The premature mortality characteristic of some of our own
magazine-literature was, even at this early period, painfully apparent:
none of the publications we have named survived their twelfth year,
most of them lived less than half that period. A great diversity in the
style and quality of their contents, as well as in external appearance,
is, of course, observable, and it somewhat requires the eye of faith to
see within their rusty and faded covers the germ of that gigantic
literary plant which, in this year of Grace, 1860, counts in the city
of Boston alone nearly one hundred and fifty periodical publications,
(about one-third being legitimate magazines,) perhaps as many more in
the other New England cities and towns, and a progeny of unknown, but
very considerable extent, throughout the Union.
Apart even from their value to the historiographer and the antiquary,
few relics of the past are more suggestive or interesting than the old
magazine or newspaper. The houses, furniture, plate, clothing, and
decorations of the generations which have preceded us possess their
intrinsic value, and serve also to link by a thousand associations the
mysterious past with the actual and living present; but the old
periodical brings back to us, beside all this, the bodily presence, the
words, the actions, and even the very thoughts of the people of a
former age.
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