You must know that the cheap press has, within a few months, made a total change in our book markets.  Every English book of any name or credit is instantly converted into a newspaper or coarse pamphlet, and hawked by a hundred boys in the streets of all of our cities for 25, 18, or 12 cents; Dickens’s Notes for 12 cents, Blackwood’s Magazine for 18 cents, and so on.  Three or four great New York and Philadelphia printing-houses do this work, with hot competition.  One prints Bulwer’s novel yesterday, for 35 cents; and already, in twenty-four hours, another has a coarser edition of it for 18 cents, in all thoroughfares.—­What to do with my sealed parcel of manuscripts and proofs?  No bookseller would in these perilous circumstances offer a dollar for my precious parcel.  I inquired of the lawyers whether I could not by a copyright protect my edition from piracy until an English copy arrived, and so secure a sale of a few weeks.  They said, no; yet advised the taking a certificate of copyright, that we might try the case if we wished.  After much consulting and balancing for a few hours, I decided to print, as heretofore, on our own account, an edition, but cheap, to make the temptation less, to retail at seventy-five cents.  I print fifteen hundred copies, and announce to the public that it is your edition, and all good men must buy this.  I have written to the great Reprinters, namely to Park Benjamin, and to the Harpers, of New York, to request their forbearance; and have engaged Little and Brown to publish, because, I think, they have something more of weight with Booksellers, and are a little less likely to be invaded than Munroe.  If we sell a thousand copies at seventy-five cents, it will only yield you about two hundred dollars; if we should be invaded, we can then afford to sell the other five hundred copies at twenty-five cents, without loss.  In thus doing, I involve you in some risk; but it was the best course that occurred.—­Hitherto, the Miscellanies have not been reprinted in the cheap forms; and in the last year, James Munroe & Co. have sold few copies; all books but the cheapest being unsold in the hard times; something has however accrued to your credit there.  J.M. & Co. fear that, if the new book is pirated at New York and the pirate prospers, instantly the Miscellanies will be plundered.  We will hope better, or at least exult in that which remains, to wit, a Worth unplunderable, yet infinitely communicable.

I have hardly space left to say what I would concerning the Dial. I heartily hoped I had done with it, when lately our poor, good, publishing Miss Peabody,... wrote me that its subscription would not pay its expenses (we all writing for love).  But certain friends are very unwilling it should die, and I a little unwilling, though very unwilling to be the life of it, as editor.  And now that you are safely through your book, and before the greater Sequel rushes to its conclusion,