Happily, nature seems always to keep up the balance in such
matters, and it is a consoling reflection that if the million are now
consumers, so have they become producers of autographs; it is
therefore probable that the evil will work its own remedy; and we
may hope that the great writers of the next century will be shielded
in some measure by the diversion made in their favor through the
lighter troops of the lion corps.

As for the full merits of the controversy so hotly waged over the
Lumley autograph between the Otwaysians and the Butlerites,
dividing the collecting world into two rival parties, we shall not here
enter into it. In all such matters it is better to go at once to the
fountain head; if the reader is curious on the subject, as doubtless
he must be, he is referred to one octavo and five duodecimo
volumes, with fifty pamphlets which have left little to say on the
point. Let it not be supposed, however, for an instant, that the
writer of this article is himself undecided in his opinion on this
question. By no means; and he hastens to repel the unjust
suspicion, by declaring himself one of the warmest Otwaysians. It is
true that he has some private grounds for believing that a
dispassionate inquiry might lead one to doubt whether Otway or
Butler ever saw the Lumley autograph; but what of that, who has
time or inclination for dispassionate investigation in these stirring
days! In the present age of universal enlightenment, we don't
trouble ourselves to make up our opinions--we take and give them,
we beg, borrow, and steal them. True, there are controversies
involving matters so important in their consequences, so serious in
their nature, that one might conceive either indifference or
fanaticism equally inexcusable with regard to them; but there are
also a thousand other subjects of discussion, at the present day, of