}48 REVIEWS AMERICAN REPRINTS. 



"Westward the course of empire takes its waj ; 



The four first acts already past, 

 A tifth shall close the drama with the day; 



Time's noblest ofifspring is the last. 



This is a favorite quotation, with the American orator, and no 

 wonder it should be. But what dawn does the literary man see as 

 yet, in promise of this " G-olden Age," for the singing of great 

 inspiring epics by America's future poets ? " Why music with her 

 silver sound ? " demands Peter of James Soundpost, in "Romeo and 

 Juliet,'" who knows not what to say in reply. " O, I cry you mercy!" 

 retorts the accute Peter : " Tou are the singer, I will say for you — 

 It is — music with her silver sound, because such fellows as you have 

 seldom gold for sounding ! " 



To the English literary man, it is unquestionably a grievous wrong, 

 that, while the Manchester and Glasgow manufacturer finds all pro- 

 tection for his " soft goods," in Boston or New York, and the hard- 

 ware of the Sheffield worker may seek its best market in the Union, 

 as elsewhere ; the manufactures of the historian, the poet, the essay- 

 ist, and the novelist, are contraband, and may be appropriated for 

 his own behoof by any pilferer who finds or fancies it his interest to 

 steal. We cannot doubt that there are many — though still a minor- 

 ity — among the intelligent citizens of the States, to whom Thackeray 

 and Tennyson, Macaulay and Grrote, Carlyle, Euskin, McCosh, and 

 other favorite British authors, would not be less, but more welcome, 

 if it were believed that America's appreciation of them was not un- 

 productive of more substantial returns than such barren laurels. In 

 the case of the Eeview reprints, however, the British essayist is not 

 without some return. If his literary work is appropriated without 

 leave asked or remuneration offered, it is something for him to know _ 

 that the Edinburgh and the London, the North British and the West- 

 minster Quarterlies, have hundreds of readers in the United States, 

 for one that their native-born E-eview can command. The power 

 thus wielded within a foreign state is beginning at length to be 

 appreciated. Already we have seen examples of the American 

 statesman sending home his carefully elaborated article, that by its 

 reappearance in the surreptitious American reprint of the British 

 Review, it may produce an effect which he would in vain look for 

 from any article issued under the sanction of a native periodical. 

 The English writer le,arns also to feel that he is writing for the per- 

 usal of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. American as well as Colonial 

 affairs begin to command a more enlarged attention ; and not the 



