PREFACE.

IN cheerfulness and good hope, was our undertaking first announced, and now that we have arrived at a period in which a retrospect may be indulged us, we would say, for the benefit of all to whom it may be matter of interest, that our earliest wishes have not been disappointed. We relied upon a few simple elements of success, and have not failed. We have met with encouragement from quarters, where, of all others, we would have desired it; from a portion of the press that we were accustomed to respect, and especially from authors, who have been pleased to identify us, in some measure, with the interests of their own labors. In one department of our journal, we have felt the need of this support, and looked for it, we must confess, with some anxiety. When we have spoken directly of popular defects in literary taste and judgment, we have assumed, for the moment, a position only to be sanctioned by the concurrence of the wise and intelligent. In criticism, it is an ungrateful task to stand alone; it is the last species of writing in which we would desire to be exclusive. A critic, of that superhuman condition of excellence, who is to admire nothing of the

works of his contemporaries, who does not carry with him, at least, the sympathy of a chosen few, whose opinions are respected, is likely to get and deserve a solitary and unique reputation with the public hangman. We have uttered our sentiments freely and candidly upon the various books of the day, and with the same freedom and fearlessness, we shall pursue our course. We value independence highly, and from a higher notion than is, perhaps, generally entertained of the nature of criticism itself, we are more concerned for the right. Modern criticism is not the mere decision upon a book, by which the author is complimented, or not, on its binding, its pages, its spelling, its typography. It was once, indeed, little more in its old fashioned meaning and acceptation; a kind of personal altercation between the author and reviewer, who was a species of out-of-door pedagogue, carrying the. habits of the schoolmaster into society. But now, criticism.has a wider scope, and a universal interest. It dismisses errors of grammar, and hands over an imperfect rhyme, or a false quantity, to the proof readers it looks now to the heart of the subject, and the author's design. It is a test of opinion. Its acuteness is not pedantic, but philosophical; it unravels the web of the author's mystery, to interpret his meaning to others; it detects his sophistry, because sophistry is injurious to the heart and life; it promulgates his beauties with liberal, generous praise, because this is its true duty, as the servant of truth. Good criti

cism may be well asked for, since it is the type of the literature of the day. It gives method to the universal inquisitiveness on every topic relating to life or action. A criticism, now, includes every form of literature, except, perhaps, the imaginative and the strictly dramatic. It is an essay, a sermon, an oration, a chapter in history, a philosophical speculation, a prose poem, an art-novel, a dialogue; it admits of humor, pathos, the personal feelings of autobiography, the broadest views of statesmanship. As the ballad and the epic were the productions of the days of Homer, the review is the native characteristic growth of this nineteenth century.

Journalism is not confined to books, as its subject. It extends its view to the manners and habits of the times. Society has more vehicles than its literature, for the expression of its thoughts. Its sentiments come under review, and are laid before the genuine critic in its fine arts, its architecture, painting, music, its churches, its theatres, its public monuments, its popular assemblages, nay, even its dress and fashions. Whatever is an index to the habits of thinking of a people, fairly falls within the attention of the critic.

It has been objected to our pages, as the journal of books and opinion, that we devote a leading portion to a work of fiction; but a work of fiction, of the character we have published, is strictly within our plan. The narrative offers a facility in its form that we were unwise to reject, especially, too,