in and about that city, while Holyrood, and all other of the buildings with which Scottish history is connected, are allowed to go to ruin.  Centralization gives libraries and museums to London, but it refuses the smallest aid to the science or literature of Scotland.  Centralization deprives the people of the power to educate themselves, by drawing from them more than thirty millions of dollars, raised by taxation, and it leaves the professors in the colleges of Scotland in the enjoyment of chairs, the emoluments of many of which are but $1,200 per annum.  Whence, then, can come the demand for books, or the power to compensate the people who make them?  Not, assuredly, from the mass of unhappy people who occupy the Highlands, whose starving condition furnishes so frequent occasion for the comments of their literary countrymen; nor, as certainly, from the wretched inhabitants of the wynds of Glasgow, or from the weavers of Paisley.  Centralization is gradually separating the people into two classes—­the very rich, who live in London, and the very poor, who remain in Scotland; and with the progress of this division there is a gradual decay in the feeling of national pride, that formerly so much distinguished the people of Scotland.  The London “Leader” tells its readers that “England is a power made up of conquests over nationalities;” and it is right.  The nationality of Scotland has disappeared; and, however much it may annoy our Scottish friends[1] to have the energetic and intelligent Celt sunk in the “slow and unimpressible” Saxon, such is the tendency of English centralization, everywhere destructive of that national feeling which is essential to progress in civilization.

   [Footnote 1:  See Blackwood’s Magazine, Sept. 1853, art.  “Scotland since
   the Union.”]

Looking to Ireland, we find a similar state of things.  Seventy years since, that country was able to insist upon and to establish its claim for an independent government, and, by aid of the measures then adopted, was rapidly advancing.  From that period to the close of the century the demand for books for Ireland was so great as to warrant the republication of a large portion of those produced in England.  The kingdom of Ireland of that day gave to the world such men as Burke and Grattan, Moore and Edgeworth, Curran, Sheridan, and Wellington.  Centralization, however, demanded that Ireland should become a province of England, and from that time famines and pestilences have been of frequent occurrence, and the whole population is now being expelled to make room for the “slow and unimpressible” Saxon race.  Under these circumstances, it is matter of small surprise that Ireland not only produces no books, but that she furnishes no market for those produced by others.  Half a century of international copyright has almost annihilated both the producers and the consumers of books.