the noble art of romance, and in five or six years we shall have
only about a tenth of the present number of romances, but that tenth will
pass through as many editions as "The Pilgrim's Progress," which, by the
way, was probably, like Ronsard's poems, the work of an amateur. But
these were other times, when an author did not expect to make money, and
thought himself lucky if, after a slashing personal review by the
Inquisition, his fragments were not burned at the stake in a bonfire of
his volumes.

SOME RARE THINGS FOR SALE.

An American writer has been complaining lately that his countrymen have
lost the habit of reading. This is partly the result of that free trade
in English books which is the only form of free trade that suits the
American Constitution. People do not buy American books any longer,
because they can get English works, mere printed rags, but paying nothing
to English authors, for a few cents. The rags, of course, fall to
pieces, and are tossed into the waste-paper basket, and thus a habit of
desultoriness and of abstention from books worth styling books grows and
grows, like a noxious and paralysing parasite, over the American
intellect. In this way our pleasant vices are made instruments to plague
us, and the condition of the law, which leaves the British authors at the
mercy of the Aldens and Monros of the States, is beginning to react on
the buyers of goods indelicately obtained. Even newspaper articles are
becoming, it is said, a heavy and a weary weight on the demoralised
attention, and people are ceasing to read anything but brief and probably
personal paragraphs, such as "Joaquin Miller has had his hair cut."

This is a deplorable condition of things, and perhaps not quite without
example at home, where, however, many people still intend to read books,
and order them at the libraries, though they never really carry out
intentions which, like those of Wilkins Micawber the younger, are
excellent. To persons conscious of mental debility and incapable of
grappling even with a short shilling novel, a brief and easy form of
reading may be recommended. They may study catalogues; they may peruse
the lists of their wares which secondhand booksellers and dealers in all
kinds of curiosities circulate gratis. This is the only kind of circular
which should not go straight to its long home in the waste-paper basket.
A catalogue is full of information. It is so exceedingly inconsecutive
tha