he book is not of sufficiently
rapid and frequent production. The monthly magazine just hits the
happy medium, enabling the writer to present himself twelve times
a year before a host of readers, in whose memories he is thus kept
fresh, yet allowing him space enough to develope his thought, and
time enough to do his talent justice in each article. Then, too,
on the score of emolument, justly recognised now as a very
essential matter, and legitimately entitled to grave
consideration, the magazine offers advantages not within the reach
of either book or newspaper. . . . BUT after all, the great point
is, that magazines are more read than any other kind of
publications. They just adapt themselves to the leisure of the
business man, and the taste of the idler; to the spare half hours
of the notable housewife and the languid inertia of the
fashionable lady. They can be dropped into a valise or a
carpet-bag as a welcome provision for the wants of a journey by
steam-boat or rail-road, when the country through which the
traveller passes offers nothing attractive to be seen, or the eyes
are weary of seeing; they while away delightfully the tedious
hours of a rainy day in summer, and afford the most pleasant
occupation through the long evenings of winter.'

Touching the matter of payment for magazine articles: Mr. WILLIS informs
us that many of the American magazines pay to their more eminent
contributors nearly three times the amount for a printed page that is paid
by English magazines to the best writers in Great-Britain; and he
instances GODEY and GRAHAM as paying often twelve dollars a page to their
principal contributors. This refers to _a few_ 'principal' writers only,
as we have good reason to know, having been instrumental in sending
several acceptable correspondents to those publications, who have received
scarcely one-fourth of the sum mentioned. Mr. WILLIS adds, however, that
many good writers write for nothing, and that 'the number of clever
writers has increased so much that there are thousands who can get no
article accepted.' All this is quite true. There is no magazine in America
that has paid so large sums to distinguished native writers as the
KNICKERBOCKER. Indeed, our _most_ distinguished American writer was never
a contributor to any other of our Monthlys than this. The books of this
Magazine show, that independent of the Editor's