" The first number
contained forty-four pages, measuring about six inches by eight. The
scope and object of the Magazine, as defined in the Preface, do not
vary essentially from the line adopted by its predecessors and
contemporaries, and seem, in the main, identical with what we have
recounted above as characteristic of this new movement in letters. The
novelty and extent of the field, and the consequent fewness and
inexperience of the laborers, are curiously shown by the miscellaneous,
_omnium-gatherum_ character of the publication, which served at once as
a Magazine, Review, Journal, Almanac, and General Repository and
Bulletin;--the table of contents of the first number exhibits a list of
subjects which would now be distributed among these various classes of
periodical literature, and perhaps again parcelled out according to the
subdivisions of each. Avowedly neutral in politics and religion, as
became an enterprise which relied upon the patronage of persons of all
creeds and parties, it recorded (usually without comment) the current
incidents of political and religious interest. A summary of news
appeared at the end of each number, under the head of "Historical
Chronicle"; but in the body of the Magazine are inserted, side by side
with what would now be termed "local items," contemporary narratives of
events, many of which have, in the lapse of more than a century,
developed into historical proportions, but which here meet us, as it
were, at first hand, clothed in such homely and impromptu dress as
circumstances might require, with all their little roughnesses,
excrescences, and absurdities upon them,--crude lumps of mingled fact
and fiction, not yet moulded and polished into the rounded periods of
the historian.
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