Such being the extent of the market for the products of literary labor, we may now inquire into its rewards.

Beginning with the common schools, we find a vast number of young men and young women acting as teachers of others, while qualifying themselves for occupying other places in life.  Many of them rise gradually to become teachers in high schools and professors in colleges, while all of them have at hand the newspaper, ready to enable them, if gifted with the power of expressing themselves on paper, to come before the world.  The numerous newspapers require editors and contributors, and the amount appropriated to the payment of this class of the community is a very large one.  Next come the magazines, many of which pay very liberally.  I have now before me a statement from a single publisher, in which he says that to Messrs. Willis, Longfellow, Bryant, and Alston, his price was uniformly $50 for a poetical article, long or short—­and his readers know that they were generally very short; in one case only fourteen lines.  To numerous others it was from $25 to $40.  In one case he has paid $25 per page for prose.  To Mr. Cooper he paid $1,800 for a novel, and $1,000 for a series of naval biographies, the author retaining the copyright for separate publication; and in such cases, if the work be good, its appearance in the magazine acts as the best of advertisements.  To Mr. James he paid $1,200 for a novel, leaving him also the copyright.  For a single number of the journal he has paid to authors $1,500.  The total amount paid for original matter by two magazines—­the selling price of which is $3 per annum—­in ten years, has exceeded $130,000, giving an average of $13,000 per annum.  The Messrs. Harper inform me that the expenditure for literary and artistic labor required for their magazine is $2,000 per month, or $24,000 a year.

Passing upwards, we reach the producers of books, and here we find rewards not, I believe, to be paralleled elsewhere.  Mr. Irving stands, I imagine, at the head of living authors for the amount received for his books.  The sums paid to the renowned Peter Parley must have been enormously great, but what has been their extent I have no means of ascertaining.  Mr. Mitchell, the geographer, has realized a handsome fortune from his schoolbooks.  Professor Davies is understood to have received more than $50,000 from the series published by him.  The Abbotts, Emerson, and numerous other authors engaged in the preparation of books for young persons and schools, are largely paid.  Professor Anthon, we are informed, has received more than $60,000 for his series of classics.  The French series of Mr. Bolmar has yielded him upwards of $20,000.  The school geography of Mr. Morse is stated to have yielded more than $20,000 to the author.  A single medical book, of one 8vo. volume, is understood to have produced its authors $60,000, and a series of medical books has given to its author probably $30,000.  Mr. Downing’s receipts