ge scale, was commenced in
Philadelphia, reprints of the Latin and Greek writers, poor Mr. Barlas's
functions were nearly annihilated. I mention him here from his relation to
the advancement of learning in my juvenile days. His opinion on the
various editions was deemed conclusive; and he controlled the judgment as
well as the pocket of the purchaser. He was long in epistolary
correspondence with "the friend of Cowper," as some call him--old John
Newton of London; and I have often wondered that no enterprise has yet
brought forward, in a new edition of the writings of Newton, their
correspondence. It is not for me to dwell on the contrast, so striking,
between the present period and that to which I have just adverted, when
even professors of Colleges were controlled in their opinions of books by
the dicta of a bookseller. Such was the fact some forty or fifty years
ago. What would be the reply of our Professor Anthon, of Columbia College,
to a bookseller who assumed such authority? of him whose love and devotion
to the philosophy of the classics has led him already in so many works to
spread before the cogitative scholars, of both worlds, the deepest
researches of antiquarian disquisition and philological lore, evincing
that America is not tardy in a just appreciation of the excellencies of
those treasures which enriched a Bentley, a Horseley, a Porson, and a
Parr.

Those of our literary connoisseurs who cast a retrospective glance over
days long past, may awaken into memory that delicately constructed and
pensive-looking man, of Pearl-street, recognized by the name of Charles
Smith. I believe he was a New-Yorker. Pulmonary suffering was his physical
infirmity--his relief, tobacco, the fumes of which aver surrounded him like
a halo. He abounded in the gloom and glory of the American Revolution, and
published, with portraits, numerous diagrams of the campaigns of the war
in the _Military Repository_, a work of great fidelity, in which it is
thought he was aided by Baron Steuben and General Gates. As a
bibliopolist, little need be said of him. But the curious in knowledge
will not overlook him as the first who popularly made known to the English
reader the names of Kotzebue and Schiller. Several of the novels and plays
of these German authors were done into English by him; and, with William
Dunlap, both as a translator and as a theatrical manager, _The Stranger_
and other plays were presented to the cultivators of the dram