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was deprived of the least participation in the profits of his own works in America. In the second part of this Miscel lany will be found his own views of this matter, simply, manfully stated, as it is incumbent upon every man to assert, in whatever case may come under his experience or observation, the laws of Justice. Self-respect, self-interest no less than a sense of justice, require the recognition, on our statute book, of the rights of the foreign author. The present system has reached that point in the development of evil where a wrong being committed, every one suffers, no one is benefited. It is the nature of wrong to end in precisely this predicament. The foreign author confessedly is injured; the American author (where the system allows such a person to exist at all) is at a disadvantage at every turn; the bookselling interest is deprived of that security of property, based upon right, which is essential to give honor and dignity to trade; and the public are not the gainers. In what respect is the nation better or wiser for the floods of reprints of every kind and quality which have been poured over the land? In every respect the people are worse for this deluge-less beneficial, more destructive than the natural rain. In the physical world there are laws, which, if violated, would destroy the harvest. If it were all rain or all sunshine, the crops would cease. A similar law governs our intellectual and moral well-being. Property is a blessing, but it is only so when acquired righteously and honestly. Riches are valuable by the stamp which virtue and privation set upon them. The grand law of morality which protects the rights of the author, and distributes his works to the world in accordance with those rights, will be found to be the just measure by which his writings can be received with any

advantage. A complicated system of checks and counterchecks all of them necessary-depends upon the recognition of that primary right. The due responsibility of the author, the force of his character depend upon it. A just competition, the sacred right to be "free and equal" between the native and the foreign author, depend upon it. A proper Nationality in our case depends upon it. Follow out the system where you will, it will be found here as elsewhere, that only the just and right are profitable.

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PROSE AND VERSE.

PREFACE TO HOOD'S OWN.

BEING

AN INAUGURAL DISCOURSE ON A CERTAIN SYSTEM OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY.

COURTEOUS READER!

Presuming that you have known something of the Comic Annual from its Child-Hood, when it was first put into half binding and began to run alone, I make bold to consider you as an old friend of the family, and shall accordingly treat you with all the freedom and confidence that pertain to such ripe connexions.

How many years is it, think you, "since we were first acquent ?"

"By the deep nine!" sings out the old bald Count Fathom with the lead-line: no great lapse in the world's chronology, but a space of infinite importance in individual history. For instance it has wrought a serious change on the body, if not on the mind, of your very humble servant ;-it is not, however, to bespeak your sympathy, or to indulge in what Lord Byron calls "the gloomy vanity of drawing from self," that I allude to my personal experience. The Scot and lot character of the dispensation forbids me to think that the world in general can be particularly interested in the state of my Household Sufferage, or that the public ear will be as open to my Maladies as to my Melodies. The simple truth is, that, being a wiser but not sadder man, I propose to admit you to my Private View of a sys

tem of Practical Cheerful Philosophy, thanks to which, perchance, the cranium of your Humorist is still secure from such a lecture as was delivered over the skull of Poor Yorick.

In the absence of a certain thin "blue-and-yellow" visage, and attenuated figure,-whose effigies may one day be affixed to the present work,—you will not be prepared to learn that some of the merriest effusions in the forthcoming numbers have been the relaxations of a gentleman literally enjoying bad health -the carnival, so to speak, of a personified Jour Maigre. The very fingers so aristocratically slender, that now hold the pen, hint plainly of the "ills that flesh is heir to:"-my coats have become great coats, my pantaloons are turned into trowsers, and, by a worse bargain than Peter Schlemihl's, I seem to have retained my shadow and sold my substance. In short, as hap. pens to prematurely old port wine, I am of a bad color with very little body. But what then? That emaciated hand still lends a hand to embody in words and sketches the creations or recre. ations of a Merry Fancy: those gaunt sides yet shake heartily as ever at the Grotesques and Arabesques and droll Picturesques that my Good Genius (a Pantagruelian Familiar) charitably conjures up to divert me from more sombre realities. It was the whim of a late pleasant Comedian, to suppose a set of spiteful imps sitting up aloft, to aggravate all his petty mundane annoy. ances; whereas I prefer to believe in the ministry of kindlier Elves that "nod to me and do me courtesies." Instead of scar. ing away these motes in the sunbeam, I earnestly invoke them, and bid them welcome; for the tricksy spirits make friends with the animal spirits, and do not I, like a father romping with his own urchins, do not I forget half my cares whilst partaking in their airy gambols? Such sports are as wholesome for the mind as the other frolics for the body. For on our own treatment of that excellent Friend or terrible Enemy the Imagination, it depends whether we are to be scared and haunted by a Scratching Fanny, or tended by an affectionate Invisible Girl-like an unknown Love, blessing us with "favors secret, sweet, and precious," and fondly stealing us from this worky-day world to a sunny sphere of her own.

This is a novel version, Reader, of "Paradise and the Peri," but it is as true as it is new. How else could I have converted a serious illness into a comic wellness-by what other agency could I have transported myself, as a Cockney would say, from Dullage to Grinnage? It was far from a practical joke to be laid up in ordinary in a foreign land, under the care of Physi cians quite as much abroad as myself with the case; indeed the shades of the gloaming were stealing over my prospect; but I resolved that, like the sun, so long as my day lasted, I would look on the bright side of everything. The raven croaked, but I persuaded myself that it was the nightingale: there was the smell of the mould, but I remembered that it nourished the vioHowever my body might cry craven, my mind luckily had no mind to give in. So, instead of mounting on the black long-tailed coach horse, she vaulted on her old Hobby that had capered in the Morris-Dance, and began to exhort from his back. To be sure, said she, matters look darkly enough; but the more need for the lights. Allons! Courage! Things may take a turn, as the pig said on the spit. Never throw down your cards, but play out the game. The more certain to lose, the wiser to get all the play you can for your money. Come-give us a song! chirp away like that best of cricket-players, the cricket himself. Be bowled out or caught out, but never throw down the bat. As to Health, it's the weather of the body-it hails, it rains, it blows, it snows, at present, but it may clear up by-and-by. You cannot eat, you say, and you must not drink; but laugh and make believe, like the Barber's wise brother at the Barmeeide's feast. Then, as to thinness, not to flatter, you look like a lath that has had a split with the carpenter and a fall out with the plaster; but so much the better: remember how the smugglers trim the sails of the lugger to escape the notice of the eutter. Turn your edge to the old enemy, and mayhap he won't see you! Come-be alive! You have no more right to slight your life than to neglect your wife-they are the two better halves that make a man of you! Is not life your means of living? so stick to thy business and thy business will stick to thee. Of course, continued my mind, I am quite disinterested in this advice-for I am aware of my own immortality—but for

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