of Congress of a joke appreciable by mere members of the human family, could we suppose them in a thoughtless moment to have carried into legislation a mildened modicum of that metaphorical language which forms the staple of debate, we should make no remonstrance.  We recognize the severe justice of an ideal avoirdupois in literary criticism.  We remember the unconscious sarcasm of the Atlantic Telegraph, as it sank heart-broken under the strain of conveying the answer of the Heavy Father of our political stage to the graceful “good-morning” of Victoria.  The enthusiastic member of the Academy of Lagado, who had spent eight years in a vain attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, might have found profitable employment in smelting the lead even from light literature, not to speak of richer deposits.  Under an act thus dubiously worded, and in a country which makes Bancroft a collector of the customs and Hawthorne a weigher and gauger, the works of an Alison and a Tupper would be put beyond the reach of all but the immensely rich.  The man of moderate means would be deprived of the exhaustless misinformation of the Scottish Baronet, who has so completely disproved the old charge against his countrymen of possessing an ingenium perfervidum, (which Dr. Johnson would have translated by brimstone temperament,) and of the don’t-fail-to-spread-your-umbrella-when-it-
rains-or-you’ll-spoil-your-hat wisdom of the English Commoner, who seems to have named his chief work in a moment of abnormal inspiration, since it has become proverbial as the severest test of human philosophy.

But we cannot suspect the Congressional Committee of a joke, still less of a joke at the expense of those anglers in the literary current whose tackle, however bare of bait, never fails of a sinker at the end of every line.  They have been taught to look upon books as in no wise differing from cotton and tobacco, and rate them accordingly by a merely material standard.  It has been the dealers in books, and not the makers of them, who have hitherto contrived to direct public opinion in this matter.  We look upon Public Opinion with no superstitious reverence,—­for Tom’s way of thinking is none the wiser because the million other Toms and Dicks and Harries agree with him,—­nevertheless, even a fetish may justly become an object of respectful interest to one who is to be sacrificed to it.

However it may be with iron, wool, and manufactured cotton, it is clear that a duty on books is not protective of American literature, but simply a tax on American scholarship and refinement.  The imperfectness of our public libraries compels every student to depend more or less upon his own private collection of books; and it is a fact of some significance, that, with the single exception of Hildreth, all our prominent historians, Sparks, Irving, Bancroft, Prescott, Ticknor, Motley, and Palfrey, have been men of independent fortune.  If anything should be free of duty, it should seem to be the material of thought.