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but full of vigor, intelligence and independence. We are not giving any opinion as to the advantage or disadvantage of this changed order of things; we are simply stating facts. Unless India is to be an exception to every country in which Englishmen have settled, this formation of a general as distinguished from an official society must cause a corresponding expansion in the news

paper press.

Papers circulating exclusively in the civil and military serviees may afford to confine themselves to events simply as they affect the prosperity of those two corporations; but newspapers which are to interest a general reader, must take for their main source of interest, not the furloughs of magistrates nor the migration of subalterns, nor the domestic affairs of both these classes; nor the civil service only, nor the army only-but no less wide a subject than the Anglo-Indian empire.

When the early jealousies of covenanted and uncovenanted have been forgotten, and the very terms produce a smile of derision in India as they do even now in England; when the yet pettier strife between civil and military services have ceased to be matters of supreme importance to the occupants of a great empire; when the Legislative Council has succeeded in the effort which we have lately seen initiated to free itself from excessive subjection to home interference; when its debates are watched by an eager public and chronicled by a vigilant press as affecting the destinies of India; when the steam whistle has been heard in regions now familiar only with the groaning of bullocks and the screeching of hackeries; when tidings flow in every day through easy channels to the metropolis from jungles now little known and never noticed; then there will be found, we do not doubt it, a newspaper press equal to its new duties; it would be the wisdom of the present incumbents to avail themselves of the advanced position which they enjoy to occupy first the new ground, and so to learn to change their nature; to become the leaders of the public opinion of a society, not the mere registers and note-keepers of a garrison. Whether Indian society in its altered phase is likely any more than at present to produce a distinct literary class, we do not venture to say. Our impression is that as the tendency of things must be to make our connexion with England closer and closer, so we shall yet more learn to look to England for our books, and those of our society who aspire to be members of the guild of authors, must forego both the advantages and the drawbacks of a limited audience, and take their chance in the great lottery of the English book market. Indian authors, as a separate class, will probably be absorbed, but Indian booksellers must remain, and we have a word to say about them before we conclude.

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At all times the trade of bookselling has been honourably es teemed. The bibliopole stands as middleman between the reader and the author; while we interpret and express the wants of the former, he catches or is supposed to catch, something of the genius or erudition of the latter. He must be to a certain extent a literary character; he ought to know and frequently does know more of books than their outsides: he stands as a connecting link between the widely separated classes of English society. Among the petty tradesmen of a small country town, the bookseller is not unfrequently found to be elevated in knowledge and character above his brethren, a living witness to the elevating and civilizing influence which results even from the humblest commerce with the muses. To bookselling then we pay due respect as being something less perhaps than a learned profession, but much more than an ordinary trade. But as a peer of Parliament forfeits those high privileges which in virtue of his peerage distinguish him from the vulgar mass of mankind, if he voluntarily descends into the common arena; and though exempt from arrest for debt, as a Howard or a Talbot, becomes liable to that degradation, if, forgetful of his ancestral right to do nothing, he becomes a trader, a mere man, a dealer with Browns and Smiths; so a bookseller loses caste if he injures by foreign alliances the integrity of his calling; if he degenerates into a stationer or a picture dealer, or worse than all, the keeper of a store. Your true bookshop is distinguished by an air of aristocratic repose.

In a world of ostentation and an age of puffing, while all mankind are vieing with each other in pretentious signs and gorgeous shop fronts, booksellers and bankers alone court privacy; the latter half close their windows, the former make no display except perhaps one or two open title pages. Both take a high tone; they have no need to appeal to the public; so necessary are they to society, that they can afford to practice this decent seclusion, quite confident that the public will search them out in spite of it.

We speak of the kings of the bookselling world, the Longmans, the Murrays, the Parkers, all of whom are in the proper sense of the term booksellers as well as publishers. There is not a gloomier street in London than Paternoster Row-the street of books, except perhaps Lombard street, which is the street of banks. Proceeding lower we still find that in country towns the bookseller's shop, while the cleanest, the best ordered, and the most really attractive, is generally the least showy shop in the place. But if some intending rival comes and attempts to draw away legitimate trade by pandering in the first instance to illegitimate tastes, we may be very certain that the gaudy display of pictures and advertisements by which he opens his piratical campaign, conceals

the poor stock and deficient knowledge of an illiterate adven

turer.

Having made these remarks, which the experience of most of our readers will, we think, confirm, we proceed to ask what is the general appearance of an Indian bookshop? Do we not instantly picture to ourselves Noor Buksh or some other Buksh leading us through the unseemly mazes of his comprehensive store, and at last finding us proof to his offer of sardines, preserved meats, Cawnpore saddles, and doubtful jewellery, conducting us as a last hope to his bookstall where a stray volume of Gibbon is found side by side with a complete edition of Paul de Kock, and tattered copies of immortal works have been contemptuously thrust aside to make room for a meretricious row of red bound, gilt lettered, expensive, worthless books? Or do we think of "the China Bazar Library," of the zealous colporteurs, whose customers are palki travellers, whose stock consists of such an extraordinary medley of authors, as never probably was got together under any other system; who seem to have discovered some secret spell for conjuring to life all the books which have been never heard of, nor ever would have been heard of, but for this desperate and timely rescue? Or do our thoughts recur at once to those more dignified establishments, the titles of which are so assiduously paraded before us in the outside sheet of all the Indian newspapers; to the Longmans and Murrays of India; to the Paternoster Row of Calcutta? Conceive a genuine book-worm entering one of these establishments! What must be the shock to his literary susceptibility! There is no decent repose; no quiet but cheerful order; no grave but attractive uniformity; none of those appearances which he has been accustomed to associate with a bookseller's shop, but all the glitter and confusion of a Yankee store. He looks to the walls, expecting to see rows of well-filled shelves; but no, that is the picture gallery, where portraits of distinguished personages, groups by Landseer, and other engravings of a high order have to put up with the unwelcome company of prints of which the artistic worthlessness is certain, and the moral tendency extremely doubtful. For all this, however, there may be some excuse; painting and poetry are kindred arts, and though he certainly finds pictures where he expected books, yet the two are first cousins, and the substitution, therefore, is less surprising. Resigning the walls he has recourse to the counter. There indeed are books; but in such fellowship as no kindred tie can justify. Here are all the menial supplements-the pen, ink and paper -nay, all the upholstery of literature-writing desks, writing tables, small printing presses, and portfolios, mingled together with a profuse indifference perplexing and distasteful to the true book

amateur.

Still even this may be considered a mere offence against taste, comparatively venial, if after all the books are plentiful, well selected and fairly priced. As to numbers we make no complaint; the whole aggregate of volumes is perhaps sufficient. But that careful and judicious selection which proves the bookseller to be more than half a scholar, which makes him not the accomplice but the patron of the publishers, and the friend and agent of the reading public, is sadly wanting. This firm represents one London publisher, and that another. What more natural than that those London publishers should rely upon the market thus secured for their refuse produce, and bring out indifferent books, confident that whether successful or not in England, the Indian publie will be forced to buy them. Again we allow ourselves to be made the victims of a too good natured and easy confidence.

We do not exercise our own choicewe take contentedly whatever is given us, and living as we do in a wicked world, suffer in consequence. The individual trusts to the secretary of his book club, the secretary to the Calcutta bookseller, the Calcutta bookseller to the London connexion. Thus more than two-thirds of the Indian reading public are in the hands of two large forms. Far from blaming those firms for enjoying a monopoly which we allow them, we only wonder that they treat us as well as they do. But we do heartily wish to see the monopoly broken down. The booksellers in this country should be the people to do this, if they would conduct their trade on the ordinary generally understood principles which regulate it elsewhere; but this they cannot and will not do: cannot, for their agents and native employés are totally ignorant of everything concerning a book except its price;-will not, because in many instances they are interested in the perpetuation of the very monopoly which it is sought to get rid of. In this dilemma, the public must help themselves. Individual readers and still more book club secretaries must do the work which Bombay and Calcutta booksellers ought to do for them, and by the aid of catalogues, order what they want direct from England. We are in a position to testify-what however may readily be imagined without testimony-that they will be eagerly assisted by the large publishers and booksellers at home, who are anxious to become competitors for that Indian trade which is now almost monopolized by two or three firms. Whoever may gain by the competition, it is clear that we, the Indian public, lose by the monopoly. Nor is it only in the selection but still more in the price of books that we suffer under the present system. Cheap literature may be opposed both by politicians and economists, but the most extreme protectionists would hardly undertake, unless personally interested, to justify Bombay and Calcutta prices. With

out professing to understand all the mysteries of the craft; allowing for the fullest difference between trade and retail cost; allowing for the extra profit fairly leviable for the convenience of a Calcutta agency; allowing also for the exile and climate rates which the Bengal tradesman has as much right to look for as the Bengal soldier or civilian, we still refuse to believe that the difference between one guinea-as the selling price of a book in England-and sixteen Rupees as the selling price of the same work in India, represents nothing more than these legitimate extra profits. If it be so, if a book which costs a guinea in London really cannot be profitably sold for less than thirty-two shillings in Calcutta, the Indian public must make up their minds to dispense with auxiliary agency in this country, and deal (doubtless at a great disadvantage to themselves; for an Indian agency properly conducted is a natural and highly desirable medium,) directly with the English publishers. However loudly Indian tradesmen may endeavour to justify the present rate of prices, we suspect that they would be ready to lower them considerably before permitting the public to be driven into this conclusion.

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With regard then to Indian modern literature we have arrived at these conclusions: that writers of books as a class are hardly to be looked for in our own ranks that the conditions of Indian life have a tendency to divide men into two great sections; the one consisting of the very idle-the other of the very busy. Those who have no employment in this country-we know how large a class it is-are more to be pitied than any other members of the Indian community. The Assistant Magistrate complains with a secret pride of the burden of his work; but the man who has a far greater right to complain is the subaltern of native infantry-of equal ability and equal character, but afflicted by the greatest of all curses-want of work. Under the pressure of this curse let us not wonder if many degenerate, nor blame harshly if some fall, nor fail to honor those who stand. But even these cannot so far escape their circumstances as not necessarily to lose the capacity for enjoying learned leisure. We are told by the poet that

"They can make who fail to find
Short leisure even in busiest days."

Leisure is not inconsistent with business, but it is absolutely and irreconcilably opposed to vacancy.

On the other hand those who have any thing to do in this country have a great deal to do. Either they are poor creatures and do as little as they can, and are of course incapable of literary as they are impatient of official labour, or they are men of intelligence and energy and do all they can, and become, above

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