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