LONDON, Printed by JOHN NICHOLS, at Cicero's Head, 'Red Lion Pasage, Flet-Street : Churck Yurd, Ludgate-Street. 1793. Volume of the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. THE HE smiling Spring, the golden field, Again to icy Winter yield; Thus, lifted to its highest zest, A calmer clue the Muse now guides Do. 3! E , Goths and Vandals, has never experienced more alarm and danger than at the present moment--Religion, Manners, Literature, and the Arts, are all equally menaced by a foe, whose characteristick is a compound of impetuosity, ignorance, and crime. It is the pride of Englishmen, to have united in one firm and noble phalanx to preserve their country from these attacks; attacks which are the more formidable, because they are not made with open, avowed, and generous boldness, but with the most dark and cowardly artifice. Our native force and native courage would prompt us to avoid no encounter in the martial field: but what would even the magnanimiry of Britons avail against the venom of poison mysteriously prepared, and communicated with the malignant filence of affaflins ? Yet such is the natural operation of these new-fangled doctrines, this strange and heterogeneous philosophy, which has deluged France with blood. Such is the fraternity, the liberty, and the light, our Gallic neighbours have not only wilhed, but endeavoured, to spread among us. To resist and counteract these machinations, has been the honest and unremitting endeavour of the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE ; and ever will be so, as long as our Political and Religious Constitution shall require our indefatigable support. After avowing ourselves the steady friends of our country's Liberties and Laws, we address ourselves more particularly to our Literary Friends and Correspondents. We presume that the Volume we are now closing will neither disgrace our cindour nor our taste; that it will manifeft our industry in collecting, from the different branches of Science and Belles-Leitres, every variety of amusement for our Readers : that it will prove we have neither been fastidious in rejecting applications for our notice, nor guilty of giving too easy and indiscriminate admission to pieces without interest, or writers without merit. In every circumstance of admission or rejection, we act from a sense of public dury, and decide according to our best judgement. This, however, we wilh to be invariably understood, that nothing will ever appear in the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, |