means of a sensational novel of great merit and admirably adapted to the
modes of thought of the hour, had been enabled to earn in a single year,
the large sum of $40,000, though still deprived of two hundred other
thousands she is here said to have fairly earned; of a historian whose
labors, after deducting what had been applied to the creation of a most
valuable library, had scarcely yielded fifty cents per day; of another who
had had but $1000 per month; and, passing rapidly from the sublime to the
ridiculous, of a school copy-book maker who had seen his improvements
copied, without compensation to himself, for the benefit of English
children.

[Footnote 2: See _Atlantic Monthly_ for October.]

These may and perhaps should be regarded as very sad facts; but had not
the picture a brighter side, and might it not have been well for the
eminent counsel to have presented both? Might he not, for instance, have
told his readers that, in addition to the $200,000 above referred to, and
wholly as acknowledgment of his literary services, the eminent recipient
had for many years enjoyed a diplomatic sinecure of the highest order, by
means of which he had been enabled to give his time to the collection of
materials for his most important works? Might he not have further told us
how other of the distinguished men he had named, as well as many others
whose names had not been given, have, in a manner precisely similar, been
rewarded for their literary labors? Might he not have said something of
the pecuniary and societary successes that had so closely followed the
appearance of the novel to whose publication he had attributed so great an
influence? Might he not, and with great propriety, have furnished an
extract from the books of the "New York Ledger," exhibiting the tens and
hundreds of thousands that had been paid for articles which few, if any,
would care to read a second time? Might he not have told his readers of