the Copyright Act. The information would afford a measure of the
fertility of the British press. It is rather curious, that for a morsel
of this kind of ordinary modern statistics, one must have recourse to so
scholarly a work as the quarto volume of the _Praefationes et Epistolae
Editionibus Principibus Auctorum Veterum praepositae, curante Beriah
Botfield, A.M._ The editor of that noble quarto obtained a return from
Mr Winter Jones, of the number of deposits in the British Museum from
1814 to 1860. Counting the "pieces," as they are called--that is, every
volume, pamphlet, page of music, and other publication--the total number
received in 1814 was 378. It increased by steady gradation until 1851,
when it reached 9871. It then got an impulse, from a determination more
strictly to enforce the Act, and next year the number rose to 13,934,
and in 1859 it reached 28,807. In this great mass, the number of books
coming forth complete in one volume or more is roundly estimated at
5000, but a quantity of the separate numbers and parts which go to make
up the total are elementary portions of books, giving forth a certain
number of completed volumes annually. From the same authority, it
appears that the total number of publications which issued from the
French press in 1858 was estimated at 13,000; but this includes
"sermons, pamphlets, plays, pieces of music, and engravings." In the
same year the issues from the German press, Austria not included, are
estimated at 10,000, all apparently actual volumes, or considerable
pamphlets. Austria in 1855 published 4673 volumes and parts. What a
contrast to all this it must be to live in sleepy Norway, where the
annual literary prowess produces 146 volumes! In Holland the annual
publications approach 2000. "During the year 1854, 861 works in the
Russian language, and 451 in foreign languages were printed in Russia;
besides 2940 scientific and literary treatises in the different
periodicals." The number of works anywhere published is, however, no
indication of the number of books put in circulation, since some will
have to be multiplied by tens, others by hundreds, and others by
thousands. We know that there is an immense currency of literature in
the American States, yet, of the quantity of literature issued there,
the Publishers' Circular for February 1859 gives the following meagre
estimate:--"There were 912 works published in America during 1858. Of
these 177 were reprints from England,