ed because they are unknown;
but the unknown man of force and quality is of all others the man whom
the editor welcomes to his page. He knows that there is always a danger
that the reigning favorite may fail to please; that at any rate, in the
order of things, he is passing away, and that if the magazine is not to
pass away with the men who have made it, there must be a constant
infusion of fresh life. Few editors are such fools and knaves as to
let their personal feeling disable their judgment; and the young writer
who gets his manuscript back may be sure that it is not because the
editor dislikes him, for some reason or no reason. Above all, he can
trust me that his contribution has not been passed unread, or has
failed of the examination it merits. Editors are not men of infallible
judgment, but they do use their judgment, and it is usually good.

The young author who wins recognition in a first-class magazine has
achieved a double success, first, with the editor, and then with the
best reading public. Many factitious and fallacious literary
reputations have been made through books, but very few have been made
through the magazines, which are not only the best means of living, but
of outliving, with the author; they are both bread and fame to him. If
I insist a little upon the high office which this modern form of
publication fulfils in the literary world, it is because I am impatient
of the antiquated and ignorant prejudice which classes the magazines as
ephemeral. They are ephemeral in form, but in substance they are not
ephemeral, and what is best in them awaits its resurrection in the
book, which, as the first form, is so often a lasting death. An
interesting proof of the value of the magazine to literature is the
fact that a good novel will have wider acceptance as a book from having
been a magazine serial.

I am not sure that the decay of the book is not owing somewhat to the
decay of reviewing. This does not now seem to me so thorough, or even
so general as it was some years ago, and I think the book oftener
comes to the buyer without the warrant of a critical estimate than it
once did. That is never the case with material printed in a magazine
of high class. A well-trained critic, who is bound by the strongest
ties of honor and interest not to betray either his employer or his
public, has judged it, and his practical approval is a warrant of
quality.

VI.

Under the regime of the great lit