is
to be found in the number bearing date February 2, 1799 (page 129).

In consequence of Watters' death, no number of the magazine was
published between August 25, 1798, and February 9, 1799. The property
was then bought from the late editor's mother, and was continued until
June 1, 1799, when it came abruptly to an end, leaving the fourth volume
unfinished and with only 256 pages.

_The Weekly Magazine_ had carried upon its covers in 1798 a proposal to
publish the novel, "Sky Walk, or the Man Unknown to Himself," a few
pages of which had been given in the magazine. The manuscript was known
to be with James Watters, but its fate is unknown; it probably was
destroyed with the rest of the unfortunate editor's papers.

One other Philadelphia publication was terminated in consequence of the
plague, which, although properly classified as a newspaper, is yet of so
much literary and historical interest that it would seem to deserve a
place in this narrative. _Porcupine's Gazette and United States Daily
Advertiser_ was published by William Cobbett on Second Street, opposite
Christ Church. It was first issued on Saturday evening, March 4, 1797.
Up to that time no such cut and thrust weapon had been seen in America,
and no such truculent foul-mouthed editor had plucked a pen out of his
pilcher by the ears on this side of the Atlantic. We had known editors
who were learned in profanity and gifted in vulgarity, but none that had
just such a bitter trick of invective as William Cobbett, or "Peter
Porcupine," as he was pleased to call himself. He was born at Farnham,
in Surrey, in 1762, within a stone's throw of Sir William Temple's Moor
Park, where lived for ten years the greatest master of virile and
virulent English in all the long annals of our literature. It is a
curious coincidence that the first book that fell into the well-nigh
penniless hands of Cobbett was "The Tale of a Tub," and in it he
discovered and appropriated the secret of Jonathan Swift's burning
English.

In Philadelphia, Cobbett advocated the extremest Tory principles, and
requested the contributors to his paper, "whether they write on their
business or mine, to pay the postage, and place it to my account. This
is a regulation I have been obliged to adopt to disappoint certain
Democratic blackguards, who, to gratify their impotent malice and put me
to expense, send me loving epistles full of curses and bawdry."

During the prevalence of the plague, Cobbett