Washington Irving's works since 1849, for which the lamented Story-King of the Hudson received the sum of $75,000. Mr. Charles Scribner has paid to Ik. Marvel $20,000 for Reveries of a Bachelor, and to Mr. Headly for three of his works $50,000. Verily Sydney Smith's question is a curiosity in 1860-Who reads an American book?

But equally startling is the reverse of such great success in authorship. In a newspaper paragraph of recent date we find the following lamentable evidences of literary mortality drawn from reliable sources: Out of one thousand published books, six hundred never pay the cost of printing, two hundred just pay expenses, one hundred return a slight profit, and only one hundred show a substantial gain. Of these one thousand books, six hundred and fifty are forgotten by the end of the year, and one hundred and fifty more at the end of three years; only fifty survive seven years' publicity. Of the 50,000 publications put forth in the seventeenth century, hardly more than fifty have a great reputation and are reprinted. Of the 80,000 works published in the eighteenth century, posterity has hardly preserved more than were rescued from oblivion in the seventeenth century.

But numerous as our publications are, they are to a certain extent without a local habitation. Not yet are they collected into libraries to any great degree; we mean proportionally to the amount issued from our press. Now Europe can look upon the most of her books as real estate. The chief library of a German duchy is as likely as not to be worth more than its best cathedral, or its sovereign's grandest palaces. It would be interesting to see how the revival of classical learning, the Reformation, religious and political conflicts and ascendencies, have each in turn been instrumental in giving a new phase to European literature, and consequently of increasing the number of publications to an almost unlimited extent. To visit some of the continental libraries and gaze upon the countless shelves of heavy tomes would lead a lunar visitor to the earth to conclude that man had been writing and printing books as long as he has been digging the ground and living on its fruits. The Bibliothèque Impériale, at Paris, reaches 1,500,000 volumes, and is rapidly increasing. The Imperial Library of St. Petersburg contains about 580,000 volumes. There were in 1856 in the British Museum 560,000 volumes, besides manuscripts which all the world has not gold enough to buy. In that one building are forty miles of well-filled book-shelves. Two dozen of the principal libraries of Germany contain four and a half millions of volumes. The library of

the Vatican contains about 300,000 volumes and 24,000 MSS. There is no catalogue of them, and they are kept in closed cases. What we give is a low estimate. A great day will that be when the Vatican Library is opened to the vulgar world. Romanism knows how to guard her interests; therefore she locks up her books which may hereafter betray many of her dark deeds. But she has classic works of priceless worth. Though her great library is by no means the largest, in many points it is the richest in existNumbers are no test of value. There are but fifty paintings in the Vatican Pinacotheca, yet these are the finest masterpieces in the world, and what every one goes to Italy to see and study.

ence.

Private libraries are larger in Europe than with us; perhaps it is because antiquarian works are cheaper and the literary class of people larger. Almost every man of learning counts his volumes by thousands. He may be poor, but the day is past when learned poverty is synonymous with lean book-shelves. But it is by the most rigid self-denial that he thus amasses the possessions of his choice. Were all men to do as he does the bookseller alone would be the millionaire, while all the grocers, tailors, and butchers would die of sheer starvation. That is the secret of the printed wealth which is sometimes lodged in the attic-room of a French or a German scholar in such incongruous but inti mate fellowship with rags, dry bread, and water. But he may congratulate himself that Guttenberg has lived, and that, with rare exceptions, great authors are now cheap. See him smile at his good fortune when he is told that Plato paid for three books of Philolaus the Pythagorean 10,000 denarii, or $1,600; that Saint Jerome made himself a poor man to buy the works of Origen; and that while one of Wickliffe's New Testaments cost forty pounds sterling, or almost one hundred and seventy-eight dollars, you can now buy a New Testament for ten cents.

Having seen how increasingly abundant our books are, and having observed the collected and settled literary treasures of Europe, it is equally interesting to notice some of the influences that have been at work in producing the redundance of American publications. The state of public sentiment in every country gives its impress to the literature. Indeed, books are always to be considered the mirrored face of the times. Tennyson has just reproduced for us in his Idylls of the King a few of those legends of Arthur-flos regum-around which clustered the literature of the sixteenth century. In the days of Rosicrucianism the books were as decidedly alchemystic as Raymond Tully himself. Now,

applying the same rule to our literature, we learn that politics have had much to do with its construction. Our colonial history and republican birth being such as they are have not been in wrought with the song and fancy of Minstrel or Minnesinger, but with the warp of substantial political facts. Thus in the Revolutionary period every publication was revolutionary. The poet could not get a hearing unless, like Virgil, he sang "of arms." The popular orator would have been hissed if he had not spoken of liberty and the tyrant. The lawyer and clergyman talked of rights because it was the uppermost subject. Ever since those days we have continued a nation of politicians. The man is a dreamer who does not vote. Rotation of office and the open hustings have thus tended to keep in motion all the political sediment which was first stirred up by the tea-boxes in Boston harbor. Eighty years ago the lion guided the American pen, but now Brother Jonathan with positiveness claims the eagle for his muse. Every change in a party platform begets a numerous though short-lived progeny of pamphlets and books.

A presidential nomination gives steady work to numberless goose-quills and presses. Then we have a national printing office, which furnishes patent-office reports, coast surveys, exploring accounts, and those innumerable and unnamable public documents that are sent as far into our distant wilds as a constituent is known to live. Every state, too, has its legislative press, which is busy night and day for at least a part of the year. Can it be wondered at, then, in the light of all these facts, that much of our literature has been produced by the political sentiment?

The next most prolific cause of the multiplication of our books is religion. The example of the colony of Maryland in granting open doors and equal rights to people of every creed was afterward wisely imitated by the confederated thirteen states. Of course we could not live together without believing differently, and the human race has, many a century ago, refused to preserve silence on theological views. Our country, young as it was, could not forget the religious commotions in England that caused many of our forefathers to leave her shores. The result was, the infant republic had strong tenets, and published them fearlessly. Then those who could not get a hearing in the land of their birth came to the new world and added their fagot to our theologic pile. English Deism and French atheism found an outlet here in some respects freer than at home, while the Mormonism of to-day is every month increased by foreign recruits. The contesting armies of Truth

and Error were not as numerous as in Europe, but the conflict was no less a desperate one.

In time imported atheism was conquered by the spirit of the Gospel. As if by word of command schools arose in the largest towns and cities. Soon they were filled with students whose hearts had been fired by Whitefield, Edwards, and Tennent. Writers lived and taught there; writers and speakers came from them. Then there were other seminaries, such as the black smith's shop, the shoe-bench, and the cornfield. From these came forth sturdy preachers and a few strong-nerved writers. Never was pen grasped by harder muscle or paper pressed by rougher hands; but the spirit gave those people utterance. They mounted the horses they had bought with the same coin with which Jacob purchased Rachel. Many of them read and thought much as they rode; but all of them preached when they stopped. It would appear as if the young Methodist heart would break at the vain struggles and final extinction of Cokesbury College. But this was a blessing in disguise, for Asbury first learned from the rising flames of his much-loved institution that "the Lord called not Mr. Whitefield and the Methodists to found colleges." This being the Bishop's conclusion, he taught his men to let no mountain or river be impassable to them, and to take their message wherever a tenanted cabin could be found. But the truth was not spread alone by the restless itinerant. Every orthodox denomination has seemed to know its duty, and nobly has it done its share in produeing a sound religious conviction in the popular heart. Our exegetical works are as rich in learning as any which England has latterly produced, and the evangelical believer will not hesitate to affirm that they are safer for the people. An Oxonian at Interlachen once made the remark, "I hate religious novels." Not so, thought we, does your country or ours. be numbered by the thousand who will not hear a sermon, and would not believe it if heard; but they will readily take it if sugar-coated with romance. This is plainly proved by Kingsley and men of his clan, who have put forth their views in religious novels. So, too, have some of our Kingsleys been doing; Holmes and Curtis are giving the people such pills as would make them frantic if they could but taste them, but which they take without a whimper. On the contrary, we have some sound minds and good Christians who have adopted the story-form to instill truth into the public mind. This is perfectly legiti mate, and a glance at publishers' notices will prove that this class of publications is rapidly increasing. A wonderful impetus has been given to our religious literature by the late revival.

The people can

Never was the Bible so popular as it now is, and never before have sermons been in such demand. But the dragon-teeth of error are equally prolific. Mormonism has occasioned more books than we have any idea of; Millerism has held its nervous and hasty pen; the long shelves of the Spiritualist Publishing House in New York are burdened with so much of the pine-table literature, that you would conclude the spirits had been rapping and writing ever since the Flood.

But science and the mechanic arts have scarcely done less than politics and religion in the increase of our books. Our country has been marvelously inventive. Egypt by her pyramids | may carry us far back into the past, Italy may dazzle us with her ruins and paintings, England and France may count their battle-fields, cathedrals, and libraries by the hundred, and talk of their Cherbourgs and Great Easterns by the hour; but none of these lands can show us a patentoffice like our own. In that one long room in Washington is more solid honor than is contained in all the palaces or reflected by all the military victories of Europe. There, too, is the source of many of our scientific works. You see the model of a steam-engine. Now, who can tell the number of works that have been produced on the subject of steam in its manifold applications? Electricity, magnetism, civil engineering, and agriculture have each been father to a large offspring. Of this last science it may be said that there is a house in New York devoted solely to the issue of agricultural works; and on its prospectus stand the names of sixtythree authors. And if this is for one state, how many Georgic writers must there be in the whole Union? Almost every ramification of science has been successfully pursued by American lovers of nature. There at the threshold of our national history stands Franklin on the bank of the Schuylkill, and by the aid of a slender kitestring stripping the thunder-cloud of its scepter. Such being the first step in science, who will dare to set a limit to our progress!

On examining the public libraries in this country one would imagine that the United States had given birth to an innumerable class of writers on natural phenomena. From what we have done who knows what laws and mysteries America may yet draw out of their long-locked hidingplace? Much has been written on geology, and were the subject to be dropped forever from human thought the world would be the gainer by its short residence among us. Astronomy has been attracting attention and eliciting thought and speculation from the dream days of Chaldean astrology down to the times of Herschel and Mitchell. But both these sciences are yet

young, and like a child that has not yet wandered away from its native cottage. So have we, after all our efforts, learned but little of the rich fields and mountain cliffs of science. But the time is coming when theory and instrument will afford us a more familiar and positive acquaintance with the dome above our heads and the globe beneath our feet. In that manhood America will have a share. If she can rob the thundercloud of its wrath and make an eloquent tongue of the dumb wire, we can set no bounds to her scientific attainments.

Physical science is every day collecting new votaries. Her reward is certain to the patient mind-the field of labor stretching from the bowels of the earth to the farthest star within the astronomer's ken. We, therefore, predict that the study of nature, which has already veined itself through every stratum of our literature, will yet form a clear acquaintance with the American printing-press. It has covered car-loads of paper with its definitions, proofs, theories, and illustrations; but the time will arrive when not merely the professor and the student will be naturalists, but when the plowman will think science as he turns up the matted glebe; and the blacksmith, after reading by the evening lamp the scientific periodical to his children, will ask the urchins what they learned that day in school about the rocks and stars. We say this because the times warrant the anticipation of great physical discoveries, a richer scientific literature, and a thorough infusion of it into the mind of the masses. Moreover, the triumph of science, come when it may, will be the triumph of revelation.

Thus much for the work of the American press and the chief causes that have rendered it so productive. Our view of the whole subject will be completed when, in another paper, we shall have considered the power and worth of our books. Meanwhile, let us be moderate in the terms we use when priding ourselves upon the multitude of publications in the United States; for as the political economist plainly shows us that a nation may actually be flooded with money and yet be in a state of poverty, so is the almost infinite number of our presses and publishinghouses by no means a positive proof of our intellectual wealth.

HOME.

HOME can never be transferred-never repeated in the experience of an individual. The place consecrated by paternal love; by the innocence and sports of childhood; and by the first acquaintance of the heart with nature, is the only true home.

A

THEODORE PARKER AND INFIDELITY.

BY THRACE TALMON.

FTER all the sublime and profound utterances of a philosopher like Socrates, he died as the fool dieth-requesting his friends to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius. And this because he was without knowledge of the great atoning sacrifice for sin. Every rational soul recognizes the stern necessity for the escape from the responsibility of transgression. The infidel-by which term we mean one who denies the divine origin of Christianity-seeks to save himself from the burdening consciousness of an offended law, by various methods, all of which center in the endeavor to destroy accountability to a higher authority than himself. He will not have God reign over him; hence denies all amenability to him.

The natural product of this seed germ of rebellion-the same rebellion which first made devils-is the most intense and indestructible self-exaltation. All the records of the great leaders of infidelity, not only of the past, but of modern time, furnish evidence of this.

Theodore Parker was the chief of these later apostles of self-admiration. He believed in himself; in his right to make law for his soul; in his ability to recognize all necessary revelation of the will of God to man; and in his power to save himself, independent of any mediator. Yet in his dying moments he was conscious that his life was not a success.

"I had great powers committed to me, and I have but half used them," were his parting words to the world. In proselyting disciples, his " "great powers" have been exercised at least to great advantage to himself and his doctrines. Many are the "unstable souls," especially young men, whom he has beguiled into his ranks. Their government now rests upon his shoulders! His works do follow him. But who, of all his admiring followers, would dare to have died for him?

But let us turn the "great powers" of this famed iconoclast into the open light of examination. The sign of the article signified must be peculiar to itself. The sign of greatness is originality, invention, with an accompanying power to accomplish great results. This all critics accord to Homer; and therefore he is immortalized as the greatest poet who ever wrote. He invented first and most. His inventions were rarest and best. Nero was endowed with a great genius for tyranny. He could invent and execute more forms of perfectly-surpassing torture than any other. Hence, he is called by historians the great tyrant. For the reason that Howard

invented new systems of prison discipline and new conduct of prison life generally, he is styled the great philanthropist. And thus through all the several divisions and subdivisions of greatness, we find that men and women are recorded great by posterity, however they may have been regarded by their cotemporaries, in proportion as they have displayed a genius for invention in superior execution.

Theodore Parker was not an original thinker. His style was peculiar to himself, and so many were disposed to accord him originality. We have but to turn to the pages of the old heathen philosophers, and to those of later skeptics, such as Bolingbroke, Tindal, Morgan, Shaftesbury, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and many others, to find the same sullen, bitter growl, the same polished sarcasm, or jeering exultation, all aimed at one central target-the right of God to govern man in his appointed way.

Because he had new names to scoff, and new principles to combat in relations with his day and generation, superficial souls, but imperfectly acquainted with the old "furniture of war," in use in the armory of skeptics of all ages, admired and said, "Truly a great man and wonderful is this!"

Theodore Parker lived not in a dark age, like Socrates, who advocated idolatrous practices; like Seneca, who tolerated intemperance and self-murder, or Lycurgus, who taught the skill of cunning theft. Learned in all the wisdom of the schools of this enlightened century, he stood out in the full light of the truth, with the records of inspiration before him, in the day when many a man said unto his neighbor, "Know ye the Lord?" and boldly avowed his unbelief.

"There is no man among the Christians," we heard a Jewish rabbi declare in his synagogue a few years since, "who so nearly approaches the truth in his doctrines as Theodore Parker." But was this unbelief, this rejection of the Messiah, new and original, and therefore an evidence of greatness?

"Theodore Parker was a great writer," say his friends. He had an apt gift at oddity in writing Parkerisms. He could take the same old strain of, "We will not have this man to rule over us "—the yet older thought-" Ye shall not surely die. In the day ye eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil,” and make it over into a genuine Parkerism, which men read, marveled at and often admired, because it echoed their own rebellion of soul.

These same characteristics stamp the produc tions of all infidels, whether Jew or Gentile, with insubordination to the authority of God, and accountability alone to themselves.