the details even of
its commonest amusements, from Bartholomew Fair to Sadler's Wells, are
portrayed with simple force and delicate discrimination; and for the
most part skillfully contrasted with the rural life of the poet's native
home. There are some truthful and powerful sketches of French character
and life, in the early revolutionary era. But above all, as might have
been anticipated, Wordsworth's heart revels in the elementary beauty and
grandeur of his mountain theme; while his own simple history is traced
with minute fidelity and is full of unflagging interest.--_London
Examiner._

FOOTNOTES:

[J] _The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind; an Autobiographical Poem_.
By William Wordsworth. London. Moxon. New York, Appleton & Co.

[From the North British Review.]

THE LITERARY PROFESSION--AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS.

It is a common complaint that the publishers make large fortunes and
leave the authors to starve--that they are, in fact, a kind of moral
vampire, sucking the best blood of genius, and destroying others to
support themselves. A great deal of very unhealthy, one-sided cant has
been written upon this subject. Doubtless, there is much to be said on
both sides. That publishers look at a manuscript very much as a
corn-dealer looks at sample of wheat, with an eye to its selling
qualities, is not to be denied. If books are not written only to be
sold, they are printed only to be sold. Publishers must pay their
printers and their paper-merchants; and they can not compel the public
to purchase their printed paper. When benevolent printers shall be found
eager to print gratuitously works of unsalable genius, and benevolent
paper-merchants to supply paper for the same, publishers may afford to
think less of a manuscript as an article of sale--may reject with less
freedom unlikely manuscripts, and haggle less savagely about the price
of likely ones. An obvious common-place this, and said a thousand times
before, but not yet recognized by the world of writers at large.
Publishing is a trade, and, like all other trades, undertaken with the
one object of making money by it. The profits are not ordinarily large;
they are, indeed, very uncertain--so uncertain that a large proportion
of those who embark in the publishing business some time or other find
their way into the Gazette. When a publishing firm is ruined by printing
unsalable books, authors seldom or never have any sympathy with a
member of it. They