rently here. Instead of
_purchasing_ our newspapers and magazines we subscribe for them."

Alack-a-day! the world went very well in the consulship of Plancus! No
doubt even in the best and soundest of their times the magazines did
suffer by the subscription plan. The remaining stock of the _Analectic
Magazine_ was sold for seven cents a volume in sheets, and the stock of
the _Literary Gazette_, its successor, brought but six and a quarter
cents per pound.

Hall took the opportunity presented by the publication of "The Lives of
the Signers," by his friend and contributor, John Sanderson, to trouble
the deaf public again with his bootless cries:

"Oh! that we could boast a reading public; and that we could say, with
truth, that any other books than a few novels and poems and, generally,
an elegant folio Bible, kept for ornament and family dignity, were to be
found in half the splendid mansions of Philadelphia. But 'we can procure
the book at the Philadelphia Library.' Yes, and the author of an
excellent work must be left to beg and starve, and his wife and children
must be doomed to penury because their natural protector was a literary
man and an author, who conferred honour on his species. _Burn_ the
Philadelphia Library, we say. Aye! _burn_ it! if this must be its
influence, to deprive meritorious authors and enterprising artists of
their sustenance and of the means of continuing their labours. Let those
who cannot afford to purchase valuable works, who wish to peruse scarce
tomes, the work of former generations, resort to the library; but let
our rich merchants, our thrifty lawyers and the elegantly neat Quaker
proprietors of the soil of this city, who have sons and daughters to be
educated for usefulness and happiness, be ashamed to creep into the
repository of rare, ancient and learned volumes, and ask in a soft voice
of the librarian, '_Is Sanderson's Biography in?_' and to add, '_My
daughters wish to see it._'"

In 1822 the _Port Folio_ was reduced to making selections from the
literary and political journals of Europe after the manner of _The
Select Reviews_ which Ewing had edited.

The final suspension of the _Port Folio_ was preceded by an
international quarrel. John Neal was in England in 1834, and his offer
to write for _Blackwood's Magazine_ in that year a series of sketches of
"American writers" was accepted, and the first instalment appeared in
_Blackwood's_ of September, 1824, page 305. The author cou