ations of my friends, but you
positively provoke them to go over to your adversary."

It seemed impossible to exercise any control over the editors, and
Murray had no alternative left but to expostulate, and if his
expostulations were unheeded, to retire from the magazine. The last
course was that which he eventually decided to adopt, and the end of the
partnership in _Blackwood's Magazine_, which had long been anticipated,
at length arrived. Murray's name appeared for the last time on No. 22,
for January 1819; the following number bore no London publisher's name;
but on the number for March the names of T. Cadell and W. Davies were
advertised as the London agents for the magazine.

On December 17, 1819, L1,000 were remitted to Mr. Murray in payment of
the sum which he had originally advanced to purchase his share, and his
connection with _Blackwood's Magazine_ finally ceased. He thereupon
transferred his agency for Scotland to Messrs. Oliver & Boyd, with whose
firm it has ever since remained. The friendly correspondence between
Murray and Blackwood nevertheless continued, as they were jointly
interested in several works of importance.

In the course of the following year, "Christopher North" made the
following statement in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in "An Hour's Tete-a-tete
with the Public":

"The Chaldee Manuscript, which appeared in our seventh number, gave us
both a lift and a shove. Nothing else was talked of for a long while;
and after 10,000 copies had been sold, it became a very great rarity,
quite a desideratum.... The sale of the _Quarterly_ is about 14,000, of
the _Edinburgh_ upwards of 7,000.... It is not our intention, at
present, to suffer our sale to go beyond 17,000.... Mr. Murray, under
whose auspices our _magnum opus_ issued for a few months from Albemarle
Street, began to suspect that we might be eclipsing the _Quarterly
Review_. No such eclipse had been foretold; and Mr. Murray, being no
great astronomer, was at a loss to know whether, in the darkness that
was but too visible, we were eclipsing the _Quarterly_, or the
_Quarterly_ eclipsing us. We accordingly took our pen, and erased his
name from our title-page, and he was once more happy. Under our present
publishers we carry everything before us in London."

Mr. Murray took no notice of this statement, preferring, without any
more words, to be quit of his bargain.

It need scarcely be added that when Mr. Blackwood had got his critics
and contri