sense in which either real or personal estate is property. None vest the ownership in either the author or his representatives for more than a limited period. One of John Milton's descendants died in the poor-house at Dover during the present century; the last living descendant of Defoe is a pauper. In these cases there is no outcry for an extension of authors' rights, although if a book is property as really as a piece of land or a piece of furniture, these two persons should have inherited great wealth. And if these rights may lapse by time, why not by space? Or if not, why not? We are to English writers-as Lord Macaulay saidvery much in the same relation as posterity; and posterity will pay nothing to them or to their descendants, however long their books may live. The real question is this: is it expedient for the United States to grant this extension of existing rights, or is it not expedient?

Mr. Newton is evidently much better read in political economy than most of his professional brethren, and his second lecture shows that he has a very decided opinion on the money question. He quite unintentionally misrepresents the views of Mr. Carey and of his school, from whom, on other points, he has, as he says, learnt much that was worth knowing. The position of that school is, in general, precisely the same as that of all the advanced English economists, such as Mr. Stanley Jevons. They believe that inconvertible paper money is a nuisance and a mischief, because of its inelasticity of volume, while they also hold, as the Nation now admits, that gold may do, and in Germany has done, precisely the same sort of mischief. They also believe that it is no more possible to give a country too much convertible paper money, than it is to force upon its people an excessive number of hats and shoes. In both points they agree with the more advanced English economists. But for the reason given they hold that the best converse for paper currency is not gold or silver, but some form of property which is not itself money and therefore not a dead loss to the holder, such as a Government bond at a low rate of interest. So that they regard the present distress, when we simply cannot resume specie payments for lack of gold, as a good time to put our currency on a better and a more permanent basis than it ever had. They are not in love with our irredeemable paper money. Nor do they deny that there has been a great and morbid inflation of currency and of values since the war. But

they do say that the currency inflated has not been chiefly or at all the paper money; it has been the money of account, created in such vast and explosive volumes on the ledgers of the banks. Some parts of the country have had too much paper; others by far too little, but that is owing to the vices of an artificial banking system.

Mr. Newton also speaks of "shoddy" as if it were something peculiar to America or of American invention. The great centre of the manufacture is Lancashire, and the invention itself is an English one.

The lecture by Mr. Hopkins to the California students, is occupied, as its name tells us, chiefly with the mischiefs of speculation. He defines business as a line of activity in which a man makes a return to society for his profits; speculation as one in which no return is made for the profits received; and gambling as one where nothing is given for anything received. He presents a schedule of the different occupations, according to the amount of risk in each, and according to their place under one of the three heads. He shows the effect of the speculative spirit in impoverishing the great mass of society while a very few do rapidly accumulate great fortunes, often to lose them as rapidly. And he presents a very lively picture of the way in which great multitudes of young men are tempted out of the paths of steady and honest industry, by the deceptive fascinations of California Street.

Mr. Hopkins has given us a very forcible lay sermon, which deserves a wide circulation in other quarters than San Francisco, though "Frisco" is even worse than New York. California Street is crowded with women-a Women's Stock Board has been opened since the lecture was delivered. J. D.

CONDENSED CLASSICS.1

Mr. Johnson is certainly justified in believing that many of the standard works of English fiction are becoming less and less read. The novels of Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, Fielding and DeFoe, 'CONDENSED CLASSICS. Prepared by the Editors of Little Classics. Our Mutual Friend. By Charles Dickens. Condensed by Rossiter Johnson. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1876.

have gone out of general circulation, and the statistics of the public libraries show that the demand for those of Scott, Dickens and Thackeray is very small. The latter fact ought not to be as much relied on as it generally is in discussions upon this subject, because it must be borne in mind that the immense accumulation of the older standards prevents the necessity in most cases of application to a library. For example, the Bible, which has probably the largest circulation in this country, is never called for. But the general proposition must be admitted to be true, that the rising generation is much more willing to talk about than to read the tales which their fathers pronounced incomparable. Mr. Johnson attributes the change solely to the hurry of the age, and proposes to re-instate the neglected authors in popular favor-condensed. Sir Walter Scott deserves such treatment at his hands, because the editor finds authority for it in the following quotation from Rob Roy, which he takes as the motto of his series: "The library of Osbaldistone Hall was a gloomy room, whose antique oaken shelves bent beneath the weight of the ponderous folios so dear to the seventeenth century, from which, under favor be it spoken, we have distilled matter for our quartos and octavos, and which, once more subjected to the alembic, may, should our sons be yet more frivolous than ourselves, be still farther reduced into duodecimos and pamphlets."

But is it so certain that the length of the stories has made them unpalatable, or that they were in fact so much longer?

The ponderous folios of Osbaldistone Hall could be easily pressed into octavos and duodecimos by the help of modern paper, type and binding. Richardson gave way before Fielding, and Smollett before Scott, and he before Dickens and Thackeray, who, according to the editor, are now in great danger of retiring unless saved in a new shape. Every one of these writers must be considered English standards; and yet, though their novels differ very little in respect of length, they have dropped in due order out of the catalogue of books really read by the public. Tales that were of as much worth, and yet shorter and more direct, like the Vicar of Wakefield, have shared the same fate. Nor can this change in public taste be due to any difference in the plots, which have in all times been similar, involving love, murder, sacrifice, etc.; nor to the difference between the customs, fashions, tongues and history of the times and countries written about and those in which the reader finds himself;

because the popular author is as much in time with his audience in his stories of olden times and distant lands as in any other. No doubt the new novelist owes much undue prominence to publishers and reviewers, to the demands for new subjects of conversation, and to the fact that he is seen and known in the flesh; but we are disposed to think that his tendency to supplant his predecessors is owing to some subtler sympathy with the temper and wants of the time, which, to say the least, can not be imparted by condensation. Mr. Johnson does not of course expect to supersede the originals for that intelligent class of readers, who do and always will wish for an acquaintance with their own literature. He simply proposes to save these standard stories for the hurried and skillful novelreaders, a class we think not very deserving of consideration. But what is the use of preserving a story? One is about as good as another. So far as the mere plot is concerned, the combinations are limited, and as ready to one man's mind as to another's. Very few persons would think it worth while to condense Clarissa Hårlowe or Pamela. If the times are out of tune with the style, the method, the genius and the personality of the author, they do not need or care to know what were the stories he told. We can condense Hamlet or Macbeth in ten minutes, with Shakspere left out.

In some respects Dickens is suited more than others to the operations of the editor and "Our Mutual Friend" a favorable subject. We commend the choice of it to open the course, as being in most need of some preserving process. A book in which the principal characters assume parts simply to test the disposition of the heroine, cannot carry a moral with dignity. It is absolutely necessary, in an artistic point of view, that the reader should believe in the characters, whether good or bad, or else that he should be informed. that their conduct and sentiments are not genuine. As a story, it seems to us the least likely and the least worthy of all its fellows to live. But it is better suited for condensation, for instance, than any of Thackeray's works, because Dickens as usual has provided a full dramatis personae, who carry several almost distinct threads through the tale-so distinct that in this instance one species of condensation might be effected without requiring great alteration, by dropping out any one of the three dramas the story contains.

1. John Harmon, a miser, leaves his property to his son, who has run away and is supposed to be lost, on condition that he

marry Bella Wilfer. In event of his not returning or not so marrying, the property to go to Mr. Boffin, his servant. On the best evidence that the son has been murdered, Mr. Boffin and wife enter on the property, and as a sort of compensation, adopt Bella Wilfer. Young Harmon, however, does reappear, and is employed as secretary to Mr. Boffin, under an assumed name, in order to test the character of Bella Wilfer. Being discovered by Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, it is agreed, though the reader does not find it out till well on towards the close of the book, that Mr. Boffin shall affect to have become changed and suspicious and miserly, shall bully the secretary in the presence of Bella, who has rejected his addresses, and finally dismiss him. The heroine, who was at first in danger of being spoiled by her adoption, softens towards the secretary in his trials, leaves the house of the Golden Dustman and its expectations, and finally marries the secretary.

2. The reckless, generous and unemployed attorney, Mr. Wrayburn, becomes interested in the daughter of a longshoreman, for whom Bradley Headstone, a self-made schoolmaster, conceives an instantaneous and violent passion. Between her preference for Wrayburn and his cool, contemptuous and superior bearing towards him, Headstone is driven almost wild, and attempts to murder Wrayburn, who at death's door marries Lizzie, and finally recovers. Dogged by the infamous Rogue Riderhood, who knows his guilt, and uses it to bleed him, Headstone ends his own life and his persecutor's by leaping with him in his arms into Plashwater weir mill lock.

3. The story of the Veneerings, the Podsnaps, of Mr. and Mrs. Lammle, and of their marriage brocage contract with Fledgeby. Filling up the tapestry between these three patterns are Wegg, Venus, Sloppy, Betsy Higden, Mr. Inspector, the Wilfer family, Jenny Wren, Riah, Lightfoot, Miss Peecher, and Charley Hexam. Neither of these stories is dropped out; every one of the characters Mr. Johnson retains. The frame remains as large as ever, and the condensed material is made to cover it as well as possible. Every name we have written is a character, and the reader becomes acquainted with the peculiarities of each, not from the author's description, but from his own conversation. The delineations of Dickens are as dramatic, in respect that the reader becomes acquainted with them at first hand, as if they were represented on the stage. Miss Wren pricks in the air with her needle at the