dy crisis. Up
to a recent period the Yankees had all the advantage of the defective
state of the law. They could steal freely from our literary richness;
whereas, not only had they little of their own to be robbed of,
but their handful of authors took very good care to secure English
publishers, and, therefore, English copyrights, for their works. This
defense, however, a recent law decision has wrested from the Coopers
and Irvings of the States; so that English booksellers have now a
perfect right to treat American authors as American booksellers
have long been in the habit of serving English authors. And there is
something just in this _lex talionis_. If Dickens, may be reprinted
and sold for a shilling in New York, why may not Cooper be reprinted
and sold for a shilling in London? At all events, the reprisal system
will possibly incline our Yankee neighbors to listen to reason, and to
favor _the embassy which Mr. James, the novelist, is to undertake to
the States, with a view of making preliminary arrangements for a
full and satisfactory code directed against all future international
literary free-booting_."

* * * * *

Albert Smith and "Protection."--The _Spectator_, misled by a statement
in the Morning Post, to the effect that a Mr. Albert Smith was
present, by invitation, at a Protectionist meeting at Wallingford,
made some caustic remarks on the supposed adhesion of the witty
novelist to the cause of dear bread. The latter, astounded thereby,
sends the _Spectator_ a note, in which he says:

"The Sphinx, at which you pleasantly affirm I came home laughing from
Egypt, never propounded a darker puzzle to any of its victims than you
have to me. From last week's _Spectator_ I learn, for the first time,
that I was at a Protection meeting at Wallingford on some particular
day, and that I wept at the prices of 1845. Allow me to assure you
that I never was at Wallingford in my life: nor, indeed, did I ever
attend a public meeting anywhere. I have not the slightest notion
what the prices--I presume of corn--were in 1845; and I should never
think of expressing an opinion, in any way, upon politics, except
against that school which abuses respectability and philanthropizes
mischievous rift-raff."

* * * * *

R.H. Stoddard is preparing for the press of Ticknor, Reed & Fields, a
collection of his Poems, to include most of those he has contributed
to the perio