carried out for several years, it was found that it had wrought but little change on the regular trade, despite strong anticipations that so active a competition would have very much damaged it. The truth was, the market created for the "numbers" was entirely new; the people who purchased them never did buy, and never would have bought, the expensive works of the more aristocratic branches of "the trade," who, despite the vast spread of books in the substrata of society, still retained their old customers at the old prices. The great metropolitan publishers went on realizing large profits upon a limited amount of business as heretofore, till the invention of steam-printing caused them to bestir themselves a little more actively.

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this, we believe, was the first attempt to furnish original literary matter of merit through such a medium. It was followed, almost immediately, by the well-known Penny Magazine, the Saturday Magazine, and other similar series, most of which attained, like the Journal, a circulation of many thousands. This mode of publication, followed as it has been by that of cheap editions of books in and out of copyright, has produced a great change in the trade. The warehouses of the great publishers are much less scenes of quiet and ease than they were; trouble is multiplied, and profit diminished, but the trade is enormously extended. The number of retailers of books, especially in suburban situations, has been vastly increased through the same cause. In short, a revolution has taken place, and if the bookseller now feels himself somewhat less stately and at ease than he used to be, he may have the satisfaction of feeling that his usefulness as a member of society has been greatly extended.

It is now time to give a short summary of the

ried on; for, unlike some other trades, it has few "secrets." The first step which a publisher usually takes when he has printed a new book, is to send it round to his brethren to have it "subscribed;" that is, to learn from each house how many copies they will venture to take; and, to induce them to speculate, the copies thus subscribed for are delivered at a certain per centage less than the regular trade price. The copies thus supplied to the wholesale metropolitan houses are then distributed throughout the retail trade, both in town and country; for every provincial bookseller selects a London or Edinburgh publish

It was about this time (1825) that Archibald Constable of Edinburgh propounded to Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Lockhart a plan for revolutionizing the entire trade by the aid of steam and cheap printing. Literary genius," he exclaimed, " may or may not have done its best; but printing and bookselling, as instruments for enlightening man-internal arrangements by which bookselling is carkind, and of course for making money, are as yet in mere infancy. Yes, the trade are in their cradle." He then shadowed forth his outline:-"A three shilling or half-crown volume every month, which must and shall sell, not by thousands, or tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands-ay by millions! Twelve volumes in the year, a halfpenny of profit upon every copy of which will make me richer than the possession of all the copyrights of all the quartos that ever were, or will be hot-pressed! -twelve volumes so good, that millions must wish to have them; and so cheap, that every butcher's callant may have them, if he pleases to let me tax him sixpence a-week!"* Bright, and not ex-ing house as his agent, for the supply of whatever travagant visions; but, alas! it was destined that others should realize them. In the following year Constable was a bankrupt. When his affairs were wound up, he commenced his Miscellany, but with crippled means and a crushed spirit, which soon after was quelled in death. By his successors, the series was managed with little success, and after a few years it was discontinued. Still, however, the plan did not sink. Murray in his Family Library," Longman and Co. in their "Cabinet Cyclopædia" and other such series, Colburn and Bentley in their "National Library," carried it out for several years with more or less success; and at that time it appeared as if no books other than monthly volumes at five or six shillings would sell.

Meanwhile, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had commenced a series of sixpenny publications, embracing the principal sciences, and thus were showing the way to still further declensions in the cost of literature. It was remarked, however, that even these comparatively cheap issues were absorbed, not by the working-classes, to whom they were professedly addressed, but by the middle ranks. And thus it has ever been with books of all kinds: direct them to one class, and they hit the next above. It became necessary, in order to reach the great bulk of the people, that cheaper works still should be presented. It was with some such views that the publishers of the present work commenced it on the 4th of February, 1832. Weekly sheets, composed of matter chiefly compiled, and aiming at no literary distinction, had previously been by no means rare; nor were they unsuccessful. But Lockhart's Life of Scott. LIVING AGE. VOL. V.

LVI.

30

works he may order. Such books are purchased by the agent from the publisher; and when they have accumulated sufficiently to cover the expense of carriage, they are made up into a parcel, and sent to the retailer. This generally happened, up to about ten years ago, on the last day of a month, when the magazines are published; for of them alone the general demand is so great, that they form a bulky parcel for each bookseller. In 1837, one of "the trade," many years conversant with the great literary hive of London on Magazine Day," made the following computations: The periodical works sold on the last day of the month amounted to 500,000 copies. The amount of cash expended in the purchase of these was £25,000. The parcels despatched into the country per month were 2000. These parcels, it must be remembered, not only contained magazines, but all the works ordered during the preceding part of the month.

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Since then, however, the vast increase of weekly publications, the opening of railroads, the extension of steam navigation, and other causes, have in a great measure withdrawn the bulk of books. from the monthly to weekly parcels, one of which every respectable provincial bookseller now regularly receives. To estimate the contents or number of these would be impossible; but we have no hesitation in saying that they more than double the above computation in all its calculations.

We learn by the abstract of occupations from the last census, that in Great Britain there are 13,355 booksellers, publishers, and bookbinders, 5499 of whom reside in London. In Scotland, there are 2547 persons following the same trades. In Edinburgh alone, there are 786 individuals connected with "the trade."

From Fraser's Magazine. THE MOURNER AND THE COMFORTER.

Ir was a lovely day in the month of August, and the sun, which had shone with undiminished splendor from the moment of dawn, was now slowly declining, with that rich and prolonged glow with which it seems especially to linger around those scenes where it seldomest finds admittance. For it was a valley in the north of Scotland into which its light was streaming, and many a craggy top and rugged side, rarely seen without their cap of clouds or shroud of mist, were now throwing their mellow-tinted forms, clear and soft, into a lake of unusual stillness. High above the lake, and commanding a full view of that and of the surrounding hills, stood one of those countrified hotels not unfrequently met with on a tourist's route, formerly only designed for the lonely traveller or weary huntsman, but which now, with the view to accommodate the swarm of visitors which every summer increased, had gone on stretching its cords and enlarging its boundaries, till the original tenement looked merely like the seed from which the rest had sprung. Nor, even under these circumstances, did the house admit of much of the luxury of privacy; for, though the dormitories lay thick and close along the narrow corridor, all accommodation for the day was limited to two large and long rooms, one above the other, which fronted the lake. Of these, the lower one was given up to pedestrian travellers the sturdy, sunburnt shooters of the moors, who arrive with weary limbs and voracious appetites, and question no accommodation which gives them food and shelter; while the upper one was the resort of ladies and family parties, and was furnished with a low balcony, now covered with a rough awning.

"It is Captain H— and his little boy," said one voice, breaking silence; "they arrived here yesterday."

"They'll be going to see the great waterfall," said another.

“They had best make haste about it; for they have a mile to walk up-hill when they land," said a third.

"Rather they than I," rejoined a languid fourth; and again there was a pause. Meanwhile the boat party seemed to be thinking little about the waterfall, or the need for expedition. For a few minutes the quick-glancing play of the oars was seen, and then they ceased again; and now an arm was stretched out towards some distant object in the landscape, as if asking a question; and then the little fellow pointed here and there, as if asking many questions at once, and, in short, the conjectures on the balcony were all thrown out. But now the oars had rested longer than usual, and a figure rose and stooped, and seemed occupied with something at the bottom of the boat. What were they about? They were surely not going to fish at this time of evening? No, they were not; for slowly a mast was raised, and a sail unfurled, which at first hung flapping, as if uncertain which side the wind would take it. and then gently swelled out to its full dimensions, and seemed too large a wing for so tiny a body. A slight air had arisen; the long reflected lines of colors, which every object on the shore dripped, as it were, into the lake, were gently stirred with a quivering motion; every soft strip of liquid tint broke gradually into a jagged and serrated edge; colors were mingled, forms were confused; the mountains, which lay in undiminished brightness above, seemed by some invisible agency to be losing their second selves from beneath them; long, cold white lines rose apparently from below, and spread radiating over all the liquid picture: in a few minutes, the lake lay one vast sheet of bright silver, and half the landscape was gone. The boat was no longer in the same element: before, it had floated in a soft, transparent ether; now, it glided upon a plain of ice.

are least prepared."

Both these rooms, on the day we mention, were filled with numerous guests. Touring was at its height, and shooting had begun; and, while a party of wayworn young men, coarsely clad and thickly shod, were lying on the benches, or lolling out of the windows of the lower apartment, a number of travelling parties were clustered in distinct "I wish they had stuck to their oars,” said the groups in the room above; some lingering round full, deep voice of an elderly gentleman; "hoisttheir tea-tables, whilst others sat on the balcony, ing a sail on these lakes is very much like trusting and seemed attentively watching the evolutions of to luck in life-it may go on all right for awhile, a small boat, the sole object on the lake before and save you much trouble, but you are never sure them. It is pleasant to watch the actions, how-that it won't give you the slip, and that when you ever insignificant they may be, of a distant group; to see the hand obey without hearing the voice "No danger in the world, sir," said a young that has bidden; to guess at their inward motives fop standing by, who knew as little about boating by their outward movements; to make theories of on Scotch lakes as he did of most things anywhere their intentions, and try to follow them out in their else. Meanwhile, the air had become chill, the actions; and, as at a pantomime, to tell the drift sun had sunk behind the hills, and the boating of the piece by dumb show alone. And it is an party, tired, apparently, of their monotonous idle practice too, and one especially made for the amusement, turned the boat's head towards shore. weary or the listless traveller, giving them amuse- For some minutes they advanced with fuller and ment without thought, and occupation without fuller bulging sail in the direction they sought, trouble; for people who have had their powers of when suddenly the breeze seemed not so much to attention fatigued by incessant exertion, or weak-change as to be met by another and stronger curened by constant novelty, are glad to settle it upon rent of air, which came pouring through the valley the merest trifle at last. So the loungers on the with a howling sound, and then, bursting on the balcony increased, and the little boat became a lake, drove its waters in a furrow before it. The centre of general interest to those who apparently little boat started, and swerved like a frightened had not had one sympathy in common before. So creature; and the sail, distended to its utmost, calm and gliding was its motion, so refreshing the cowered do n to the water's edge. gentle air which played round it, that many an eye from the shore envied the party who were seated in it. These consisted of three individuals, two large figures and a little one.

"Good Heaven! why don't they lower that sail? Lown with it! down with it!" shouted the same deep voice from the balcony, regardless of the impossibility of being heard. But the admo

water.

nition was needless; the boatman, with quick, inflict than for the peace which we are about to eager motions, was trying to lower it. Still it remove; and the smile of unconsciousness which bent, fuller and fuller, lower and lower. The man precedes the knowledge of evil is still more painevidently strained with desperate strength, defeat-ful to look back upon than the bitterest tear that ing, perhaps, with the clumsiness of anxiety, the follows it. And, if such be the feelings of the end in view; when, too impatient, apparently, to messenger of heavy tidings, the mind that is to witness their urgent peril without lending his aid, receive them is correspondingly actuated. For the figure of Captain H- rose up; in one in- who is there that thanks you really for concealing stant a piercing scream was borne faintly to shore the evil that was already arrived-for prolonging -the boat whelmed over, and all were in the the happiness that was already gone? Who cares for a reprieve when sentence is still to follow? It is a pitiful soul that does not prefer the sorrow of certainty to the peace of deceit; or, rather, it is a blessed provision which enables us to acknowledge the preference when it is no longer in our power to choose. It seems intended as a protection to the mind from something so degrading to it as an unreal happiness, that both those who have to inflict misery and those who have to receive it should alike despise its solace. Those who have trod the very brink of a precipice, unknowing that it yawned beneath, look back to those moments of their ignorance with more of horror than of comfort; such security is too close to danger for the mind ever to separate them again. Nor need the bearer of sorrow embitter his errand by hesitations and scruples how to disclose it; he need not pause for a choice of words or form of statement. In no circumstance of life does the soul act so utterly independent of all outward agency; it waits for no explanation, wants no evidence; at the furthest idea of danger it flies at once to its weakest part; an embarrassed manner will rouse suspicions, and a faltering word confirm them. Dreadful things never require precision of terms-they are wholly guessed before they are half told. Happiness the heart believes not in till it stands at our very threshold; misery it flies as if eager to meet.

For a few dreadful seconds nothing was seen of the unhappy creatures; then a cap floated, and then two struggling figures rose to the surface. One was evidently the child, for his cap was off, and his fair hair was seen; the other head was covered. This latter buffeted the waters with all the violence of a helpless, drowning man; then he threw his arms above his head, sank, and rose no more. The boy struggled less and less, and seemed dead to all resistance before he sank too. The boat floated keel upwards, almost within reach of the sufferers; and now that the waters had closed over them, the third figure was observed, for the first time, at a considerable distance, slowly and laboriously swimming towards it, and in a few moments two arms were flung over it, and there he hung. It was one of those scenes which the heart quails to look on, yet which chains the spectator to the spot. The whole had passed in less than a minute: fear-despair-agony-and death, had been pressed into one of those short minutes, of which so many pass without our knowing how, It is well. Idleness, vanity, or vice-all that dismisses thought-may dally with time, but the briefest space is too long for that excess of consciousness where time seems to stand still.

At this moment a lovely and gentle-looking young woman entered the room. It was evident that she knew nothing of the dreadful scene that So it was with the unfortunate Mrs. H-; no had just occurred, nor did she now remark the in-one spoke of the accident, no one pointed to the tense excitement which still riveted the spectators lake no connecting link seemed to exist between to the balcony; for, seeking, apparently, to avoid the security of ignorance and the agony of knowlall intercourse with strangers, she had seated her-edge. At one moment she raised her head in self, with a book, on the chair farthest removed from the window. Nor did she look up at the first rush of hurried steps into the room; but, when she did, there was something which arrested her attention, for every eye was fixed upon her with an undefinable expression of horror, and every foot seemed to shrink back from approaching her. There was also a murmur as of one common and irrepressible feeling through the whole house; quick footsteps were heard as of men impelled by some dreadful anxiety; doors were banged; voices shouted; and, could any one have stood by a calm and indifferent spectator, it would have been interesting to mark the sudden change from the abstracted and composed look with which Mrs. H-(for she it was) first raised her head from her book to the painful restlessness of inquiry with which she now glanced from eye to eye, and seemed to question what manner of tale they told.

It is something awful and dreadful to stand before a fellow-creature laden with a sorrow which, however we may commiserate it, it is theirs alone to bear; to be compelled to tear away that veil of unconsciousness which alone hides their misery from their sight; and to feel that the faintness gathering round our own heart alone enables theirs to continue beating with tranquillity. We feel less almost of pity for the suffering we are about to

placid indifference, at the next she knew that her husband and child were lying beneath the waters. And did she faint, or fall as one stricken? No: for the suspicion was too sudden to be sustained; and the next instant came the thought, this must be a dream; God cannot have done it. And the eyes were closed, and the convulsed hands pressed tight over them, as if she would shut out mental vision as well; and groans and sobs burst from the crowd, and men dashed from the room, unable to bear it; and women too, untrue to their calling. And there was weeping and wringing of hands, and one weak woman fainted; but still no sound or movement came from her on whom the burden had fallen. Then came the dreadful revulsion of feeling; and, with contracted brow and gasping breath, and voice pitched almost to a scream, she said, "It is not true-tell me-it is not true-tell me-tell me!" And, advancing with desperate gestures, she made for the balcony. All recoiled before her; when one gentle woman, small and delicate as herself, opposed her, and, with streaming eyes and trembling limbs, stood before her. "Oh, go not there-go not there! cast your heavy burden on the Lord!" These words broke the spell. Mrs. H uttered a cry which long ran in the ears of those that heard it, and sank, shivering and powerless, in the arms of the kind stranger.

kindest of arms supported her, she rested not. are framed to love and yet ordained to lose. He There was the unvarying moan, the weary pac- was oppressed with compassion, miserable with ing, the repetition of the same action, the meas- sympathy; he longed with all the generosity of a urement of the same distance, the body vibrating manly heart to do something, to suggest someas a mere machine to the restless recurrence of thing, that should help her, or satisfy himself. the same thought. But what were fortitude, philosophy, strength of mind? Mockeries, nay, more, imbecilities, which he dared not mention to her, nor so much as think of in the same thought with her woe. Either he must accuse the Power who had inflicted the wound, and so deep he had not sunk, or he must acknowledge His means of cure. Impelled, therefore, by a feeling equally beyond his doubting or his proving, he did that which for years German sophistry had taught him to forbear; he gave but little, but he felt that he gave his best-he prayed for the suffering creature, and in the name of One who suffered for all, and from that hour God's grace forsook him not.

We have said that every outer sign of woe was there all but that which great sorrows set flowing, but the greatest dry up-she shed no tears! Tears are things for which a preparation of the heart is needful; they are granted to anxiety for the future, or lament for the past. They flow with reminiscences of our own, or with the example of others; they are sent to separations we have long dreaded, and to disappointments we cannot forget; they come when our hearts are softened, or when our hearts are wearied; but, in the first amazement of unlooked-for woe, they find no place the cup that is suddenly whelmed over lets no drop of water escape.

But the most characteristic sympathizer on the It was evident, however, through all the un- occasion was Sir Thomas the fine old genruliness of such distress, that the sufferer was a tleman who had shouted so loudly from the balcreature of gentle and considerate nature; in the cony. He was at home in this valley, owned the whirlpool which convulsed every faculty of her whole range of hills on one side of the lake, from mind, the smooth surface of former habits was their fertile bases to their bleak tops, took up his occasionally thrown up. Though the hand which abode generally every summer in this hotel, and sought to support her was cast aside with a rest- felt for the stricken woman as if she had been a less, excited movement, it was sought the next guest of his own. Ever since the fatal accident instant with a momentary pressure of contrition. he had gone about in a perfect fret of commiseraThough the head was turned away one instant from the whisper of consolation with a jesture of impatience, yet it was bowed the next as if in entreaty of forgiveness. Poor creature! what effort she could make to allay the storm which was rioting within her was evidently made for the sake of those around. With so much and so suddenly to bear, she still showed the habit of forbearance.

one,

tion, inquiring every half hour at her door how she was, or what she had taken. Severe bodily illness or intense mental distress had never fallen upon that bluff person and warm heart, and abstinence from food was in either case the proof of an extremity for which he had every compassion, but of which he had no knowledge. He prescribed, therefore, for the poor lady everything that he would have relished himself, and nothing at that moment could have made him so happy as to have been allowed to send her up the choicest meal that the country could produce. Not that his benevolence was at all limited to such manifestations; if it did not deal in sentiment, it took the widest range of practice. His laborers were despatched round the lake to watch for any traces of the late catastrophe; he himself kept up an hour later planning how he could best promote the comfort of her onward journey and of her present stay; and though the good old gentleman was now snoring loudly over the very apartment which contained the object of his sympathy, he would have laid down his life to save those that were gone, and half his fortune to solace her who was left.

Meanwhile night had far advanced; many had been the inquiries and expressions of sympathy made at Mrs. H—'s door; but now, one by the parties retired each to their rooms. Few, however, rested that night as usual; however differently the terrible picture might be carried on the mind during the hours of light, it forced itself with almost equal vividness upon all in those of darkness. The father struggling to reach the child, and then throwing up his arms in agony, and that fair little head borne about unresistingly by the waves before they covered it over-these were the figures which haunted many a pillow. Or, if the recollection of that scene was lulled for awhile, it was recalled again by the weary sound of those footsteps which told of a mourner who Some hours had elapsed-the footsteps had rested not. Of course, among the number and ceased, there was quiet if not rest, in the chammedley of characters lying under that roof, there ber of mourning; and, shortly after sunrise, a was the usual proportion of the selfish and the side door in the hotel opened, and she who had careless. None, however, slept that night with- been as a sister to the stranger, never seen before, out confessing, in word or thought, that life and came slowly forth. She was worn with watching, death are in the hands of the Lord; and not all, it her heart was sick with the sight and sounds of is to be hoped, forgot the lesson. One young such woe, and she sought the refreshment of the man, in particular, possessed of fine intellectual outer air and the privacy of the early day. It powers, but which unfortunately had been devel- was a dawn promising a day as beautiful as the oped among a people who, God help them! affect preceding; the sun was beaming mildly through to believe only what they understand, was in- an opening towards the east, wakening the tops debted to this day and night for a great change of the nearest hills, while all the rest of the beauin his opinions. His heart was kind, though his tiful range lay huge and colorless, nodding, as it understanding was perverted; and the thought of were, to their drowsy reflections beneath, and the that young, lovely, and feeble woman, on whom lake itself looked as calm and peaceful as if the a load of misery had fallen which would have winds had never swept over its waters, nor those crushed the strongest of his own sex, roused waters over all that a wife and mother had loved. within him the strongest sense of the insufficiency Man is such a speck on this creation of which he of all human aid or human strength for beings who is lord, that had every human being now sleeping