PREFACE. Ar the close of a year's labour, the Editor of a periodical work is, by custom, allowed the privilege of addressing a few words to his Readers, in order to state the efforts which he has made to gain their favour, and to apologize for whatever real or imaginary defects may have been alleged against his publication. This explanatory privilege is peculiarly due to a new Editor. The part of his reckoning with the Public which would naturally be the most agreeable to his own selfish feelings, would undoubtedly be the mention of those congratulatory eulogies which have reached him from friends, and from unknown individuals. But the world is not to be addressed by him with self-complacency; and his recency as an Editor makes it proper that he should rather declare the means by which he has endeavoured to deserve success, than that he should boast of having partially obtained it. Those means, it is true, are likely to be the very same which every other periodical publisher takes credit to himself, more or less, for having employed; and it is not his duty to disparage the merit of rivals and contemporaries in the same pursuit only he will not shrink from a comparison with any of them, in the pains which he has taken to solicit the assistance of able writers; in the terms which he has obtained from the Proprietors of the work, as acknowledgments to its contributors; and in the care which he has exerted, to keep the developement of moral truth and feeling free from all taint of personal animosity or invasion of private character. It is as deeply the interest of the Editor, as of his Readers, that every obvious and remediable defect of the work should be forthwith amended; and he will |