REVIEWS — THE BOOKSELLER. 197 



favourable notices, ingeniously culled from damnatory reviews ; and 

 a thousand other tricks of The Trade : have all been told long ago. 

 But we see that the "Westminster Eeviewer, for April, in his " Morals 

 of Trade," leaves out " The Trade " par excellence, to turn against 

 the authors and their immoralities. 



A deplorable picture he does draw of mercantile and trading 

 morals, filling the ample canvass so thoroughly that we would gladly 

 believe there is no room left for the author to be dragged into such 

 company. " The remark of Dr. Darwin, that the law of the animal 

 creation is, ' Eat and be eaten,' may be paralleled with respect to our 

 trading community, of which the law appears to be, ' Cheat and be 

 cheated !' " Unhappily the accusation does not appear for the first 

 time in this Westminster article. The reviewer might have taken 

 his motto from Tennyson's " Maud," with a singular appropriateness 

 to the present condition of "Europe : — 



Is it peace or war ? Better war ! loud war by land and by sea, 



War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones. 



For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill, 



And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam. 



That the smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter and till, 



And strike, if he could, wex-e it but with his cheating yard-wand, home. 



The author of " The Morals of Trade," has nothing to say against 

 the booksellers, or if he has he keeps it to himself. But after notic- 

 ing imagined comments on the misdoings of the mercantile world, 

 from the Solicitor, the Barrister, and other representatives of pro- 

 fessional respectability, not, in his estimation so entirely without sin 

 as to justify them in casting the first stone, the Reviewer proceeds : 

 " Does the condemnation come through the press ? The condemned 

 may remind those who write, of the fact, that it is not quite honest 

 to utter a positive verdict on a book merely glanced through, or to 

 pen glowing eulogies on the mediocre work of a friend, while slight- 

 ing the good one of an enemy ; and may further ask, whether those 

 who, at the dictation of an employer, write what they do not think, 

 are not guilty of the serious ofience of adulterating public opinion." 



It would seem indeed to be the fashion, among critical penmen of 

 the present day, to make a special set at the author's weak points. 

 Here, for example, is Dr. Charles Mackay's last effusion of the kind, 

 in his satirical poem styled " SjlE^ Predictions !" After making 

 his safe predictions of the patriot, the disconsolate widow, the 



