e eyes of a more fortunate investigator. I have done my best to make
the story, dull and dreary as it surely is at times, not unworthy of its
subject, or of the city that it describes, and of which I grow fonder
year by year.

My grateful thanks are due to my friends, Professor H. B. Adams, Dr.
James W. Bright, Mr. Charles R. Hildeburn, Professor John Bach McMaster,
Hon. S. W. Pennypacker and Mr. F. D. Stone, for thoughtful suggestions
and valuable information.

I am deeply indebted to Mr. George W. Childs for his unfailing interest
and assistance. To Mr. George R. Graham, Dr. Thomas Dunn English, Mr.
John Sartain and Mr. Frank Lee Benedict I owe some of the most important
facts in this little volume.

ALBERT H. SMYTH.

_Philadelphia, 5 February, 1892,
126, South Twenty-second Street._

"Sweet Philadelphia! lov'liest of the lawn,"
Where rising greatness opes its pleasing dawn,
Where daring commerce spreads th' advent'rous sail,
Cleaves thro' the wave, and drives before the gale,
Where genius yields her kind conducting lore,
And learning spreads its inexhausted store:--
Kind seat of industry, where art may see
Its labours foster'd to its due degree,
Where merit meets the due regard it claims,
Tho' envy dictates and tho' malice blames:--
Thou fairest daughter of Columbia's train,
The great emporium of the western plain;--
Best seat of science, friend to ev'ry art,
That mends, improves, or dignifies the heart.

_The Philadelphiad_, Vol. I, p. 6, 1784.

INTRODUCTION.

To relate the history of the Philadelphia magazines is to tell the story
of Philadelphia literature. The story is not a stately nor a splendid
one, but it is exceedingly instructive. It helps to exhibit the process
of American literature as an evolution, and it illustrates perilous and
important chapters in American history. For a hundred years Pennsylvania
was the seat of the ripest culture in America. The best libraries were
to be found here, and the earliest and choicest reprints of Latin and
English classics were made here. James Logan, a man of gentle nature and
a scholar of rare attainments, had gathered at Stenton a library that
comprehended books "so scarce that neither price nor prayers could
purchase them." John Davis, the satirical English traveller, who said of
Princeton that it was "a place more famous for its college than its
learning," did justice, despi