dollars a year.  Mrs. Hemans, the universally admired poetess, lived and died in poverty.  Laman Blanchard lost his senses and committed suicide in consequence of being compelled, by his extreme poverty, to the effort of writing an article for a periodical while his wife lay a corpse in the house.  Miss Mitford, so well known to all of us, found herself, after a life of close economy, so greatly reduced as to have been under the necessity of applying to her American readers for means to extricate her little property from the rude hands of the sheriff.  Like Lady Morgan, she is now a public pensioner.  Leigh Hunt is likewise dependent on the public charity.  Tom Hood, so well known by his “Song of a Shirt”—­the delight of his readers, and a mine of wealth to his publishers; a man without vices, and of untiring industry—­lived always from day to day on the produce of his labor.  On his death-bed, when his lungs were so worn with consumption that he could breathe only through a silver tube, he was obliged to be propped up with pillows, and, with shaking hand and dizzy head, force himself to the task of amusing his readers, that he might thereby obtain bread for his unhappy wife and children.  With all his reputation, Moore found it difficult to support his family, and all the comfort of his declining years was due to the charity of his friend, Lord Lansdowne.  In one of his letters from Germany, Campbell expresses himself transported with joy at hearing that a double edition of his poems had just been published in London.  “This unexpected fifty pounds,” says he, “saves me from jail.”  Haynes Bayley died in extreme poverty.  Similar statements are furnished us in relation to numerous others who have, by the use of their pens, largely contributed to the enjoyment and instruction of the people of Great Britain.  It would, indeed, be difficult to find very many cases in which it had been otherwise with persons exclusively dependent on the produce of literary labor.  With few and brilliant exceptions, their condition appears to have been, and to be, one of almost hopeless poverty.  Scarcely any thing short of this, indeed, would induce the acceptance of the public charity that is occasionally doled out in the form of pensions on the literary fund.

This is certainly an extraordinary state of things, and one that makes to our charitable feelings an appeal that is almost irresistible.  Nevertheless, before giving way to such feelings, it would be proper to examine into the real cause of all this poverty, with a view to satisfy ourselves if real charity would carry us in the direction now proposed.  The skilful physician always studies the cause of disease before he determines on the remedy, and this course is quite as necessary in prescribing for moral as for physical disorder.  Failing to do this, we might increase instead of diminishing the evil, and might find at last that we had been taxing ourselves in vain.