in disappointment.  It can act only as a plaster to conceal the sore, while the sore itself becomes larger and more dangerous from day to day.  To effect a cure, the sore itself must be examined and its cause removed.  To cure the disease so prevalent among British authors we must first seek for the causes why the home market for the products of their labor is so very small, and that will be found in the steadily growing tendency towards centralization, so obvious in every part of the operations of the British empire.  Centralization and civilization have in all countries, and at all periods of the world, been opposed to each other, and that such is here the case can, I think, readily be shown.

   [Footnote 1:  The several figures here given are from a statement in a
   British journal.  Whether they are perfectly accurate, or not, I have no
   means of determining.]

Among the earliest cases in which this tendency was exhibited was that of the Union by which the kingdom of Scotland was reduced to the condition of a province of England, and Edinburgh, from being the capital of a nation, to becoming a mere provincial town.  By many and enlightened Scotchmen a federal union would have been preferred; but a legislative one was formed, and from that date the whole public revenue of Scotland tended towards London, towards which tended also, and necessarily, all who sought for place, power, or distinction.  An absentee government produced, of course, absentee landholders, and with each step in this direction there was a diminution in the demand at home for talent, which thenceforward sought a market in the great city to which the rents were sent.  The connection between the educated classes of Scotland and the Scottish seats of learning tended necessarily to decline, while the connection between the former and the universities of England became more intimate.  These results were, of course, gradually produced, but, as is the case with the stone as it falls towards the earth, the attraction of centralization grew with the growth of the city that was built out of the contributions of distant provinces, while the counteracting power of the latter as steadily declined, and the greater the decline the more rapid does its progress now become.  Seventy years after the date of the Union, Edinburgh was still a great literary capital, and could then offer to the world the names of numerous men of whose reputation any country of the world might have been proud:  Burns and McPherson; Robertson and Hume; Blair and Kames; Reid, Smith, and Stewart; Monboddo, Playfair, and Boswell; and numerous others, whose reputation has survived to the present day.  Thirty-five years later, its press furnished the world with the works of Jeffrey and Brougham; Stewart, Brown, and Chalmers; Scott, Wilson, and Joanna Baillie; and with those of many others whose reputation was less widely spread, among whom were Galt, Hogg, Lockhart, and Miss Ferrier, the authoress of “Marriage.”