and write.' For a population of 17,000,000 we have but twelve normal
schools; while in Massachusetts they have three such schools for only
800,000 of population."

Poverty and ignorance produce intemperance and crime, and hence it is that
both so much abound throughout England. Infanticide, as we are told,
prevails to an extent unknown in any other part of the world. Looking at
all these facts, we can readily see that the local demand for information
throughout England must be very small, and this enables us to account for
the extraordinary fact, that in all that country there has been no daily
newspaper printed out of London. There is, consequently, no local demand
for literary talent. The weekly papers that are published require little
of the pen, but much of the scissors. The necessary consequence of this
is, that every young man who fancies he can write, must go to London to
seek a channel through which he may be enabled to come before the public.
Here we have centralization again. Arrived in London, he finds a few daily
papers, but only one, as we are told, that pays its expenses, and around
each of them is a corps of writers and editors as ill-disposed to permit
the introduction of any new laborers in their field as are the
street-beggars of London to permit any interference with their "beat." If
he desires to become contributor to the magazines, it is the same. To
obtain the privilege of contributing his "cheap labor" to their pages, he
must be well introduced, and if he make the attempt without such
introduction he is treated with a degree of insolence scarcely to be
imagined by any one not familiar with the "answers to correspondents" in
London periodicals. If disposed to print a book he finds a very limited
number of publishers, each one surrounded with his corps of authors and
editors, and generally provided with a journal in which to have his own
books well placed before the world. If, now, he succeeds in gaining
favorable notice, he finds that he can obtain but a very small proportion