be accomplished. Saturday night appears
to be the only night on which those connected with these immense,
undertakings can be said to have any repose from year's end to year's
end. What a life of toil what an unnatural life must theirs be, who
thus cater during the hours of darkness for the information and
amusement of the mass who have slept soundly through the night, and rise
to be instructed by the labour of their vigils! It can be effected in
no other country in the world. It is another link in the great chain of
miracles, which proves the greatness of England.

The editors of these papers must have a most onerous task. It is not
the writing of the leading article itself, but the obligation to write
that article every day, whether inclined or not, in sickness or in
health, in affliction, distress of mind, winter and summer, year after
year, tied down to one task, remaining in one spot. It is something
like the walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours. I have a
fellow-feeling for them, for I know how a monthly periodical will wear
down one's existence. In itself it appears nothing--the labour is not
manifest nor is it the labour--it is the continual attention which it
requires. Your life becomes as it were the magazine. One month is no
sooner corrected and printed than on comes the other. It is the stone
of Sisyphus--an endless repetition of toil--a constant weight upon the
mind--a continual wearing upon the intellect and spirits, demanding all
the exertion of your faculties, at the same time that you are compelled
to do the severest drudgery. To write for a magazine is very well, but
to edit one is to condemn yourself to slavery.

Magazine writing, as it is generally termed, is the most difficult of
all writing, and but few succeed in it; the reason of which is obvious--
it must always be what is termed "up to the mark."

Any one who publishes a work in one, two, or three volumes, may be
permitted to introduce a dull chapter or two: no one remarks it; indeed,
these dull chapters allow the mind of the reader to relax for the time,
and, strange to say, are sometimes favourable to the author. But in
magazine-writing these cannot be permitted; the reader requires
excitement, and whether the article be political or fictitious, there
requires a condensation of matter, a pithiness of expression (to enable
you to tell your story in so small a space), which is very difficult to
obtain. Even in continuati