In some excellent articles on Modern Literature in Blackwood’s Magazine the other day, this subject was touched upon with respect to fiction, and might well have filled a greater space, for the growth of that description of literature of late years is simply marvellous.  Curiously enough, though France originated the feuilleton, it was from America and our own colonies that England seems to have taken the idea of publishing novels in newspapers.  It was a common practice in Australia long before we adopted it; and, what is also curious, it was first acclimatised among us by our provincial papers.  The custom is rapidly gaining ground in London, but in the country there is now scarcely any newspaper of repute which does not enlist the aid of fiction to attract its readers.  Many of them are contented with very poor stuff, for which they pay a proportional price; but others club together with other newspapers—­the operation has even received the technical term of ’forming a syndicate’—­and are thereby enabled to secure the services of popular authors; while the newspapers thus arranged for are published at a good distance from one another, so as not to interfere with each other’s circulation.  Country journals, which are not so ambitious, instead of using an inferior article, will often purchase the ‘serial right,’ as it is called, of stories which have already appeared elsewhere, or have passed through the circulating libraries.  Nay, the novelist who has established a reputation has many more strings to his bow:  his novel, thus published in the country newspapers, also appears coincidently in the same serial shape in Australia, Canada, and other British colonies, leaving the three-volume form and the cheap editions ‘to the good.’  And what is true of fiction is in a less degree true of other kinds of literature.  Travels are ‘gutted,’ and form articles in magazines, illustrated by the original plates; lectures, after having served their primary purpose, are published in a similar manner; even scientific works now appear first in the magazines which are devoted to science before performing their mission of ‘popularising’ their subject.

When speaking of the growth of readers, I have purposely not mentioned America.  For the present the absence of copyright there is destroying both author and publisher; but the wheels of justice, though tardy, are making way there.  In a few years that great continent of readers will be legitimately added to the audience of the English author, and those that have stolen will steal no more.

Nor, in our own country, must we fail to take notice of the establishment of School Boards.  A generation hence we shall have a reading public almost as numerous as in America; even the very lowest classes will have acquired a certain culture which will beget demands both for journalists and ‘literary persons.’  The harvest will be plenteous indeed, but unless my advice be followed in some shape or another, the labourers will be comparatively few and superlatively inadequate.