Is
it not to be feared that they will yet exterminate the whole race,
that the great lion literary, like the mastodon, will become extinct?
Or, perhaps, by taming him down to a mere producer of autographs,
his habits will change so entirely that he will no longer be the same
animal, no longer bear a comparison with the lion of the past. On the
other hand should the great race become extinct, what will be the
fate of the family of autograph-feeders? What a fearful state of
things would ensue, even in our day, were the supply to be reduced
but a quire! The heart sickens at the picture which would then be
presented--collectors turning on each other, waging a fierce war over
every autographic scrap, making a battle-field of every social circle.
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.
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