t, I doubt whether it will long
continue in any shape at all. Its crack article is always reprinted in
another form; and oracular as its pages are deemed by the clannish
provincials of Boston, its general contents seldom go down with the
public. The truth is, no one honestly prefers porridge to roast-beef;
and in spite of a natural leaning to buff and blue, Jonathan will not be
diverted from his luxurious repasts in Maga, by anything less "hot in
the mouth."

I remember that, in one of those Ambrosial Noctes, some one remarked in
auld-lang-syne, that Maga is a ubiquity. The Shepherd assented, for he
had seen the head of Geordy alike in the hut and the hall; beaming the
same by the mirrored fire-light of the manorial villa, and "by the
peat-lowe frae the ingle o' the auld clay biggin." But think, my dear
Godfrey, what a flow of the _decalect_ would have gushed from that child
of the Yarrow, had he beheld, with me, the pirated Maga scattered
through the length and breadth of this immense republic, and devoured
with equal delight by the self-congratulating native of Massachusetts
Bay, and the home-sick immigrant of Oregon. Here, too, Maga is
ubiquitous. If you make your summer tour through the States of New
England, and stop to visit its priggish little colleges, and biggish
little schools, you shall find it on many a sophister's table, and in
many a schoolboy's hands; or, ten to one, as you pass the windows of the
barracks where they keep their terms, you will chance to hear some
full-voiced youth adding a nasal rhetoric to Maga's pages, as he retails
them, through clouds of cigar-smoke, to his assembled companions. To
your surprise, you will find Maga in every library and reading-room from
the Independent Union Lyceum of Jeffersonville, in New Hampshire, to the
Congressional lobbies at Washington. And I assure you, they not only
take it in, but they read it out and out. Often, when I have wanted but
a glimpse at its leader, I have found it, like _The Times_ at a country
inn, in the grasp of some sturdy monopolist, exploring it inch by inch,
and only pausing at intervals, to wipe his glasses, and renew his pinch
of snuff. Along the shores of the Hudson, in those snug little villas
that peep forth from the thick trees and copsewood, Maga is quite as
universal, but is found in more palmy estate. There--whether your
retreat from the city be to the banks of Westchester, to the glens of
the Highlands, or to the table-lands tha