Literature--The
Secretary described--His Paintings--The Lion
and ---- --Toryism of Toronto--Canadian
Attentions--Proposed Theatricals--Last
Letter--The Private Play--Stage Manager's
Report--The Lady Performers--Bill of the
Performance--A Touch of Crummles--HOME.

MY friend was better than his word, and two more letters reached me
before his return. The opening of the first was written from Niagara on
the 3d, and its close from Montreal on the 12th, of May; from which
latter city also, on the 26th of that month, the last of all was
written.

Much of the first of these letters had reference to the international
copyright agitation, and gave strong expression to the indignation
awakened in him (nor less in some of the best men of America) by the
adoption, at a public meeting in Boston itself, of a memorial against
any change of the law, in the course of which it was stated that, 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 to the American taste. This deliberate declaration,
however, unsparing as Dickens's anger at it was, in effect vanquished
him. He saw the hopelessness of pursuing further any present effort to
bring about the change desired; and he took the determination not only
to drop any allusion to it in his proposed book, but to try what effect
might be produced, when he should again be in England, by a league of
English authors to suspend further intercourse with American publishers
while the law should remain as it is. On his return he made accordingly
a public appeal to this effect, stating his own intention for the future
to forego all profit derivable from the authorized transmission of early
proofs across the Atlantic; but his hopes in this particular also were
doomed to disappointment. I now leave the subject, quoting only from his
present letter the general remarks with which it is dismissed by
himself.

"NIAGARA FALLS,
"_Tuesday, Third May, 1842._

"I'll tell you what the two obstacles to the passing of an international
copyright law with England are: firstly, the national love of 'doing' a
man in any bargain or matter of business; secondly, the national vanity.
Both these characteristics prevail to an extent which no stranger can
possibly