of the far-famed Guatemala.

[Illustration]

A "SWEET" NUT FOR THE YANKEES.

Lord Chesterfield once remarked that a thoroughly vulgar man could not
speak the most common-place word, nor perform the most ordinary act,
without imparting to the one and the other a portion of his own inborn
vulgarity. And exactly so is it with the Yankees; not a question can
arise, no matter how great its importance, nor how trivial its
bearings, upon which, the moment they express an opinion, they do not
completely invest with their own native coarseness, insolence, and
vulgarity. The boundary question was made a matter of violent
invective and ruffian abuse; the right of search was treated with the
same powers of ribaldry towards England; and now we have these amiable
and enlightened citizens defending the wholesale piracy of British
authors, not on the plausible but unjust pretext of the benefit to be
derived from an extended acquaintance with English literature; but,
only conceive! because, if "English authors were invested with any
control over the republication of their own books, it would be no
longer possible for American editors to alter and adapt them as they
do now to the American taste." However incredible this may seem, the
passage formed part of a document actually submitted to congress, and
favourably received by that body. This is not the place for me to
dwell on the unprincipled usurpation by which men who have contributed
nothing to the production of a work, assume the power of reaping its
benefits, and profiting by its success. The wholesale robbery of
English authors has been of late well and ably exposed. The gifted
and accomplished author of "Darnley" and "The Gipsy" has devoted his
time and his talents to the subject; and although the world at large
have few sympathies with the wrongs of those who live to please them,
yet the day is not distant when the rights of a large and influential
body, who stamp the age with the image of their own minds, can be no
longer neglected, and the security of literary property must become at
least as great as of mining scrip, or the shares in a railroad.

My present business is with the Yankee declaration, that English
authors to be readable in America must be passed through the ordeal of
re-writing. I scarcely think that the annals of impertinence and
ignorance could equal this. What! is it seriously meant that Scott and
Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Bulwer, James, D