: Simms, W: Gilmore. Eutaw a sequel to the Forayers; or, the raid of the dog-days: a tale of the Revolution. N. Y., J: W. Lovell Co., 1885. 582 p. S. (Lovell's lib., no. 703.) рар., 30 с. Sleight, Mary B. The house at Crague; or, her own way. N. Y., T: Y. Crowell & Co., [1886.] 362 p. D. cl., $1.25. The story for the most part is devoted to the wilfulness which caused Blanche Braddington to leave her cottage home in Crague, and become a music teacher, a governess, and the wife of a wealthy man before she realized that she had wrought her own undoing. Here we lose sight of her troubles in the pretty little romance of Ray Braddington and Gane Pencroft; but when we again take up Blanche's affairs events seem to shape themselves more satisfactorily for Blanche and her first lover, Donald Keith. *Stephens, Leslie, ed. Dictionary of national biography. V. 5, Bichem-Bottisham. N. Y., Macmillan, 1886. O. cl., $3.25. Thayer, W: M. From tannery to the White House the life of Ulysses S. Grant; his boyhood, youth, manhood, public and private life, and services. N. Y., Ward & Drummond, 1885. il. 3-480 p. D. cl., $1.50. Companion volume to the author's lives of Garfield, Lincoln, and Washington; written chiefly for boys, the style being simple and popular, many anecdotes being introduced. Like its predecessors, it aims to show the elements of character that made its subject great. Veazie, G. A., jr. Music primer, for the use of teachers introductory to first series Mason's "National music charts." Bost., Ginn & Co., 1885. 2-18 p. T. pap., 6c. This little work is for the use of teachers in preparing their classes for the study of staff-notation. Nearly all the exercises have been tested in the primary grades under the author's direction; and while they are intended as introductory to Mason's national music course, they will be found to be of value as a preparation in connection with other methods, not only for children, but also in teaching adult classes. The exercises have been confined within the limits of the scale proper, for obvious reasons. Williams, S. W., ed. Queenly women, crowned and uncrowned. [Biographies.] Chic., Western Methodist Book Concern, 1885. 486 p. il. O. cl., subs., $3.75 to $6.75. Winter, J: S. A man of honor: a novel. N. Y., G: Munro, [1886.] 3-73 p. S. (Seaside lib., pocket ed., no. 688.) pap., 10 C. Worcester, Rev. J: Lectures upon the doctrines of the new church; delivered in Newtonville, 1885. Bost., Massachusetts New Church Union, 1886. 4-97 p. S. cl., 50c. Present in the language of modern thought a sketch of Swedenborg's teachings relative to creation, revelation, redemption, the future life, the divine providence, and the second coming of the Lord. The book is not controversial. *Xenophon. Selections from the Cyropædia : ed. for the use of schools, with notes, vocabulary, and exercises, by Alfred Hands Cooke. N. Y., Macmillan, 1885. S. (Elementary classics.) cl., 40 c. AUCTION SALES. We shall be pleased to insert under this heading, without charge, advance notices of auction sales to be held anywhere in the United States. Word must reach us before Wednesday evening, to be in time for same issue.] FEBRUARY SALES: Feb. 15.-The law library of Hon. R. T. Merrick.-T. Dowling, Washington, D. C. Feb. 15 and 16, 3:30 P.M.-Americana, pamphlets, etc., etc., the property of a well-known New Hampshire collector.- Bangs & Co., N. Y. Feb. 18 and 19, 7:30 P. M.-British Consignment: Costly Illustrated Works, Standard Literature, Scientific, etc.-W. O. Davie & Co., Cincinnati, O. - Law library.-G. A. Leavitt & Co., N. Y. - Library of late Hon. James Brooks, proprietor and editor of N. Y. Evening Express.-G. A. Leavitt & Co., N. Y. - Library of Numismatics and Archæology.-Bangs & Co., N. Y. JAMES OSBORNE WRIGHT, 860 B'way, N. Y. Browne, Iconoclasm.... 1.50 Morgan's library of Fine Art and Standard Books. (An édition de luxe catalogue, $23.)-American Art Assoc'n, 6 E. 23d St., N. Y. Regular Spring Trade Sale.-G. A. Leavitt & Co., N. Y. - Library of Dr. George Hamilton (10,000 v.)-S. V. Henkels & Co., Phila. - Miscellaneous portion of the Barclay Library.-7. A. Freeman & Co., Phila. -Medical and miscellaneous books of the late John Butler, M.D., of N. Y.-G. A. Leavitt & Co., N. Y. Regular Spring Parcel sale.- Bangs & Co., N. Y. Law Books, including American and English Reports, recent editions of text-books.-C. F. Libbie, Bost Miscellaneous Portion of the Library of Dr. David Hunt of Boston.-C. F. Libbie, Bost. - English Portion of the Library of the late Ulysse Chamecin, of Philadelphia. Best Editions of Standard Authors, -C. F. Libbie, Bost. March 29 and 31.-R. M. Dorman's library of Missals, Cruikshankiana. Fine Bindings, etc. (Price of catalogue, 75c.)-G. A. Leavitt & Co., N. Y. For catalogues write to the auctioneers as follows: Bangs & Co., 739-741 Broadway, New York City. Davie (W. O.) & Co., 16 E. 4th St., Cincinnati, O. Dowling (T.), Penn'a and 11th St., Washington D. C. Ezekiel & Bernheim, 134 Main St., Cincinnati, O. Freeman (J. A.) & Co., 422 Walnut St., Philadelphia, Pa. Henkels (S. V.) & Co., 1117 Chestnut St., Philad'a, Pa. Leavitt (G. A.) & Co., 787-789 Broadway, New York. Libbie (C. F.) & Co., 1 Hamilton Place, Boston, Mass. Morse (C. C.) & Son, 67 Merrimack St., Haverhill, Mass. Thomas & Sons, 137-141 S. 4th St., Philadelphia, Pa, The Publishers Weekly. FOUNDED BY F. LEYPOLDT. FEBRUARY 13, 1886. PUBLISHERS are requested to furnish title-page proofs and advance information of books forthcoming, both for entry in the lists and for descriptive mention. An early copy of each book published should be forwarded, to insure correctness in the final entry. The trade are invited to send "Communications to the editor on any topic of interest to the trade, and as to which an interchange of opinion is desirable. Also, matter for "Notes and Queries" thankfully received. In case of business changes, notification or card should be immediately sent to this office for entry under " Business Notes." New catalogues issued will also be mentioned when forwarded. “Every man is a debtor to his profession, from the which, as men do of course seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of amends to be a help thereunto."-LORD BACON, WHAT DO THE RETAILERS SAY? POST-OFFICE LEGISLATION. MR. CHAS. HUTCHINS, of Boston, is again pushing his bill to secure 'justice, uniformity and simplicity" in the postal laws, in the matter of the pound-rate at carrier offices. The bill is as follows: A bill regulating rates of postage on second-class mail matter at letter-carrier offices. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the passage of this act, the rate of postage on second-class publications deposited in a letter-carrier office for delivery by the carriers of the office, shall be uniform at one cent a pound. SEC. 2. That the proviso to section twenty-five of the act of March 3d, 1879, entitled "An act making appropriations for the service of the Post-Office Department," and so forth, is hereby repealed. This bill has twice been favorably reported from House Committees, and has three times passed the House and failed in the Senate, because of the close of a session. It is intended to omit the senseless distinctions between weeklies, other newspapers and periodicals, especially those published at carrier delivery offices. Under the present law, a New York semiweekly, or bi-weekly, must pay one cent each on New York copies, but only one cent a pound THE suggestion signed "R" in our last is-on copies delivered free by carrier in San Fran sue, which will readily be recognized as from the pen of an experienced and distinguished bookseller and publisher, offers a solution of the vexed question of publishers' prices, in line with a course which we have more than once advocated, which ought to have the careful consideration of the retail trade. What have the retailers to say to it? We have so far had almost no replies to our queries on this subject, although we have had a good many grumbles as to the space given to international copyright. These two subjects copyright and prices-we consider vital questions in the prosperity of the American book-trade, retail as well as manufacturing. We shall be glad to give any amount of space to the latter question if the members of the trade will give us their views. The questions at issue are: 1. What effect will the reduction of nominal prices by the adoption of close discounts have in the retail trade? 2. What effect will making a net price on noncopyright standards have in the retail trade? These are questions even more important to the retailer than his last year's profits or a ten dollar sale, for they affect his immediate and permanent future. We ask our readers in the retail trade therefore to sit right down on receipt of this number and devote half an hour to giving us their views. We know positively of several publishers desirous of moving in this matter, if they can have the support of the retail trade. cisco. Another bill pending in Congress is that introduced in the Senate by Senator Wilson, of Iowa. Whereas, The expenditures of the Post Office Department for the year 1886 will exceed the receipts in the sum of $10,500,000; and Whereas, The postal revenues should, as far as practicable, equal the postal expenditures, especially for the transportation of matter not conveying personal or general intelligence; therefore, Be it enacted, etc., That the postage on all matter of the fourth class transported in the mails of the United States shall be at the rate of two cents for each ounce or fractional part thereof. In fourth-class matter are included merchan dise, samples of ores, metals, seeds, etc., photo- MR. HENRY B. BARNES, treasurer of the Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association, received on the 3d inst., from Mr. Armand Hawkins, bookseller of New Orleans, a contribution for the association. This Mr. Barnes took the liberty of returning, with the request that the donor would hand it to some of the other appropriate charities at home, taking the ground that we ought to be able to look after our own charity here. This seems to us perfectly proper, and we would suggest to the same donor the propriety of starting a Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association in New Orleans, with a book branch. Something of this kind ought to be started in all large cities of the United States. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. From Harper's Weekly, Feb. 13. | and after recording the copyright, the importation of foreign copies of the book is prohibited. This is the substance of the bill which is designed to secure the manufacture of the books in this country, and to exclude the foreign editions. As Senator Hawley also has decided that some such manufacturing provision is expedient, it is probable that this condition will be in some form included in any bill that may be reported. It will undoubtedly restrain the cheapness which springs from the unrecompensed appropriation of foreign works. But under any equitable arrangement, if the larger market be here, and the demand of that market be cheap books, cheap books will be supplied. In that opinion Mr. Lowell is undoubtedly right. But it is a mistake to suppose that the people of this country want cheap books at any cost to honor and honesty. They have had cheap books for many a year, but the cheapness has been in accord with a practical copyright paid to foreign authors by honorable American publishers. And it is the fact that cheapness has been sought by making the further payment of such practical copyright impossible which has re-awakened and stimulated the present interest in the question. So long as the foreign author received from this country a fair reward for his work, a law was desired by him only as a guarantee of continuBut when a situation arises in which the foreign author is deprived of his reward, and the American author becomes a workman competing with laborers who are paid nothing, then the time has come when, in the language of the Constitution, THERE has been a very interesting discussion before the Congressional committee upon the question of international copyright, in which, if nothing new was said, some old truths were stated with great vigor and precision. The opposition to such a copyright, so far as it is based upon the theory that there can be no property in ideas, or that all property rights are regulated | by society, is futile. Mr. Hubbard evidently attempted something of this kind, and Mr. Lowell answered him conclusively by the remark that property does not attach to the idea, but to the literary form of the idea. An invention is only an idea fashioned in a certain way; but society properly grants patents. So it is true that society appropriates private property to its own use. But it appropriates it only for the common benefit, and with adequate compensation. It does not wantonly confiscate it upon the ground that a certain kind of property is not property at all. The domestic copyright law is a grant to the author for an exclusive control for a limited time and for the common benefit of the disposition of the form in which he fashions his idea. The moral consideration inevitably presents itself in the inquiry whether a nation can rightfully discriminate in such a grant against any body of authors. Or even if all property or claim of the author be denied, and the copyright be regarded as a mere bounty of the state for its own advantage, it is still a question of CHEAP BOOKS AND INTERNATIONAL expediency whether it is not desirable practically to concede, at least in some degree, the right which the author asserts. The bill introduced by Senator Hawley, which is known as the bill of the Copyright League, gives to the foreign author in this country the same rights that the American author enjoys, provided that the grant is reciprocal in the country of the foreign author. Senator Hawley stated to the committee that more careful reflection had led him to the conclusion that foreign works copyrighted here should be printed and manufactured in this country for the United States, and he would add such a provision to the bill. Mr. Clemens agreed with him that such a provision would be expedient. This is suggested as a concession of policy, because such a provision belongs properly to the tariff rather than to a copyright law. Under the present conditions of the tariff and of contingent expenses, the protection given to books is from thirty to forty per cent. That protection would not be annulled by the reciprocal copyright. The bill introduced by Senator Chace, of Rhode Island, is simply a modification of the tariff regulations in the form of a grant of international copyright. To gain an American copyright, the foreign author must register within fifteen days after publication in the foreign country, and deposit two copies of the best American edition within three months after such register, or the copyright will become void. If the American publisher abandons publication after publishing, the copyright lapses, ance. the progress of science and useful arts" is to be promoted "by securing by law for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.' COPYRIGHT. MR. O. B. BUNCE has a paper on "International Copyright and the Future of American Literature" in the Home Journal of Feb. 10, in which he says as to the price of books under International Copyright : "A grave question with American readers is the effect of international copyright on the prices of American books! Would it make books dearer? and if so, to what extent? Many attempts have been made to alarm the public mind on this question, and some of them have been disingenuous if not distinctly dishonest. In the first place, no concessions made to foreign authors would or could affect the price of school-books or text-books in the slightest degree. Cyclopadias and other books of reference would probably experience no change; and all the great authors of the past, the whole noble host of poets, historians, essayists, and novelists, that gives such brilliant lustre to the English name, would be as accessible in cheap editions then as now. We should be able to educate our children and fill our book-shelves at no additional cost whatsoever. Nor, as we have already indicated, would there be any appreciable increase in the cost of current books of learning; the increase of price would fall solely on new books of a popular character-almost exclusively, in fact, upon reprints of English fiction. We should not be able to purchase a new novel by Mr. Black for twenty cents, hideously printed with worn-out type, on detestable paper, but for a moderate price it would doubtless be attainable in a convenient form, and at least decently printed. This of course assumes that by virtue of a ' manufacturing clause' these books would be reprinted here; but if the uncompromising bill proposed by the league becomes law, and we must depend on the notions of London publishers, it is not safe to predict in what form our English favorites would reach us. Increase of price falling upon one class of books only, and that class not an important one, it is obvious that apprehensions of injury to American buyers are not well grounded." He gives also the following schedule of books not likely to be affected in price by an international copyright law : "The books that would not be affected in price by international copyright may be summarized as follows: "School-books and text-books; tion that it is a rule for the benefit of the author, not of the manufacturer. An English author can grant a permit to import foreign editions of his books if he owns the copyright at home. Under Mr. Chace's bill no author could do anything of the kind. Standard authors, the entire literature of the their terms. When pushed to the wall for a THE Copyright question is again before Congress, and various authors and literary men have received a hearing from the Committee of the Senate on a bill which has been introduced by General Hawley at the instance of the American Copyright League. Another bill has, however, been introduced by Senator Chace, which is supported in a pamphlet by Mr. Henry C. Lea, the well-known author and publisher of Philadelphia. Senator Hawley's bill simply offers reciprocity to the foreign author, so that he could come here and secure copyright for his books, on complying with the requisite legal formalities, if his own country did the same thing for the American author. It is, in fact, an author's bill pure and simple. Mr. Lea objects to this on behalf of the American reader, inasmuch as it would probably in its practical operation make books dearer; next on behalf of the paper-makers, printers, and binders, who would lose the work they now get in reprinting foreign or rather English books, inasmuch as the English author on obtaining copyright here would almost invariably have his book produced at home. On this point Mr. Lea makes the usual protectionist argument on behalf of native industry. Senator Chace's bill, on the other hand, provides for the manufacture in this country of all foreign books obtaining an American copyright, and absolutely prohibits the importation of foreign editions of the works so copyrighted. This prohibition, Mr. Lea says, is essential, and that it is an invariable rule in all countries where copyright exists," but he fails to men Now, we understand the position of the protectionist opponents of the Hawley bill, or any author's bill, perfectly. We see why they desire to save the home paper-maker, printer, and bookbinder from foreign competition. What we do not understand is the exceptional way in which they seek to secure this protection. Against all other products of foreign industry all they ask by way of protection is either high import duties or total prohibition. But as regards foreign books, they claim the right of seizing the commodity and selling it for their own benefit. That is, they allow of its introduction and then convert it to their own use, unless the foreign producer chooses to accept moral defence of this system they fall back on what we have always considered a most dreary bit of metaphysical slipslop. The air of profundity with which the ordinary champion of protectionist copyright produces it has always seemed to us very comic. We are far from putting Mr. Lea in this category, however, and yet we could hardly read in his pamphlet without a smile that old story that "society recognizes no absolute and unlimited ownership in any species of property. All that the individual earns or inherits is held under such limitations as society sees fit to impose, in return for the protection which is afforded by the social compact, and the value which is imparted to ownership by the aggregation of individuals in communities." This is all true as Gospel, but it is no more true of literary property than of property in houses and lands and railroad shares. Property in these things is also limited by the "social compact " and divers other more tangible agencies. But one of the great differences between civilized and uncivilized communities, between Dahomey and the United States, for instance, is that in the latter the limitation on property is not enforced by "Society," except for the benefit of the whole community and on making due compensation to the owner. Society among civilized men in practice does not take any man's property away from him, or allow it to be taken, except for public use, and after giving the owner its value out of the Treasury. The one solitary exception to this rule is made in the case of literary property, and it is now only made by the United States. It is only here that civilized men get up and defend, 'high priori" grounds, the practice of taking away from a man, as not property, a thing which they themselves sell on the market as property. on The truth is, that whatever any man can sell and make a profit on is, or ought to be, in the eye of the law, property. The dress, called a book, in which a man clothes his ideas is property, because, like cows or horses, it can be traced, identified, and sold on the market, and is therefore entitled to such protection as its peculiar nature calls for, like all other possessions. The ownership in land is not proved or protected in the same way as the ownership in railroad stocks; nor the ownership in railroad stocks in the same way as that in a bill of |