet this and other cases, other

laws were added, until at present the code, as laid down by the rigorists,

consists of the following rules:--

1. If a publisher issues an edition of a foreign work, he has acquired an

exclusive right to it for a period undefined.

2. If a publisher is the first to announce his intention to publish a

foreign work, that announcement gives him an exclusive right to publish it.

3. If a publisher has already issued a work of a foreign author, he has

acquired thereby an exclusive right to the republication of all subsequent

works by the same author.

4. The purchase of advance sheets for publication in a periodical gives a

publisher the exclusive right to publish the same in any other form.

5. All and several of these rights may be bought and sold, like any other

kind of property.

There is a kind of justice in all these rules. If we could concede that a

foreign author _has_ no ownership of the coinage of his brain,--if anything

but that author's free gift or purchased consent _could_ convey that

property to another,--if foreign literature _is_ the legitimate spoil of

America,--then some such code as this would be the only method of

preventing the business from degenerating into a game of unmitigated grab.

In its present ill-defined and most imperfect state, this system of

"courtesy" scarcely mitigates the game at all; and, accordingly, in "the

trade," instead of the friendly feeling that would naturally exist among

honorable men in the highest branch of business, we find feuds,

heart-burnings, and a grievous sense of wrongs unredressed and

unredressable. Some houses "announce" everything that is announced on the

other side of the Atlantic, so as to have the first choice. Smaller firms,

seeing these announcements, dare not undertake any foreign work, even

though the great house never decides to publish the book upon which the

smaller had fixed its attention. It is only under the reign of law that the

rights of the weak have any security. In the most exquisitely organized

system of piracy, no man can rely upon the enjoyment of a right which he is

not strong enough personally to defend. It is not every house that can

crush a rival edition by selling thousands of expensive books at half their

cost. Between the giant houses that tower above him, and the yellow-covered

gentry that prowl about his feet, an American publisher of only ordinary

resources has a game to play which is really too difficult for the limited

capacities of man. Who can wonder that most of them lose it?

One effect of this courtesy system is, that many excellent works, which it

would be a public benefit to have reprinted here are not reprinted. Another

is, that corrected or improved editions cannot be given to the American

reader without bringing down upon the publisher the enmity or the vengeance

of a rival. It is not common in Europe for the first editions of important

works to be stereotyped; but in America they always are. The European

author frequently makes extensive additions and valuable emendations in

each successive edition; until, in the course of years, his work is

essentially different from, and far superior to, the first essay. _We_

cannot have the advantage of the improved version. There is a set of old

and worn stereotype plates in the way, the proprietor of which will not

sacrifice them, nor permit another publisher to produce the corrected

edition, which would as completely destroy their value as though they were

melted into type metal. Who can blame him? No one likes to have a valuable

property suddenly rendered valueless. "It is not human nature." Mr. Lewes

is not justified in so bitterly reproaching Messrs. Appleton for their cold

entertainment of his offer to them of the enlarged version of his "History

of Philosophy."

"I felt," says Mr. Lewes, "that Messrs. Appleton, of New York, had, in

courtesy, a prior claim, on the ground of their having reprinted the

previous edition in 1857. Accordingly I wrote to them, through their London

agent, stating that I considered they had a claim to the first offer, and

stating, further, that the new edition was substantially a new book. [As

this is an important element in the present case, allow me to add, that the

edition of 1857 was in one volume 8vo, published at sixteen shillings,

whereas the new edition is in two volumes 8vo, published at thirty

shillings; and the work is so considerably altered and enlarged that a new

title has been affixed to it, for the purpose of marking it off from its

predecessors.] Questions of courtesy are, however, but ill understood by

some people, and by Messrs. Appleton so ill understood that they did not

even answer my letter. After waiting more than three months for an answer,

I asked a friend to see their London agent on the subject, and thus I

learned that Messrs. Appleton--_risum teneatis, amici?_--'considered they

had a right to publish all future editions of my work without payment,'

because ten years ago they had given the magnificent sum of twenty-five

pounds to secure themselves against rivals for the second edition."

The omission to answer the author's letter, we may assume, was accidental.

It is not correct to say that the publishers founded their claim to issue

the new edition upon their payment of twenty-five pounds. The real

difficulty was, that Messrs. Appleton possessed the plates of the first

edition, and could not issue the enlarged edition without, first,

destroying a property already existing, and, secondly, creating a new

property at an expenditure about four times as great as the sum originally

invested. The acceptance of Mr. Lewes's offer would have involved an

expenditure of several thousand dollars, at a time when, for a variety of

reasons, works of that character could hardly be expected to return the

outlay upon them. The exclusive and certain ownership of the work might

well justify its republication, even now, when it costs exactly three times

as much to manufacture a book in the United States as it did seven years

ago. But nothing short of this would warrant a publisher in undertaking it.

The real sinners, against whom Mr. Lewes should have launched his sarcasm,

are the people of the United States, who permit their instructors, both

native and foreign, to be robbed of their property with impunity. Thus we

see that a few hundred pounds of metal are likely to bar the entrance among

us of a work which demonstrates, in the clearest and most attractive

manner, the inutility of all that has hitherto gone by the name of

"metaphysics," and which also indicates the method of investigation from

which good results are to be rationally hoped for.

It is the grossest injustice to hold American publishers responsible for

the system of ill-regulated plunder which they have inherited, and which

injures them more immediately and palpably than any other class, excepting

alone the class producing the commodity in which they deal. There are no

business men more honorable or more generous than the publishers of the

United States, and especially honorable and considerate are they toward

authors. The relation usually existing between author and publisher in the

United States is that of a warm and lasting friendship,--such as that which

subsisted for so many years between Irving and Putnam, and which now

animates and dignifies the intercourse between the literary men of New

England and Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, and which gathers in the well-known

room of the Harpers a host of writers who are attached friends of the

"House." The relation, too, is one of a singular mutual trustfulness. The

author receives his semiannual account from the publisher with as absolute

a faith in its correctness as though he had himself counted the volumes

sold; and the publisher consigns the manuscript of the established author

to the printer almost without opening it, confident that, whether it

succeeds or fails, the author has done his best. We have heard of instances

in which a publisher had serious cause of complaint against an author, but

never have we known an author to be intentionally wronged by a publisher.

We have known a publisher, in the midst of the ruin of his house, to make

it one of the first objects of his care to save authors from loss, or make

their inevitable losses less. How common, too, it is in the trade for a

publisher to go beyond the letter of his bond, and after publishing five

books without profit, to give the author of the successful sixth more than

the stipulated price! Let every one speak of the market as he finds it. For

our part, after fifteen years of almost daily intercourse with publishers,

we have no recollections of them that are not agreeable, and can call to

mind no transaction in which they did not show themselves to be men of

honor as much as men of business. We have not the least doubt that Mr.

Peterson honestly thought he had acquired a right, by fair purchase, to

sell the property of Charles Dickens in the United States as long as he

should continue in business, and then to dispose of that right to his

successor. We are equally confident that Messrs. Harper felt themselves

completely justified in endeavoring to crush the Diamond Edition of

Thackeray. All this chaos and uncertainty, all these feuds and enmities,

have one and the same cause,--the existence in the world of a kind of

property which is at once the most precious, the easiest stolen, and the

worst protected.

Almost to a man, our publishers are in favor of an International Copyright.

We have been able to hear of but one exception, and this is the publisher

of but one book,--Webster's Dictionary,--the work of all others now in

existence that would profit most from just protection in foreign countries.

There is an impression in many circles that the Harpers are opposed to it.

We are enabled to state, upon the authority of a member of that great

house, that this is not now, and never has been, the case. Messrs. Harper

comprehend, as well as we do, that they would gain more from the measure

than any other house in the world; because it is the natural effect of law,

while it protects the weak, to legitimate and establish the dominion of the

strong. International Copyright would benefit every creature connected with

publishing, but it would benefit most of all the great and wealthy houses.

The Harpers have spent tens of thousands in enforcing the observance of the

courtesy of the trade, but they cannot enforce it. It is a work never done

and always beginning. It cost them four hundred of our ridiculous dollars

for the advance sheets of each number of Mr. Dickens's last novel; and

within forty-eight hours of the publication of the Magazine containing it,

two other editions were for sale under their noses. The matter for

"Harper's Magazine" often costs three or four thousand dollars a number;

can any one suppose that the proprietors _like_ to see Blackwood and half a

dozen other British magazines sold all over the country at a little more

than the cost of paper and printing? They like it as little as the

proprietors of Blackwood like it. This is a wrong which injures two

nations and benefits one printer; and that printer would himself do better

if he could obtain exclusive rights by fair purchase. No; Messrs. Harper,

we are happy to state, are decidedly in favor of an International

Copyright, and so is every other general publishing house in the country of

which we have any knowledge.

Consider the case of our venerable and beloved instructor, "The North

American Review," conducted with so much diligence, energy, and tact by the

present editors. Not a number of it has appeared under their management

which has not been a national benefit; and no country more needs such a

periodical than the United States, now standing on the threshold of a new

career. The time has passed when a review could consist chiefly of the

skilfully condensed contents of interesting books, which men could execute

in the intervals of professional duty, and think themselves happy in

receiving one dollar for a printed page, extracts deducted. At the present

time, a review must initiate as well as criticise, and do something itself

as well as comment upon the performances of others. We believe that no

number of the North American Review now appears, the matter of which costs

as little as a thousand dollars. But it has to compete, not only with the

four British Reviews sold here at the price of paper and printing, but with

several periodicals made up of selections from the reviews and magazines of

Europe. Nor is this all. A public accustomed to buy books and periodicals

at a price into which nothing enters but manual labor and visible material

is apt to pause and recoil when it is solicited to pay the just value of

those commodities. A man who buys a number of the Westminster Review for

half a dollar is likely to regard a dollar and a half as an enormous price

for a number of the North American, though he gets for his money what cost

a thousand dollars before the printer saw it. For forty years or more we

have all been buying our books and reviews at thieves' prices,--prices in

which everybody was considered except the creators of the value; and the

consequence is, that we turn away when a proper price is demanded for a

book, and regard ourselves as injured beings. How monstrous for a volume of

Emerson to be sold for a dollar! In England and France, when the price is

to be fixed upon works of that nature, the mere cost of paper and printing

is hardly considered at all. Such trifles are felt, and rightly felt, to

have little to do with the question of price. The publisher knows very well

that he has to dispose of one of those rare and beautiful products which

only a very few thousands of his countrymen will care to possess, or could

enjoy if it were thrust upon them. He fixes the price with reference to the

facts of the case,--the important facts as well as the trivial, the rights

of the author as well as the little bill of the printer,--and that price is

half a guinea. The want of an International Copyright, besides lowering and

degrading all literature, has demoralized the public by getting it into the

habit of paying for books the price of stolen goods. And hence the North

American Review, which would naturally be a most valuable property, has

never yielded a profit corresponding to its real value. People stand aghast

at the invitation to pay six dollars a year for an article, the mere

unmanufactured ingredients of which cost a thousand times six dollars.

Good contemporary books cannot be very cheap, unless there is stealing

_somewhere_, for a good book is one of the most costly products of nature.

Fortunately, they need not be cheap, for it is not necessary to own many of

them. As soon as an International Copyright has given tone to the business

of writing and publishing books, and has restored the prices of them to the

just standard, we shall see a great increase of those facilities for

purchasing the opportunity to read a book without buying it, which have

placed the whole literature of the world at the command of an English

farmer who can spare a guinea or two per annum. It is not necessary, we

repeat, to possess many new books; it is only necessary to read them, get

the good of them, and give a hearty support to the library from which we

take them. The purchase of a book should be a serious and well-considered

act, not the hasty cramming of a thin, double-columned pamphlet into a

coat-pocket, to be read and cast aside at the bottom of a book-case. It is

an abominable extravagance to buy a great and good novel in a perishable

form for a few cents; it is good economy to pay a few dollars for one

substantially bound, that will amuse and inform generations. A good novel,

play, or poem can be reread every five years during a long life. When a

book is to be selected out of the mass, to become thenceforth part and

parcel of a home, let it be well printed and well bound, and, above all,

let it be of an edition to which the author has set the seal of his consent

and approbation. No one need fear that the addition of the author's ten per

cent to the price of foreign books will make them less accessible to the

masses of the people. It will make them more accessible, and it will tend

to make them better worth keeping.

When we consider the difficulties which now beset the publication of books

in the United States, we cannot but wonder at the liberality of American

publishers toward foreign authors,--a liberality which has met no return

from publishers in Europe. The first money that Herbert Spencer ever

received in his life from his _books_ was sent to him in 1861 by the

Appletons as his share of the proceeds of his "Essays upon Education"; and

every year since he has received upon all his works republished here the

percentage usually paid to native authors. This is so interesting a case,

and so forcibly illustrates many aspects of our subject, that we will dwell

upon it for a moment.

It will occasionally happen that an author is produced in a country who is

charged with a special message for another country. There will be something

in the cast of his mind, or in the nature of his subject, which renders his

writings more immediately or more generally suitable to the people of a

land other than his own. We might cite as an example Washington Irving,

who, though a sound American patriot, was essentially an English author,

and whose earlier works are so English that many English people read them

to this day, we are told, who do not suspect that the author was not their

countryman. Washington Irving owed his literary career to this fact! His

seventeen years' residence abroad enabled him to enjoy part of the

advantage which all great authors would derive from an International

Copyright, that is to say, he derived revenue from _both_ countries. During

the first half of his literary career, he drew the chief part of his income

from England; during the second half, when his Sketch-Book vein was

exhausted, and he was again an American resident, he derived his main

support from America. If he had never resided abroad, we never should have

had a Washington Irving; if he had not returned home, he would have been

sadly pinched in his old age. Alone among the American authors of his day

or of any day, he had the market of the world for his works; and he only,

of excellent American authors, has received anything like a compensation

for his labor. The entire proceeds of his works during his lifetime were

$205,383, of which about one third came to him from England. His average

income, during the fifty years of his authorship, was about four thousand

dollars a year. Less than any other of our famous authors he injured his

powers by over-production, and it was only the unsteadiness of his income,

the occasional failure of his resources, or the dread of a failure, that

ever induced him to take up his pen when exhausted nature cried, Forbear!

Cooper, on the contrary, who was read and robbed in every country, wrote

himself all out, and still wrote on, until his powers were destroyed and

his name was a by-word.

A case similar in principle to that of Irving was Audubon, the

indefatigable and amiable Audubon. The exceeding costliness of his "Birds

of America" protected that work as completely as an International Copyright

could; and, but for this, we never could have had it. Audubon enjoyed the

market of the world! The price of his wonderful work was a thousand

dollars, and, at that period, neither Europe nor America could furnish

purchasers enough to warrant him in giving it to the press. But Europe

_and_ America could! Europe and America _did_,--each continent taking about

eighty copies. The excellent Audubon, therefore, was not ruined by his

brave endeavor to honor his country and instruct mankind. He ended his days

in peace in that well-known villa on the banks of the Hudson, continuing

his useful and beautiful labors to the last, and leaving to his sons the

means of perfecting what he left incomplete.

But to return to Herbert Spencer, the author of "Social Statics"; or, as we

call it, Jeffersonian Democracy, illustrated and applied. Unconnected with

the governing classes of his own country, escaping the universities, bred

to none of the professions, and inheriting but a slender patrimony, he

earned a modest and precarious livelihood by contributing to the

periodicals, and wrung from his small leisure the books that England

needed, but would not buy. An American citizen, Professor Youmans, felt all

their merit, and perceived how adapted they were to the tastes and habits

of the American mind, and how skilfully the ideas upon which America is

founded were developed in them. He also felt, as we have heard him say,

that, next to the production of excellent works, the most useful thing a

man can do in his generation is to aid in giving them currency. Aided by

other lovers of his favorite author, he was soon in a position to bear

part of the heavy expense of stereotyping Mr. Spencer's works; and thus

Messrs. Appleton were enabled, not only to publish them, but to afford the

author as large a share of the proceeds as though he had been a resident of

the United States. Thus Herbert Spencer, by a happy accident, enjoys part

of the advantage which would accrue to all his brethren from an

International Copyright; and we have the great satisfaction of knowing,

when we buy one of his volumes, that we are not defrauding our benefactor.

Charles Scribner habitually pays English authors a part of the profit

derived from their republished works. Max Mueller, Mr. Trench, and others

who figure upon his list, derive revenue from the sale of their works in

America. Mr. Scribner considers it both his duty and his interest to

acquire all the right to republish which a foreign author can bestow; and

he desires to see the day when the law will recognize and secure the most

obvious and unquestionable of all rights, the right of an author to the

product of his mind.

We trust Messrs. Ticknor and Fields will not regard it as an affront to

their delicacy if we allude here to facts which recent events have in part

disclosed to the public. This house, on principle, and as an essential part

of their system, send to foreign authors a share of the proceeds of their

works, and this they have habitually done for twenty-five years. The first

American edition of the Poems of Mr. Tennyson, published by them in 1842,

consisted of one thousand copies, and it was three years in selling; but

upon this edition a fair acknowledgment in money was sent to the poet.

Since that time, Mr. Tennyson has received from them a certain equitable

portion of the proceeds of all the numerous editions of his works which

they have issued. Mr. Fields, with great labor and some expense, collected

from periodicals and libraries a complete set of the works of Mr. De

Quincey, which the house published in twenty-two volumes, the sale of which

was barely remunerative; but the author received, from time to time, a sum

proportioned to the number of volumes sold. Mr. Fields has been recently

gathering the "Early and Late Papers" of Mr. Thackeray, one volume of which

has been published, to the great satisfaction of the public. Miss Thackeray

has already received a considerable sum for the sale of the first edition.

Mr. Browning, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Reade, the Country Parson, Mr. Kingsley, Mr.

Matthew Arnold, Dr. John Brown, Mr. Mayne Reid, Mr. Dickens, have been

dealt with in a similar manner; some of them receiving copyright, and

others a sum of money proportioned to the sale or expected sale of their

works. Nor has the appearance of rival editions been allowed to diminish

the author's share of the profits realized upon the editions published with

their consent. Mr. Tennyson counts upon the American part of his income

with the same certainty as upon that which he derives from the sale of his

works in England, although he cannot secure his Boston publishers the

exclusive market of the United States. We dare not comment upon these

facts, because, if we were to indulge our desire to do so, the passage

would be certain "to turn up missing" upon the printed page, since Messrs.

Ticknor and Fields live two hundred miles nearer the office of the Atlantic

Monthly than we do. Happily, comment is needless. Every man who has either

a conscience or a talent for business will recognize either the propriety

or the wisdom of their conduct. Upon this rock of fair-dealing the eminent

and long-sustained prosperity of this house is founded.

The following note appeared recently in "The Athenaeum":--

"May I, without egotism, mention in your paper that

Messrs. Harper, of New York, have sent me, quite

unsolicited, a money acknowledgment for reprinting, in

their cheap series, two of my novels, 'Lizzie Lorton of

Greyrigg' and 'Sowing the Wind.' At a time when so many

complaints are being made of American publishers, it

is pleasant to be able to record this voluntary act of

grace and courtesy from so influential a house.

"E. LYNN LINTON."

Complaints, then, are made of American publishers! This is pleasant. We say

again, that, after diligent inquiry, we cannot hear of one instance of an

English publisher sending money to an American author for anything but

advance sheets. Mr. Longfellow is as popular a poet in England as Mr.

Tennyson is in America, and he has, consequently, as before remarked,

received considerable sums for early sheets, but nothing, we believe, upon

the annual sale of his works, nothing from the voluntary and spontaneous

justice of his English publishers. We have no right, perhaps, to censure

men for not going beyond the requirements of law; but still less can we

withhold the tribute of our homage to those who are more just than the law

compels, and this tribute is due to several publishers on this side of the

Atlantic. But then there remains the great fact against us, that England is

willing to-day, and we are not, to throw the protection of international

law around this most sacred interest of civilization.

Would that it were in our power to give adequate expression to the mighty

debt we owe, as a people, to the living and recent authors of Europe! But

who can weigh or estimate the invisible and widely diffused influence of a

book? There are sentences in the earlier works of Carlyle which have

regenerated American souls. There are chapters in Mill which are reforming

the policy of American nations. There are passages in Buckle which give the

key to the mysteries of American history. There are lines in Tennyson which

have become incorporated into the fabric of our minds, and flash light and

beauty upon our daily conversation. There are characters in Dickens which

are extinguishing the foibles which they embody, and pages of Thackeray

which kill the affectations they depict. What a colossal good to us is Mr.

Grote's "History of Greece"! Miss Mulock, George Eliot, Charles Reade,

Charlotte Bronte, Kinglake, Matthew Arnold, Charles Kingsley, Ruskin,

Macaulay,--how could we spare the least of them? Take from our lives the

happiness and the benefit which we have derived from the recent authors of

Europe; take from the future the silent, ceaseless working of their

spirits,--so antidotal to all that remains in us of colonial, provincial,

and superstitious,--and what language could state, ever so inadequately,

the loss we and posterity should experience? And let us not lay the mean

unction to our souls that money cannot repay such services as these. It

can! It can repay it as truly and as fully as sixpence pays for a loaf of

bread that saves a shipwrecked hero's life. The baker gets his own; he is

satisfied, and holy justice is satisfied. This common phrase, "making

money," is a poor, mean way of expressing an august and sacred thing; for

the money which fairly comes to us, in the way of our vocation, is, or

ought to be, the measure of our worth to the community we serve. It is

honor, safety, education, leisure, children's bread, wife's dignity and

adornment, pleasant home, society, an independent old age, comfort in

dying, and solace to those we leave behind us. Money is the representative

of all the substantial good that man can bestow on man. And money justly

earned is never withheld without damage to the withholder and to the

interest he represents.

We often think of the case of Dion Boucicault, the one man now writing the

English language who has shown a very great natural aptitude for telling a

story in the dramatic form. For thirty years we have been witnessing his

plays in the United States. A fair share of the nightly receipts of the

theatres in which they were played would have enriched him in the prime of

his talent, or, in other words, have delivered him from that temptation to

over-production which has wellnigh destroyed his powers. He never received

any revenue from us until he came here and turned actor. He gets a little

money now by associating with himself an American friend, who writes a few

sentences of a play, then brings it to New York and disposes of it to

managers as their joint production. But what an exquisite shame it is for

us to compel an artist to whom we owe so many delightful hours to resort to

an artifice in order to be able to sell the product of his talent! Our

injustice, too, damages ourselves even more than it despoils him; for if we

had paid him fairly for "London Assurance" and "Old Heads and Young

Hearts," if he had found a career in the production of plays, he might not

have been lured from his vocation, and might have written twenty good

plays, instead of a hundred good, bad, indifferent, and atrocious. We cheat

him of our part of the just results of his lifetime's labor, and he flings

back at us his anathema in the form of a "Flying Scud." Think of Sheridan

Knowles, too, deriving nothing from our theatres, in which his dramas have

been worn threadbare by incessant playing! To say that they are trash is

not an infinitesimal fraction of an excuse; for it is just as wrong to

steal paste as it is to steal diamonds. We liked the trash well enough to

appropriate it. Besides, he really had the knack of constructing a telling

play, which, it seems, is one of the rarest gifts bestowed upon man, and

the one which affords the most intense pleasure to the greatest number of

people.

Why, we may ask in passing, did the English stage languish for so many

years? It was because the money that should have compensated dramatists

enriched actors; because the dramatist that wrote "Black-eyed Susan" was

paid five pounds a week, and the actor that played William received four

thousand pounds during the first run of the play. In France, where the

drama flourishes, it is the actor who gets five pounds a week, and the

dramatist who gets the thousands of pounds for the first run; and this

just distribution of profits is infinitely the best, in the long run, for

_actors_.

There is still an impression prevalent in the world, that there is no

connection between good work and good wages in this kind of industry. There

was never a greater mistake. A few great men, exceptional in character as

in circumstances, blind like Milton, exiled like Dante, prisoners like

Bunyan and Cervantes, may have written for solace, or for fame, or from

benevolence; but, as a rule, _nothing gets the immortal work from

first-rate men but money_. We need only mention Shakespeare, for every one

knows that he wrote plays simply and solely as a matter of business, to

draw money into the treasury of his theatre. He was author and publisher,

actor as well, and thus derived a threefold benefit from his labors.

Moliere, too, the greatest name in the literature of France, and the second

in the dramatic literature of the world, was author, actor, and manager.

Play-writing was the career of these great men. It was their business and

vocation; and it is only in the way of his business and vocation that we

can, as a rule, get from an artist the best and the utmost there is in him.

Common honesty demands that a man shall do his best when he works for his

own price. His honor and his safety are alike involved. All our courage and

all our cowardice, all our pride and all our humility, all our generosity

and all our selfishness, all that can incite and all that can scare us to

exertion, may enter into the complex motive that is urging us on when we

are doing the work by which we earn our right to exist. Nothing is of great

and lasting account,--not religion, nor benevolence, nor law, nor

science,--until it is so organized that honest and able men can live by it.

Then it lures talent, character, ambition, wealth, and force to its support

and illustration. The whole history of literature, so far as it is known,

shows that literature flourishes when it is fairly rewarded, and declines

when it is robbed of its just compensation. Mr. Reade has admirably

demonstrated this in his "Eighth Commandment," a little book as full of

wit, fact, argument, eloquence, and delicious audacity as any that has

lately appeared.

There has been but one country in which literature has ever succeeded in

raising itself to the power and dignity of a profession, and it is the only

country which has ever enjoyed a considerable part of the market of the

world for its literary wares. This is France, which has a kind of

International Copyright in its language. Educated Russia reads few books

that are not French, and in every country of Christendom it is taken for

granted that an educated person reads this language. Wherever in Europe or

America or India or Australia many books are sold, some French books are

sold. Here in New York, for example, we have had for many years an elegant

and well-appointed French bookstore, in which the standard works of French

literature are temptingly displayed, and the new works are for sale within

three weeks after their publication in Paris. Many of our readers, too,

must have noticed the huge masses of French books exhibited in some of the

second-hand bookstores of Nassau Street. French books, in fact, form a very

considerable part of the daily business of the bookstores in every capital

of the world. Nearly one hundred subscribers were obtained in the United

States for the _Nouvelle Biographie_ in forty-six volumes, the total cost

of which, bound, was more than two hundred of our preposterous dollars.

Besides this large and steady sale of their works in every city on earth,

French authors enjoy a protection to their rights at home which is most

complete, and they address a public accustomed to pay for new books a

price, in determining which the author was considered. Mr. Reade informs us

that a first-rate dramatic success in Paris is worth to the author six

thousand pounds sterling, and that this six thousand pounds is very

frequently drawn from the theatre after a larger sum has been obtained for

the same work in the form of a novel.

What is the effect? Literature in France, as we have said, is one of the

liberal professions. Literary men are an important and honorable order in

the state. The press teems with works of real value and great cost. The

three hundred French dramatists supply the theatres of Christendom with

plays so excellent, that not even the cheat of "adaptation" can wholly

conceal their merit. Great novels, great histories, great essays and

treatises, important contributions to science, illustrated works of the

highest excellence, compilations of the first utility, marvellous

dictionaries and statistical works, appear with a frequency which nothing

but a universal market could sustain. In whatever direction public

curiosity is aroused, prompt and intelligent efforts are made to gratify

it. Nothing more surprises an American inquirer than the excellent manner

in which this mere task-work, these "booksellers' jobs," as we term them,

are executed in Paris. That _Nouvelle Biographie_ of which we have spoken

is so faithfully done, and is so free from any perverseness or narrowness

of nationality, that it would be a good enterprise in any of the reading

countries to publish a translation of it just as it stands. French

literature follows the general law, that, as the volume of business

increases, the quality of the work done improves. The last French work

which the pursuit of our vocation led us to read was one upon the

Mistresses of Louis XV., by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. We need not say

how such a subject as this would be treated by the cheated hirelings of the

Yellow Cover. This work, on the contrary, is an intelligent historical

study of a period when mistresses governed France; and the passages in the

work which touch upon the adulterous tie which gave fair France over to

these vampires are managed with a delicacy the most perfect. The present

hope of France is in her literature. Her literary men are fast educating

that interesting and virtuous people to the point when they will be able to

regain their freedom and keep it safe from nocturnal conspirators. They

would have done it ere now, but for the woful fact that only half of their

countrymen can read, and are thus the helpless victims of a perjured

Dutchman and his priests.

What the general knowledge of the French language has done for French

literature, all of that, and more than that, an International Copyright law

would do for the literature of Great Britain and the United States. Here

are four great and growing empires, Great Britain, the United States, the

Dominion of Canada, and the states of Australia, in which the same language

is spoken and similar tastes prevail. In all these nations there is a

spirit abroad which will never rest content until the whole population are

readers, and those readers will be counted by hundreds of millions. Already

they are so numerous, that one first-rate literary success, one book

excellent enough to be of universal interest, would give the author leisure

for life, if his rights were completely protected by international law.

What a field for honorable exertion is this! And how can these empires fail

to grow into unity when the cultivated intelligence of them all shall be

nourished from the same sources, and bow in homage to the same commanding

minds? Wanting this protection, the literature of both countries

languishes. The blight of over-production falls upon immature genius,

masterpieces are followed by labored and spiritless repetitions, and men

that have it in them to inform and move mankind grind out task-work for

daily bread. One man, one masterpiece, that is the general law. Not one

eminent literary artist of either country can be named who has not injured

his powers and jeoparded his fame by over-production. We do not address a

polite note to Elias Howe, and ask him how much he would charge for a

"series" of inventions equal in importance to the sewing-machine. We

merely enable him to demand a dollar every time that _one_ conception is

used. Imagine Job applied to for a "series" of Books of Job. Not less

absurd is it to compel an author to try and write two Sketch-Books, two

David Copperfields, two Uncle Toms, two Jane Eyres, or two books like "The

Newcomes." When once a great writer has given such complete expression of

his experience as was given in each of those works, a long time must elapse

before his mind fills again to a natural overflow. But, alas! only a very

short time elapses before his purse empties.

It was the intention of the founders of this Republic to give complete

protection to intellectual property, and this intention is clearly

expressed in the Constitution. Justified by the authority given in that

instrument, Congress has passed patent laws which have called into exercise

an amount of triumphant ingenuity that is one of the great wonders of the

modern world; but under the copyright laws, enacted with the same good

intentions, our infant literature pines and dwindles. The reason is plain.

For a labor-saving invention, the United States, which abounds in

everything but labor, is field enough, and the inventor is rewarded; while

a great book cannot be remunerative unless it enjoys the market of the

whole civilized world. The readers of excellent books are few in every

country on earth. The readers of any one excellent book are usually very

few indeed; and the purchasers are still fewer. In a world that is supposed

to contain a thousand millions of people, it is spoken of as a marvel that

two millions of them bought the most popular book ever published,--one

purchaser to every five hundred inhabitants.

We say, then, to those members of Congress who go to Washington to do

something besides make Presidents, that time has developed a new necessity,

not indeed contemplated by the framers of the Constitution, yet covered by

the Constitution; and it now devolves upon them to carry out the evident

intention of their just and wise predecessors, which was, to secure to

genius, learning, and talent the certain ownership of their productions. We

want an international system which shall protect a kind of property which

cannot be brought to market without exposing it to plunder,--property in a

book being simply the right to multiply copies of it. We want this property

secured, for a sufficient period, to the creator of the value, so that no

property in a book can be acquired anywhere on earth unless by the gift or

consent of the author thereof. There are men in Congress who feel all the

magnitude and sacredness of the debt which they owe, and which their

country owes, to the authors and artists of the time. We believe such

members are more numerous now than they ever were before,--much more

numerous. It is they who must take the leading part in bringing about this

great measure of justice and good policy; and, as usual in such cases, some

one man must adopt it as his special vocation, and never rest till he has

conferred on mankind this immeasurable boon.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Upon this expression Mr. Reade justly remarks: "This is a foolish and

inapplicable phrase. Free trade is free buying and selling, not free

stealing."

THE FLIGHT OF THE GODDESS.

A man should live in a garret, I think,

And have few friends, and be poorly clad,

With an old hat stopping the wind in the chink,

To keep the Goddess constant and glad.

Of old, when I walked on a rugged way,

And gave much work for but little bread,

The Goddess dwelt with me night and day,

Sat at my table, haunted my bed.

The narrow, mean attic, I see it now!--

Its window o'erlooking the city's tiles,

The sunset's fires, and the clouds of snow,

And the river wandering miles and miles.

Just one picture hung in the room,

The saddest story that Art can tell,--

Dante and Virgil in lurid gloom

Watching the Lovers float through Hell.

Wretched enough was I sometimes,

Pinched, and harassed with vain desires;

But thicker than clover sprung the rhymes

As I dwelt like a sparrow among the spires.

Midnight filled my slumbers with song;

Music haunted my dreams by day:

Now I listen and wait and long,

But the Delphian airs have died away!

I wonder and wonder how it befell:

Suddenly I had friends in crowds;

I bade the house-tops a long farewell;

"Good by," I cried, "to the stars and clouds!

"But thou, rare soul, that hast dwelt with me,

Spirit of Poesy! thou divine

Breath of the morning, thou shalt be,

Goddess! for ever and ever mine."

And the woman I loved was now my bride,

And the house I wanted was my own;

I turned to the Goddess satisfied,--

But the Goddess had somehow flown!

Flown, and I fear she will never return!

I'm much too sleek and happy for her,

Whose lovers must hunger, and waste, and burn,

Ere the beautiful heathen heart will stir!

I call,--but she does not stoop to my cry;

I wait,--but she lingers, and ah! so long!

It was not so in the years gone by,

When she touched my lips with chrism of song.

I swear I will get me a garret again,

And let the wee wife see the sunset's fires,

And lure the Goddess, by vigil and pain,

Up with the sparrows among the spires!

For a man should live in a garret aloof,

And have few friends, and be poorly clad,

With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof,

To keep the Goddess constant and glad!

THE THRONE OF THE GOLDEN FOOT.

Early on the morning of the 13th of September, 1855, a most fantastic and

picturesque procession--in which the formal and arrogant simplicities of a

nice Western civilization, and the grotesque and insolent ostentations of a

crude Oriental barbarism, with all the splendid riddles of its far-fetched

type-and-symbolry, were blended in a rich bizarreness--formed in the main

street of the western suburb of "the Immortal City" of Amarapoora, and

moved toward the palace of "him who reigns over the kingdoms of

Thunaparanta, Tampadepa, and all the great umbrella-bearing chiefs of the

Eastern countries,"--the Lord of Earth and Water, King of the Rising Sun,

Lord of the Sacred White Elephant and of all white elephants, Master of the

Celestial Weapon, and Great Chief of Life and Righteousness,--called, "for

short," Mendoon-men, King of Ava. An imposing deputation of Woons and other

grandees, with their respective "tails," were escorting the newly arrived

Envoy of the Governor-General of India, and his suite, from their Residency

on the south shore of the lake Toung-ah-mah-Eing below the city, to the

Hall of the Throne of the Golden Foot, there to have audience of that

great, glorious, and most excellent Majesty, whose dominions are bounded

only by the imagination--and here and there a British customhouse; and

whose excursions of dreadful power are stayed only by the forbearing fiat

of Boodh--and now and then some British bayonets.

The escort was illustrious: there were the old Nan-ma-dau-Phra Woon, or

Lord-Governor of the Queen's Palace; the Woondouk Mhoung Mhon, a minister

of the second order in the High Court and Council; and the Tara-Thoogyi, or

Chief Judge of Amarapoora; besides other magnificos of less note, but all

very fine in their heavy, wide-sleeved court robes of crimson velvet, laced

with a broad edging of Benares brocade. On their heads they wore high

mitres, also of crimson velvet, curving backward in a volute, and encircled

at the base with a coronet of tinsel spear-heads. It is the _ton_ at court

to wear these mitres excessively tight, and to carry a little ivory blade,

modelled like a shoe-horn, with which the cap of honor is drawn on, and all

"vagrom" locks of hair "comprehended." The _tsalwe_ (a Burman badge of

nobility, derived from the Brahminical triple cord, and having three, six,

nine, or even twelve threads, according to the distinction conferred on the

wearer), and a trumpet-shaped ear-tube of gold, complete the official

costume.

The royal presents from England, guarded by the British-Indian cavalry

escort, had been sent forward over a long bridge which spanned the southern

end of the Toung-ah-mah, to await on the other side the arrival of the

Envoy. There was a superb carriage for the King, which, being too wide to

pass the bridge, was towed across the lake on a raft.