tion of the proposed act
which has a direct interest not only for all scholars, but for that
large and constantly increasing class whose thirst for what may be
called voluminous knowledge prompts them to buy all those
shelf-ornamenting works without which no gentleman's library can be
considered complete. Though in the matter of book-buying the
characters of gentleman and scholar, so seldom united, are
distinguished from each other with remarkable precision,--the desire
of the former being to cover the walls of what he superstitiously
calls his "study," and that of the latter to line his head, while the
resultant wisdom is measured respectively by volume and by mass,--yet
it is equally important to both that the literary furniture of the
one and the intellectual tools of the other should be cheap.

The "Providence Journal" deserves the thanks of all students for
having called attention to the fact, that, under the proposed tariff,
the duties will be materially increased on two classes of foreign
books: the cheap ones, like "Bohn's Library,"--and the bulky, but
often indispensable ones, such as the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." The
new bill, in short, proposes to substitute for the old duty of eight
_per cent. ad valorem_ a new one of fifteen cents the pound weight.
Could we suspect a Committee of Members of Congress of a joke
appreciable by mere members of the human family, could we suppose
them in a thoughtless moment to have carried into legislation a
mildened modicum of that metaphorical language which forms the staple
of debate, we should make no remonstrance. We recognize the severe
justice of an ideal avoirdupois in literary criticism. We remember
the unconscious sarcasm of the Atlantic Telegraph, as it sank
heart-broken under the strain of conveying the answer of the Heavy Father
of our political stage to the graceful "good-morning" of Victoria.
The enthusiastic member of the Academy of Lagado, who had spent eight
years in a vain attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, might
have found profitable employment in smelting the lead even from light
literature, not to speak of richer deposits. Under an act thus
dubiously worded, and in a country which makes Bancroft a collector
of the customs and Hawthorne a weigher and gauger, the works of an
Alison and a Tupper would be put beyond the reach of all but the
immensely rich. The man of moderate means would be deprived of the
exhaustless misinformation of the Scottish