It is not creditable that America should be the last of civilized nations to acknowledge the justice of an author’s claim to a share in the profits of a commercial value which he has absolutely created.  England is more liberal to our authors than we to hers, but it is only under certain strictly limited contingencies that an American can acquire copyright there.  Were all our booksellers as scrupulous as the few honorably exceptional ones among them now are, there would be no need of legislative regulation; but, in the present condition of things, he who undertakes to reprint an English book which he has honestly paid for is at the mercy of whoever can get credit for poor paper and worse printing.  There is no reason why a distinction should be made between copy-right and patent-right; but, if our legislators refuse to admit any abstract right in the matter, they might at least go so far as to conclude an international arrangement by which a publisher in either country who was willing to pay for the right of publication should be protected in its exercise.  No just objection could be made to a plan of this kind, which, if not so honest as a general international law of copyright, would be profitable to our publishers, and to such of our authors at least as had acquired any foreign reputation.

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

The Church of the First Three Centuries; or, Notices of the Lives and Opinions of Some of the Early Fathers, with Special Reference to the Doctrine of the Trinity; illustrating its Late Origin and Gradual Formation.  By Alvan Lamson, D.D.  Boston.  Walker, Wise, & Co. 8vo. pp. xii., 352.

Plato’s Apology and Crito; with Notes, by W.S.  Tyler, Graves Professor of Greek in Amherst College.  New York.  Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 180. 75 cts.

Poems.  By William H. Holcombe, M.D.  New York.  Mason Brothers. 12mo. pp. 360. $1.25.

Science in Theology.  Sermons preached in St. Mary’s, Oxford, before the University.  By Adam S. Farrar, M.A., F.G.S., F.R.A.S., Michel Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford; late One of the Select Preachers to the University; and Preacher at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall.  Philadelphia.  Smith, English, & Co. 12mo. pp. 250. 85 cts.

Remembered Words from the Sermons of Rev. I. Nichols, late Pastor of the First Parish in Portland, Maine.  Boston.  Crosby, Nichols, Lee, & Co. 12mo. pp. viii., 141. 75 cts.

The Throne of David; from the Consecration of the Shepherd of Bethlehem to the Rebellion of Prince Absalom.  Being an Illustration of the Splendor, Power, and Dominion of the Reign of the Shepherd, Poet, Warrior, King, and Prophet, Ancestor and Type of Jesus; in a Series of Letters addressed by an Assyrian Ambassador, Resident at the Court of Saul and David, to his Lord and King on the Throne of Nineveh; wherein the Glory of Assyria, as well as the Magnificence of Judea, is presented to the Reader as by an Eye-witness.  By the Rev. J.H.  Ingraham, LL.D., Author of “The Prince of the House of David,” and of “The Pillar of Fire.”  Philadelphia.  Evans. 12mo. pp. 603. $1.25.