d sunstruck, is to be over-taken half with scorn for their
pretense, and half with pity for conductors and readers, who had to make
believe very hard to find them quite nice. "They would bear a little
more seasoning certainly," like the marchioness's orange-peel and water;
yet how strong must have been the passion for literature when money was
expended and pains taken with these hopeless ventures. The change in
popular taste, moreover, must not mislead us into supposing that
writings which are arid to us now were necessarily devoid of interest to
contemporary readers. We take down from the shelf the solitary volume
which contains the "American Magazine," and its reading-matter looks as
faded to our eyes as the leather upon the covers, but it was once the
latest publication of the day. We can with little difficulty imagine
that the monthly report of Warren Hastings' trial, with its plan of the
High Court at Westminster, would have an interest at the time quite as
reasonable in its way as that which held readers of journals, not so
long extinct, over the details of the Tichborne case. It is in the field
of polite literature that our later taste refuses to discover anything
in common with the readers of the "American Magazine." What impresses
one most in such a periodical is the value which the conductors set upon
American historical material. This was offered to the public with all
the assurance which now attends the promise of a great serial story. The
explanation may most reasonably be found in the fact, that the
subscribers to any such magazine at the time must have been sought among
the well educated, and this class had been used chiefly to a serious
view of literature.

The "American Magazine" was Webster's venture, and in the Belknap and
Hazard correspondence one may find some curious incidents in the
struggle for existence which the magazine had. It should be premised
that neither of these gentlemen--and they represented the most
cultivated class of the day--had much confidence in Webster. They
nicknamed him the "Monarch," possibly from some assumption and arrogance
in his tone, and he is rarely mentioned by them except in a slighting
manner. "_I_ think the _Monarch_ a literary puppy, from what little I
have seen of him," writes Hazard to Belknap. "He certainly does not want
understanding, and yet there is a mixture of self-sufficiency,
all-sufficiency, and at the same time a degree of insufficiency about
him, whic