so that Reprint & Co. are the monopolists of Maga,
from the mouth of the St Lawrence, to the deltas of the Mississippi, and
before long will doubtless have their travelling agents pushing its
sale in the "halls of the Montezumas," or exchanging it for peltry at
the head-waters of the Colombia. It is said in one of the newspapers of
this city, that for every copy issued in Edinburgh, two copies of the
reprint are published here; and though the estimate strikes me as, at
least, unlikely, it is far from being incredible. I can pardon Mr
Blackwood should his temper be a little ruffled, when he compares his
trouble and responsibility, and limited sale, with the _sans souci_ and
universal market of Reprint & Co.; but surely, old Christopher North
should smile with inward satisfaction when, not by cannon, or carnage,
but as the result of a greatness thrust upon him, he finds his empire,
like her Majesty's, the girdle of the earth, and his sovereignty
recognised, in the world of letters, where hers can claim no subjects,
and demand no homage. That crutch is now the sceptre of bookdom. Its
shadow stretcheth over all lands, whether the dawn project it athwart
the broad Atlantic, or the Boreal light send it overland to farthest
India. Who reads not Maga? You shall find the smutched lieutenant
turning over its pages by the camp-fire, after a terrible scratch with
the Sikhs; and within the same twenty-four hours you may fairly surmise
that some green mountain volunteer, on the wrong side of the Rio Grande,
has lighted a pine-knot, and is reading one of the Marlborough articles
to his mess, with extemporary paralellisms in favour of General Taylor,
which the shade of the great Churchill must not venture to overhear.
Swinging in his hammock, the midshipman holds Blackwood to the smoky
lamp of the orlop, as he plunges and pitches around Cape Horn. Lounging
in his state-room, and bound for Hong Kong, the sea-sick passenger
corrects his nausea with the same spicy page, and bewitched with the
flavour, forgets to sigh for Madeira, which he has passed, or to look
out for St Helena, which is somewhere on his lee. It keeps the old
Admiral from the deck as his keel scrapes the coral-reefs of the South
Pacific; and a stale back number, from the bottom of a seaman's chest,
is purchased as a prize, by him who cruises among seals, icebergs, and
spermaceti whales.

"Quis jam locus, inquit, Achate,
Quae regio in terris nostri non plen