Thomas Hood's daughter, has also rendered a page of Every Month memorable by a poem from her pen.

Of the Liverpool literary supporters of the magazine, it need only be said here that they have aspired to be worthy compeers of these distinguished writers, and that their special knowledge of some subjects on which they have written, while it has much increased the value of their contributions, has been wholly uncontaminated by the "parochialism" which has spoiled so many otherwise excellent local literary miscellanies.

The Illustrations have been a source of some little pride to the conductors of Every Month because respectable and artistic embellishments have never before been attempted in the provinces, and those which appear in this volume may well compare with the most perfect metropolitan specimens in the same department of art.

It need hardly be added, that if any one is sensible of the formidable difficulties of such a publication as this, it is those who are responsible for the appearance of Every Month. That they have in any great degree overcome them, or that their magazine is at all what it may become, if fostered and believed in by the educated circles of Liverpool, they do not pretend. But they record for their own encouragement, that the obstacles they have already surmounted proved less terrible than they appeared afar off. Moreover, they confess for the satisfaction of the public, that they have found their way clearer as they advanced.

The experience of the first volume has taught them the spirit in which Every Month should be conducted, and has inspired them with an ambition which they invite the educated public of Liverpool to aid them in fulfilling. The late Miss Lucy Aikin satirically reproached Dr. Channing for supposing that any one in London could be conscious of the existence of an author who lived at Sheffield; and it is undeniable that, for the amount of intelligence and culture which prevails in the provinces, they are, in a literary point of view, too much overshadowed by the Metropolis.

The conductors of Every Month aspire to prove that Liverpool can produce magazine literature, not only good in itself, but supplying a real intellectual need of a vast and important community, in a way in which it could not be supplied from without. They promise and undertake that the merits of their publication shall advance in full proportion to the cordiality with which this ambition is approved and encouraged by the enlightened public of the

town.

"THERE WAS A MAN SITTING, LIKE AN EMBLEM OF SOLITUDE, PLACIDLY ON THE BANKS OF THE TRENT, BOTTOM FISHING

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ABSENCE

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