THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE: DEVOTED TO Literature, Art, and Religion. ABEL STEVENS, EDITOR. VOLUME I. JULY TO DECEMBER, 1852. New-York: PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PHILLIPS, 200 MULBERRY-STREET. 1852. THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE. JULY, 1852. PERIODICAL LITERATURE. THE publishers of the NATIONAL MAG- excess of fragmentary literature. AZINE doff their hats and make their best bow to the "reading public." If they appear not in the best presentation dress, it is owing to their disposition to be prompt and punctual in their new duties. They have had to choose July or January as the convenient semi-annual period for their introduction: to delay till the latter would be neither good enterprise nor seemly courtesy; and yet the choice of the former has left them but little time between the conception and the execution of their design. The arrangements necessary for the fulfillment of all that their Prospectus promises have, however, been mostly organized; and if it is not a pertinent reason for congratulation to the public, yet they do flatteringly congratulate themselves, as they make their most respectful obeisance, that any present disadvantage in their appearance will afford them an opportunity of future improvement, and of increased claims on the favorable regards of their readers. The advantage which a large number of pages affords for a large variety of contents, and therefore a better adaptation to different tastes, is sufficiently provided within the limits we have chosen, and, in any case, had better be secured by editorial discrimination than by a repletion of matter. Periodical literature, though comparatively modern, has become the chief power of the pen. In England and France, and to a considerable extent in Germany, the best authors avail themselves of it as the most effectual access to the public mird. Its advantages are too manifest to need remark. There are, doubtless, evils also connected with it, to guard against which becomes a grave duty of the conductors of periodical publications. It is necessarily fugitive; it is liable to be superficial, and needs the corrective influence of more substantial reading; it is superabundant, and thus tends to displace this needed corrective influence; it is suited generally more to excite with transient but enervating gratification than to inform and invigorate the popular mind. To a great extent it is characterized by the sheerest fiction, by morbid appeals to the passions, and by tendencies which are at least indirectly adverse to religion. The projectors of this magazine, fully aware of these liabilities, are determined to guard against them with all possible care. In adding another publication to what they acknowledge to be the already superabundant fugitive literature of the times, it will be their endeavor to mitigate the evils of this excess by winnowing the wheat from the chaff by render In their advertisement the publishers have sufficiently defined the character which they propose to give to this magazine. In deciding on the terms of the work, they have had the choice of the usual size and three-dollar price of the most commanding American monthlies, or of a less number of pages at a proportionate price. They have adopted the latter alternative. The charge of three dollars a year, however well repaid in the merits of such a publication, is above the convenience of the mass of the American people. A periodical like the present, containing nearly a hundred pages per number, is as large as most persons finding their work a repository of only the desirable for their leisure reading; there selectest articles. may be too much of a good thing; it would be an evil rather than an advantage, to displace, especially in the reading of youth, the more substantial works by an VOL. I, No. 1.—A There are three means at least by which the unfavorable tendencies mentioned may be checked. First by a selection of such articles |