Let us take an illustration from our own experience. English iron-manufactured articles could compete successfully with American articles of the same kind. To counteract this inferiority America imposes on English iron articles a protective duty sufficient to exclude them from her market. If we were to put a protective duty on American wheat, we might, at great loss to ourselves, inflict on America a considerable injury. Put on a protective duty on American iron, Mr. Wallace would say. Suppose this to be done, and what will be the result? Simply and solely that the American iron, which could not live in our market before, will not be able to live in it now -in other words, nothing. We should show our teeth, but only to show conclusively that we are unable to bite.

But though the plan of reciprocal protective duties on the same articles of commerce-if we could suppose that, after the exposure of its futility, it could be for a moment seriously entertained--would be utterly useless, we are not to assume that on that account it would be equally harmless. By imposing duties, not on the same but on other articles in which our rival possesses a superiority, we can at any rate remove the objection that our hostile measures are utterly harmless. We can remedy that by retaliating not upon what our adversary cannot, but what he can, sell to a profit in our country, and thus introducing into our intercourse with civilised and on the whole friendly nations the principle upon which war is founded-the bringing enormous evils on ourselves in the hope of inflicting still greater evils on our rivals. Nothing is more honourable in the history of this country than the patience with which we have endured the exclusion of our manufactures, not only by rival states but by colonies who expect us, in case they are attacked, to contribute our last man and last shilling to their defence. I trust that the complete breakdown of this scheme will not induce its projectors to substitute a mischievous reality for a comparatively harmless absurdity.

Here I close my remarks on Mr. Wallace's proposal. I claim to have shown from his own writings that he has never taken the trouble to consider what protection and free trade really mean; that he has never even alluded to that taxation of the many for the benefit of the few which constitutes the real and intolerable mischief of protection; that his notion of stability logically carries with it the protection of one trade in the same country from the competition of another; and that his retaliating duties would, if we were unwise enough to adopt them, entirely fail to attain the object for which they were designed, certainly cover us with ridicule, and possibly become the fruitful parents of the fiercest rivalry and the bitterest animosity.

ROBERT LOWE.

THE CRITIC ON THE HEARTH.

Ir has often struck me that the relation of two important members of the social body to one another has never been sufficiently considered, or treated of, so far as I know, either by the philosopher or the poet. I allude to that which exists between the omnibus driver and his conductor. Cultivating literature as I do upon a little oatmeal, and driving, when in a position to be driven at all, in that humble vehicle, the 'bus, I have had, perhaps, exceptional opportunities for observing their mutual position and behaviour; and it is very peculiar. When the 'bus is empty, they are sympathetic and friendly to one another, almost to tenderness; but when there is much traffic, a tone of severity is observable upon the side of the conductor. "What are yer a-driving on for? Will nothing suit but to break a party's neck?' 'Wake up, will yer, or do yer want the Bayswater to pass us?' are inquiries he will make in the most peremptory manner. Or he will concentrate contempt in the laconic but withering observation: Now then, stoopid!'

When we consider that the driver is after all the driver-that the 'bus is under his guidance and management, and may be said pro tem. to be his own-indeed, in case of collision or other serious extremity, he calls it so: What the infernal regions are yer banging into my 'bus for?' &c. &c.,-I say, this being his exalted position, the injurious language of the man on the step is, to say the least of it, disrespectful.

On the other hand, it is the conductor who fills the 'bus, and even entices into it, by lures and wiles, persons who are not voluntarily going his way at all. It is he who advertises its presence to the passers-by, and spares neither lung nor limb in attracting passengers. If the driver is lord and king, yet the conductor has a good deal to do with the administration: just as the Mikado of Japan, who sits above the thunder and is almost divine, is understood to be assisted and even conducted' by the Tycoon. The connection between those potentates is perhaps the most exact reproduction of that between the 'bus driver and his cad; but even in England there is a pretty close parallel to it in the mutual relation of the author and the professional critic.

While the former is in his spring-time, the analogy is indeed almost complete. For example, however much he may have plagiarised, the book does belong to the author: he calls it, with pardonable pride (and especially if any one runs it down), 'my book.' He has written it, and probably paid pretty handsomely for getting it published. Even the right of translation, if you will look at the bottom of the title-page, is somewhat superfluously reserved to him. Yet nothing can exceed the patronage which he suffers at the hands of the critic, and is compelled to submit to in sullen silence. When the book-trade is slack-that is, in the summer season-the pair get on together pretty amicably. This book,' says the critic, may be taken down to the seaside, and lounged over not unprofitably;' or, Readers may do worse than peruse this unpretending little volume of fugitive verse;' or even, We hail this new aspirant for the laurels of Apollo.' But in the thick of the publishing season, and when books pour into the reviewer by the cartful, nothing can exceed the violence, and indeed sometimes the virulence, of his language. That Now then, stoopid!' of the 'bus conductor pales beside the lightnings of his scorn.

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Among the lovers of sensation, it is possible that some persons may be found with tastes so utterly vitiated as to derive pleasure from this monstrous production.' I cull these flowers of speech from a wreath placed by a critic of the Slasher on my own early brow. Ye gods, how I hated him! How I pursued him with more than Corsican vengeance; traduced him in public and private; and only when I had thrust my knife (metaphorically) into his detested carIt is a lesson case, discovered I had been attacking the wrong man. I have never forgotten; and I pray you, my younger brothers of the pen, to lay it to heart. Believe rather that your unfriendly critic, like the bee who is fabled to sting and die, has perished after his attempt on your reputation; and let the tomb be his asylum. For even supposing you get the right sow by the ear-or rather, the wild boar with the raging tooth '-what can it profit you? It is not like that difference of opinion between yourself and twelve of your fellowcountrymen which may have such fatal results. You are not an Adonis (except in outward form, perhaps), that you can be ripped up with his tusk. His hard words do not break your bones. If they are uncalled for, their cruelty, believe me, can hurt only your vanity. While it is just possible-though indeed in your case in the very highest degree improbable-that the gentleman may have been right.

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In the good old times we are told that a buffet from the hand of an Edinburgh or Quarterly Reviewer would lay a young author dead at his feet. If it was so, he must have been naturally very deficient in vitality. It certainly did not kill Byron, though it was a knockdown blow; he rose from that combat with earth, like Antæus, all

the stronger for it. The story of its having killed Keats, though embalmed in verse, is apocryphal; and if such blows were not fatal in those times, still less so are they nowadays. On the other hand, if authors are difficult to slay, it is infinitely harder work to give them life by what the doctors term 'artificial respiration'-puffing. The amount of breath expended in the days of the Quarterlies' in this hopeless task would have moved windmills. Not a single favourite of those critics-selected, that is, from favouritism, and apart from merit—now survives. They failed even to obtain immortality for the writers in whom there was really something of genius, but whom they extolled beyond their deserts. Their pet idol, for example, was Samuel Rogers. And who reads Rogers's poems now? We remember something about them, and that is all; they are very literally Pleasures of Memory.'

And if these things are true of the past, how much more so are they of the present! I venture to think, in spite of some voices to the contrary, that criticism is much more honest than it used to be: certainly less influenced by political feeling, and by the interests of publishing houses; more temperate, if not more judicious, and-in the higher literary organs, at least-unswayed by personal prejudice. But the result of even the most favourable notices upon a book is now but small. I can remember when a review in the Times was calculated by the Row' to sell an entire edition. Those halcyon days-if halcyon days they were-are over. People read books for themselves now; judge for themselves; and buy only when they are absolutely compelled, and cannot get them from the libraries. In the case of an author who has already secured a public, it is indeed extraordinary what little effect reviews, either good or bad, have upon his circulation. Those who like his works continue to read them, no matter what evil is written of them; and those who don't like them are not to be persuaded (alas!) to change their minds, though his latest effort should be described as though it had dropped from the heavens. I could give some statistics upon this point not a little surprising, but statistics involve comparisonswhich are odious. As for fiction, its success depends more upon what Mrs. Brown says to Mrs. Jones as to the necessity of getting that charming book from the library while there is yet time, than on all the reviews in Christendom.

O Fame! if I e'er took delight in thy praises,

'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases
Than to see the bright eyes of those dear ones discover.
They thought that I was not unworthy-

of a special messenger to Mr. Mudie's.

Heaven bless them! for, when we get old and stupid, they still stick by one, and are not to be seduced from their allegiance by any

blaring of trumpets, or clashing of cymbals, that heralds a new arrival among the story-tellers.

On the other hand, as respects his first venture, the author is very dependent upon what the critics say of him. It is the conductor, you know (I wouldn't call him a 'cad,' even in fun, for ten thousand pounds), on whom, to return to our metaphor, the driver is dependent for the patronage of his vehicle, and even for the announcement of its existence. A good review is still the very best of advertisements to a new author; and even a bad one is better than no review at all. Indeed, I have heard it whispered that a review which speaks unfavourably of a work of fiction, upon moral grounds, is of very great use to it. This, however, the same gossips say, is mainly confined to works of fiction written by female authors for readers of their own sex-by ladies for ladies,' as a feminine Pall Mall Gazette might describe itself.

Nor would I be understood to say that even a well-established author is not affected by what the critics may say of him; I only state that his circulation is not-albeit they may make his very blood curdle. I have a popular writer in my mind, who never looks at a newspaper unless it comes to him by a hand he can trust, for fear his eyes should light upon an unpleasant review. His argument is this: I have been at this work for the last twelve months, thinking of little else and putting my best intelligence (which is considerable) at its service. Is it humanly probable that a reviewer who has given his mind to it, for a less number of hours, can suggest anything in the way of improvement worthy of my consideration? I am supposing him to be endowed with ability and actuated by good faith; that he has not failed in my own profession and is not jealous of my popularity; yet even thus, how is it possible that his opinion can be of material advantage to me? If favourable, it gives me pleasure because it flatters my amour propre, and I am even not quite sure that it does not afford a stimulating encouragement; but if unfavourable, I own it gives me considerable annoyance. [This is his euphemistic phrase to express the feeling of being in a hornets' nest without his clothes on.] On the other hand, if the critic is a mere hireling, or a young gentleman from the university who is trying his 'prentice hand at a lowish rate of remuneration upon a veteran like myself, how still more idle would it be to regard his views!'

And it appears to me that there is really something in these arguments. As regards the latter part of them, by the bye, I had the pleasure of seeing my own last immortal story spoken of in an American magazine-the Atlantic Monthly-as the work of a bright and prosperous young author.' The critic (Heaven bless his young heart, and give him a happy Whitsuntide) evidently imagined it to be my first production. In another Transatlantic organ, a critic, speaking of the last work of that literary veteran, the late Mr. Le