Messrs. Cassell send us some specimens of a new series
of standard books which they are publishing under the title of "The People's Librail " (8d. and is. 6d. per vol.) They are well printed and well got up, and certainly offer good money's- worth. What the mortal author can do to compete with the humortals, happily removed as they are from the necessity of earning their bread and cheese, it is difficult to imagine. The volumes are Tennyson's Poems (down to 1865). Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Unto This Last, and Political Economy of Art (in one volume), Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Mrs. Wood's East Lynne, C. Kingsley's Westward Ho ! Scott's Ivanhoe, Lamb's Essays of Ella, Stevenson's Treasure Island, and George Eliot's Adam Bede. We make no sort of reflection on Messrs. Cassell, who are absolutely within their rights, when we say that it would be a desirable change in the law if the copyright of all an author's works ended with that of his latest. There is something repulsive about the way in which they are caught at as they fall out of protection. There were dealings with Ruskin's books that were anything but. pleasing a few months since. We remember, too, an enterprising editor declaring that there was nothing of Tennyson's really worth reading that was not out of copyright.
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