ch a quarter of a million of volumes? So, too, of the histories of
Bancroft and Prescott, and of other books of permanent character.

Such being the extent of the market for the products of literary labor, we
may now inquire into its rewards.

Beginning with the common schools, we find a vast number of young men and
young women acting as teachers of others, while qualifying themselves for
occupying other places in life. Many of them rise gradually to become
teachers in high schools and professors in colleges, while all of them
have at hand the newspaper, ready to enable them, if gifted with the power
of expressing themselves on paper, to come before the world. The numerous
newspapers require editors and contributors, and the amount appropriated
to the payment of this class of the community is a very large one. Next
come the magazines, many of which pay very liberally. I have now before me
a statement from a single publisher, in which he says that to Messrs.
Willis, Longfellow, Bryant, and Alston, his price was uniformly $50 for a
poetical article, long or short--and his readers know that they were
generally very short; in one case only fourteen lines. To numerous others
it was from $25 to $40. In one case he has paid $25 per page for prose. To
Mr. Cooper he paid $1,800 for a novel, and $1,000 for a series of naval
biographies, the author retaining the copyright for separate publication;
and in such cases, if the work be good, its appearance in the magazine
acts as the best of advertisements. To Mr. James he paid $1,200 for a
novel, leaving him also the copyright. For a single number of the journal
he has paid to authors $1,500. The total amount paid for original matter
by two magazines--the selling price of which is $3 per annum--in ten
years, has exceeded $130,000, giving an average of $13,000 per annum. The
Messrs. Harper inform me that the expenditure for literary and artistic
labor required for their magazine is $2,000 per month, or $24,000 a year.

Passing upwards, we reach the producers of books, and here we find rewards
not, I believe, to be paralleled elsewhere. Mr. Irving stands, I imagine,
at the head of living authors for the amount received for his books. The
sums paid to the renowned Peter Parley must have been enormously great,
but what has been their extent I have no means of ascertaining. Mr.
Mitchell, the geographer, has realized a handsome fortune from his
schoolbooks. Professor Davies is understood to