" Landscape Gardening. 3 50 9,000

    " Cottage Residences. 2 00 6,250

    " Country Homes. 4 00 3,500

   Mahan’s Civil Engineering. 3 00 7,500

   Leslie’s Cookery and Receipt-books. 1 00 96,000

   Guyot’s Lectures on Earth and Man. 1 00 6,000

   Wood and Bache’s Medical Dispensatory 5 00 60,000

   Dunglison’s Medical Writings,
    in all 10 vols. 2 50 50,000

   Pancoast’s Surgery, 4to. 10 00 4,000

   Rayer, Ricord, and Moreau’s Surgical Works
   (translations). 15 00 5,500

   Webster’s Works, 6 vols. 2 00 46,800

   Kent’s Commentaries, 4 vols. 3 38 84,000

Next to Chancellor Kent’s work comes Greenleaf on Evidence, 3 vols., $16.50; the sale of which has been exceedingly great, but what has been its extent, I cannot say.

Of Blatchford’s General Statutes of New York, a local work, price $4.50, the sale has been 3,000; equal to almost 30,000 of a similar work for the United Kingdom.

How great is the sale of Judge Story’s books can be judged only from the fact that the copyright now yields, and for years past has yielded, more than $8,000 per annum.  Of the sale of Mr. Prescott’s works little is certainly known, but it cannot, I understand, have been less than 160,000 volumes.  That of Mr. Bancroft’s History, has already risen, certainly to 30,000 copies, and I am told it is considerably more; and yet even that is a sale, for such a work, entirely unprecedented.

Of the works of Hawthorne, Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Curtis, Sedgwick, Sigourney, and numerous others, the sale is exceedingly great; but, as not even an approximation to the true amount can be offered, I must leave it to you to judge of it by comparison with those of less popular authors above enumerated.  In several of these cases, beautifully illustrated editions have been published, of which large numbers have been sold.  Of Mr. Longfellow’s volume there have been no less than ten editions.  These various facts will probably suffice to satisfy you that this country presents a market for books of almost every description, unparalleled in the world.

In reflecting upon this subject, it is necessary to bear in mind that the monopoly, granted to authors and their families, is for the term of no less than forty-two years, and that in that period the number of persons subjected to it is likely to grow to little short of a hundred millions, with a power of consumption that will probably be ten times greater than now exists.  If the Commentaries of Chancellor Kent continue to maintain their present position, as they probably will, may we not reasonably suppose that the demand for them will continue as great, or nearly so, as it is at present, and that the total sale during the period of copyright will reach a quarter of a million of volumes?  So, too, of the histories of Bancroft and Prescott, and of other books of permanent character.