muel] H.[arrison] Smith
for Richard Lee, No. 131 Chestnut Street." It was commenced as a weekly
journal, but after January 23 it was published biweekly. After February
6 it was printed by Budd and Bartram, and contained frequent articles
favoring the abolition of slavery. It was taken in hand by new printers
on March 6, and sent out by Snowden and McCorkle.

The second volume ran from April 3 to June 13, and was printed by the
proprietor, Richard Lee, at No. 4 Chestnut Street.

The third volume, July 10, to November 15, 1797, informed the patrons of
the publication that the editor "would be assisted by a gentleman whose
literary abilities have been frequently sanctioned by public
approbation." It was printed by "Samuel H. Smith and Thomas Smith."

The fourth volume, with which the publication ended, lived from December
5, 1797, to March 7, 1798.

Philadelphia, in 1793, had been visited by the terrible scourge of
yellow fever. In 1798 the pestilence returned, and repeated in
Philadelphia the horrors recorded of London in the previous century.

During this year certain magazines were published in the city that may
almost be called journals of the plague.

_The Philadelphia Monthly Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge
and Entertainment_, was begun in January, 1798, and printed for Thomas
Condie, stationer in Carter's Alley (No. 20). It lasted through the
year, and made two volumes. The publishers appended to the second volume
"A History of the Pestilence, commonly called Yellow Fever, which
almost desolated Philadelphia in the months of August, September and
October, 1798. By Thomas Condie and Richard Folwell." The history
contains 108 pages, an appendix of 31 pages, and a list of all the names
of those who died of the fever--3,521 in all. In the month of September
alone 2,004 persons died of the plague, being one in every twenty-five
of the total population.

This magazine contained the first long biographical sketch of
Washington. The "Memoirs of George Washington, Esq., Late President of
the U. S.," ran through the months of January, February, March, May and
June, 1798.

It is in this magazine that we find the earliest notice of Mrs. Merry,
who was the first eminent actress that crossed the ocean. "Biographical
Anecdotes of Mrs. Merry of the theatre, Philadelphia, by Thomas Condie,"
April, 1798 (Vol. I, p. 187). With a reputation in England second only
to Mrs. Siddons, this brilliant actress was added