ike apples
of gold to frolicsome schoolboys, so beautiful Maga, to covetous
Yankees, is a thing too full of relish and of beauty to be other than
pardonable plunder! Maga, like Italy, ought to be less bewitching, or
better defended. What would not some of Maga's cotemporaries give,
nevertheless, for the compliment of being perpetually ravished by the
Goths and Vandals of Letters--the merciless anti-copyright booksellers
of America? Nay--they will pout at the insinuation, and stand upon the
virtue which no one believes they possess. But assure them, dear
Godfrey, that they are in no conceivable danger. Maga shall growl, and
they shall fawn; but the republicans will not be repulsed by the honest
frankness of the one nor propitiated by the hypocritical blandishments
of the others. If they doubt it, just tell them what happened with me
the other day, and what I vouch for as fairly exhibiting the feeling of
the most intelligent Americans. I could add many other anecdotes of the
same colour and character; but I tell this as creditable to them, and
illustrative of Maga's footing among them:--

I was at the reading-rooms of "The Athenaeum"--a literary club-house in
this city, which has grown out of a small society of scholars that
existed here before the Revolution--and which, I am happy to say, is
always supplied with the genuine imported Magazine. A young man, whom I
had often met at the rooms, and who had the Magazine in his hand, called
my attention to a palpable error in an article, that reflected pretty
merrily on his countrymen. "Ha!" said I, "just like old Ebony! Why don't
you banish the rabid old Tory from these most democratic tables?"

"Banish Maga!" was the reply--"what would be left fit to read?"

"You surprise me! Edinburgh, Westminster--any thing that thinks better
of Congress, and legislative eloquence--as you do, of course!"

"Why so? Mayn't a man be a republican, without recognising a _jure
divino_ majesty in a Congressman?"

"But Maga would make out some of your Solons prodigiously long in the
ears."

"Nay--rather intolerably long in the wind, which is just the intolerable
truth. Thanks to Maga for giving them the echo of their palaver! and may
the first reformed Congress vote her a gold medal for the good she has
done to the country!"

"She sometimes makes free with the nation itself, and some of the little
peculiarities of your countrymen."

"Well, well--we are not drawn more out of proportion than