ter cannot expect an
extensive sale, unless his leaders equal, at least, the frothy head of
"Barclay's porter," or possess the Attic salt of "Fortnum and Mason's
hams." At the same time, the proudest notable in literature can now no
longer swamp, or thrust aside, his obscurer peers; nor is the humblest
votive offering at the shrine of intellect, in danger, as formerly, from
the hoofs of spurious priests, alike insensible to receive, and impotent
to reflect or minister, light or warmth, from the sacred fire they
pretend to cherish. In short, such is the pleasant change which has come
over literary affairs, that, however apposite in past times, there is
not, in the present, any fitness in the exclamation, "Oh, that mine
enemy would write a book!"

With reference to the observation, made by more than one correspondent,
that the horse-shoe has not always proved an infallible charm against
the devil, the author, deferentially, begs to hazard an opinion that, in
every one of such cases, the supposed failure may have resulted from an
adoption of something else than the real shoe, as a protection. Once
upon a time, a witness very sensibly accounted for the plaintiff's horse
having broken down. "'Twasn't the hoss's fault," said he; "his plates
was wore so thin and so smooth, that, if he'd been Hal Brook[1] his
self, he couldn't help slipping."

[Footnote 1: Doubtless he meant Al Borak, the name of Mahomet's night
mare.]

"You mean," said the judge, "that the horse, instead of shoes, had
merely slippers?"

Peradventure, the alleged failures may be similarly accounted for;
the party, in each case, having perhaps nailed up, not a shoe, but a
slipper, the learned distinction respecting which was thus judicially
recognised. The deed which the devil signed, must, like a penal statute,
be construed strictly. It says nothing of a slipper; and it has been
held by all our greatest lawyers, from Popham and Siderfin, down to
Ambler and Walker, that a slipper is not a shoe.

Another solution suggests itself. Possibly the horse-shoe, even if
genuine, was not affixed until after the Wicked One had already got
possession. In that case, not only would the charm be inefficacious
to eject him, but would actually operate as a bar to his quitting the
premises; for that eminent jurisconsult, Mephistopheles himself, has
distinctly laid it down as "a law binding on devils, that they must go
out the same way they stole in." Nailing up a shoe to ke