Chapter II: Part 2

"The arch high bending doth convey,
In a hieroglyphic way,
What in noble style like this
Our united empire is!
The pillars, which support the weight,
Are, each of them, a mighty State;
Thirteen and more the vista shows,
As to vaster length it grows;
For new States shall added be,
To the great confederacy,
And the mighty arch shall rise
From the cold Canadian skies,
And shall bend through heaven's broad way
To the noble Mexic Bay!
In the lofty arch are seen
Stars of lucid ray--thirteen!
When other States shall rise,
Other stars shall deck these skies,
There, in wakeful light to burn
O'er the hemisphere of morn."

As might be expected from Brackenridge's management, the magazine was full of wit and scurrility. The January (1779) number contained Witherspoon's delightful satire upon James Rivington, the Royal Printer, of New York. It was a parody of Rivington's "Petition to Congress," and was called "The Humble Representation and Earnest Supplication of J. R., Printer and Bookseller in New York--To his Excellency Henry Laurens, Esq." And Dr. Witherspoon, who was President of Princeton College when Brackenridge was a student there, supplied his former pupil during his year's editorship with many a sly sarcasm and bit of grave philosophy.

"The Cornwalliad, an Heroic Comic Poem," was begun in March, 1779, and was continued through several numbers. It described various incidents in the British retreat to New York after the battles of Trenton and Princeton.

In the January number was begun a series of articles under the title of "The Cave of Vanhest," concerning which the following letter was written October 2, 1779, by Mrs. Sarah Bache to Benjamin Franklin: "The publisher of _The United States Magazine_ wrote to you some time ago to desire you would send him some newspapers, and sent you some of his first numbers. I suppose you never received them. I now send six, not that I think you will find much entertainment in them, but you may have heard that there was such a performance, and may like to see what it is; besides, its want of entertainment may induce you to send something that may make the poor man's magazine more useful and pleasing. Tell Temple 'The Cave of Vanhest' is a very romantic description of Mr. and Mrs. Blair's house and family; the young ladies that the traveller describes and is in love with are children, one seven months younger than our Benjamin, and the Venus just turned of five."

The most amusing episode in the history of the magazine was the quarrel that arose between its editor and General Charles Lee. Brackenridge published in full, in Vol. I, p. 141, a letter written by "an officer of high rank in the American service to Miss F----s (Franks), a young lady of this city." The letter contained a humorous challenge growing out of a merry war in which Miss F. had said that "he wore green breeches patched with leather," and the writer declared that he wore "true sherry vallies," that is, trousers reaching to the ankle with strips of leather on the inside of the thigh. Lee immediately published in the _Pennsylvania Advertiser_ an angry letter upon "the impertinence and stupidity of the compiler of that wretched performance with the pompous title of the magazine of the United States." In reply, Brackenridge compared Lee, as usual, to his favorite ourang-outang, and added: "You are neither Christian, Jew, Turk nor Infidel, but a _metempsychosist_! You have been heard to say that you expect when you die to transmigrate to a Siberian fox-hound, and to be messmate to Spado." Upon this Lee, in a rage, called at the office with the intention of assaulting the editor. Brackenridge's son cleverly relates what followed. General Lee "knocked at the door, while Mr. Brackenridge, looking out of the upper-story window, inquired what was wanting. 'Come down,' said he, 'and I'll give you as good a horse-whipping as any rascal ever received.' 'Excuse me, General,' said the other, 'I would not go down for two such favors.'"

Besides the publication of the State Constitution and a windy war over female head-dress and hard money, there is little else to say of _The United States Magazine_. But near the close of the volume the appearance of an imitation of Psalm 137, with the foot-note, "by a young gentleman to whom, in the course of this work, we are greatly indebted," brings for the first time into notice, if not into prominence, a writer destined to display the finest sense of poetic form and the nicest delicacy of poetic sentiment to be found among his contemporaries in America, and who, through his opposition to Hamilton and the Federalists, should win from Washington the epithet of "that rascal FRENEAU."

Philip Freneau was born in New York in 1752; he had been a classmate at Princeton of James Madison and Brackenridge, and on his return from the Bermudas in 1779, he assisted the latter in his editorial work in Philadelphia. The first edition of his poems was prepared in Philadelphia by Francis Bailey, the publisher of _The United States Magazine_, in 1786.

Freneau was one of the first American poets to be read and appreciated in England. At the time when Byron was making merry with the notion of an American poet bearing the name of Timothy (Dwight), Campbell was appropriating a line, "The hunter and the deer--a shade" from Freneau's "Indian Burying Ground," and knitting it into "O'Connor's Child," and Sir Walter Scott in "Marmion," by altering a single word, was transparently concealing his theft from "The Heroes of Eutaw."

In December, 1779, the suspension of the magazine was announced, the editor declaring in explanation that the publication was "undertaken at a time when it was hoped the war would be of short continuance, and the money, which had continued to depreciate, would become of proper value. But these evils having continued to exist through the whole year, it has been greatly difficult to carry on the publication; and we shall now be under the necessity of suspending it for some time--until an established peace and a fixed value of the money shall render it convenient or possible to take it up again."

For seven years no one attempted another magazine, and then in September, 1786, by a combination of publishers, _The Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany_, modelled upon the _Gentleman's Magazine_ and the _London Magazine_, began its career. It was the most ambitious enterprise of the kind that had yet been undertaken in America. The printing facilities were still very limited, and the subscription lists for all publications small. In 1786 there was one daily paper printed in Philadelphia, and but three or four weekly ones. In the same year four printers after much deliberation agreed to print a small edition of the New Testament. "Before the Revolution a spelling-book, impressed upon brown paper, with the interesting figure of Master Dilworth as a frontispiece, was the extent of American skill in printing and engraving." Improvements came very rapidly, and before the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century Barlow's _Columbiad_ was magnificently printed in Philadelphia, and the great undertakings of Rees' "Cyclopædia" and Wilson's "Ornithology" entered upon. The monthly expense of printing the _Columbian_ was said to be £100, which was paid to mechanics and manufacturers of the United States. The magazine was inaugurated by Matthew Carey, T. Siddons, C. Talbot, W. Spotswood and J. Trenchard.

Carey published, in the first number, "The Life of General Greene," whose portrait was the first in the volume. He also contributed "The Shipwreck," "A Philosophical Dream" (a vision of 1850), and "Hard Times." In the "Philosophical Dream" Carey made the first suggestion of a canal to unite the waters of the Delaware and Ohio. He withdrew from the _Columbian Magazine_ in December, 1786, finding that the quintuple team could not work well together.

Charles Cist, another of the combination, was born at St. Petersburg, August 15, 1738, was graduated at Halle, and, upon coming to Philadelphia in 1773, entered into partnership with Melchior Steiner, with whom he published Paine's "Crisis"--"These are the times that try men's souls." He died in Philadelphia, December 2, 1805.

John Trenchard became sole proprietor of the publication in January, 1789. He was an engraver by profession, having studied under James Smithers, and engraved most of the plates for the magazine. His son, Edward Trenchard, entered the navy, visited England and induced Gilbert Fox, then a 'graver's apprentice, to return with him to America. In this country Fox became an actor, and for him Joseph Hopkinson wrote "Hail Columbia."

"The Foresters, an American Tale," was written for the _Columbian_ by Jeremy Belknap, who sought to portray humorously in it the history of the country and the formation of the Constitution.

The _Columbian_ of May, 1789, gave an elaborate account of Washington's progress to New York, with the notable receptions at Gray's Ferry and at Trenton.

In July, 1790, the name of the magazine was changed to "The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, by a Society of Gentlemen." Benjamin Rush was one of its most faithful contributors. A number of the engravings and several of the articles illustrated the agricultural improvements of the times. John Penington contributed in 1790 "Chemical and Economical Essays to Illustrate the Connection between Chemistry and the Arts." The editor of the _Columbian Magazine_ for nearly three years was Alexander James Dallas, a sketch of whose life is to be found in a later magazine, the _Port Folio_, of March, 1817. Dallas was born in Jamaica, but received his earliest education near London from James Elphinstone, through whom he became acquainted with Dr. Johnson and Dr. Franklin. He became a citizen of Philadelphia in 1785, studied law, edited the _Columbian_, held various offices of trust in the State, and became successively Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of War for the United States. Robert Charles Dallas, brother of the editor, author of the "History of the Maroons" and a score of other works, is best known as the friend and counsellor of Lord Byron. His last work was his "Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron from 1808 to 1814." It was at his request that Byron published "Childe Harold," and to him Byron gave the profits arising from that and four other of his poems. Dallas was related to Lord Byron through the marriage of his sister with the poet's uncle. George Mifflin Dallas, son of the editor of the _Columbian_, became Vice-President of the United States under President Polk. His commencement oration at Princeton, in 1809, on the "Moral Influence of Memory," is printed in the _Port Folio_ of that year (Vol. II, p. 396[7]). Two members of the family, Rev. A. R. C. Dallas, son of Robert Charles, and his cousin, Rev. Charles Dallas, served at Waterloo, and were afterward prominent in philanthropic work.

[7] John Quincy Adams' commencement oration "On the Importance and Necessity of Public Faith to the Well-being of a Government," was inserted in the _Columbian Magazine_ (1787) by Jeremy Belknap.

A. J. Dallas reported for the _Herald_ and for the _Columbian_ the debates of the State Convention until the Federalists, annoyed by the publications, withdrew their subscriptions from the _Columbian_, which led Benjamin Rush to write to Noah Webster (February 13, 1788): "From the impudent conduct of Mr. Dallas in misrepresenting the proceedings and speeches in the Pennsylvania Convention, as well as from his deficiency of matter, the _Columbian Magazine_, of which he is editor, is in the decline."

Nevertheless the _Columbian_ continued to prosper. The circulation at times made necessary a second edition, which was reset at considerable expense, and often contained additional articles.

The final number appeared in December, 1792. The principal motive for the suspension, the editors declared, "is to be found in the present law respecting the establishment of the post-office, which totally prohibits the circulation of monthly publications through that channel on any other terms than that of paying the highest postage on private letters or packages." A futile attempt was made to continue the magazine in January, 1793, under the title, "_The Columbian Museum, or Universal Asylum_: John Parker, Phila." The only number that I have seen contains sixty pages.

In January, 1787, or one month after withdrawing from the management of _The Columbian Magazine_, Matthew Carey published the first number of _The American Museum, or Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces, etc., Prose and Poetical_, which proved to be the first really successful literary undertaking of the kind in America. General Washington said of it in a letter dated June 25, 1788: "No more useful literary plan has ever been undertaken in America." John Dickinson in the same year also commended it. Governor Wm. Livingstone wrote: "It far exceeds in my opinion every attempt of the kind which from any other American press ever came into my hands." Among others who swelled the chorus of praise were Governor Randolph of Virginia, Ezra Stiles of Yale, Timothy Dwight, Francis Hopkinson and Provost Ewing. "Citizen" Brissot, in his "New Travels in the United States" (1788), considered Carey's _Museum_ to be "equal to the best periodical published in Europe." The first number attracted great attention; Franklin furnished the first article, "Consolation for America;" Benjamin Rush followed with an "Address to the People of the United States",[8] the burden of which was that the "Revolution is not over;" already the cry was going up for civil service reform to deliver the country from the oppression of politics. The edition--one thousand copies--was soon exhausted. "I had not means," said Carey, "to reprint it. This was a very serious injury, many persons who intended to subscribe declining because I could not furnish them the whole of the numbers."

[8] Benjamin Rush's papers in the _Museum_ and in the _Columbian_ were printed in book form, "Essays--Literary, Moral and Philosophical," 1798.

The work of editorship was no novelty to Matthew Carey. He had had full and fiery experience in both Ireland and America. He was born in Ireland in 1760, and became acquainted with Dr. Franklin in Paris while living there to avoid prosecution at home. He was imprisoned for the publication of the _Volunteer's Journal_ in Dublin. He arrived in Philadelphia, November 15, 1784, and in the following January began to publish the _Pennsylvania Evening Herald_, the first newspaper in the United States to furnish accurate reports of legislative debates. He was wretchedly poor, but Lafayette laid the foundation of his fortune by a generous gift of four hundred dollars in notes of the Bank of North America. The first pamphlet that Carey published in Ireland was a treatise on duelling. Soon after his arrival in America he gave a practical illustration of the text by engaging in a duel with Colonel Oswald, in which he received a wound that stayed him at home for more than a year.

_The American Museum_ was the first magazine in Philadelphia to reflect faithfully the internal state of America. Bradford's magazines, intensely loyal, looked across the ocean and saw little at home worthy of record. Paine and Brackenridge expended their erratic genius in abusive satire upon the Tories; the _Columbian Magazine_ avoided the serious political problems of the times, and granted much of its space to agricultural improvements and the beginnings of manufactures.

In almost every page, however, of the _Museum_ the reader catches glimpses of the anxieties and disorders of the critical years of party strife that attended the making and adoption of the Constitution. The social order was weak, there was a general revolt against taxation. "I am uneasy and apprehensive, more so than during the war," wrote Jay to Washington, June 27, 1786. David Humphreys, one of the "Hartford Wits," who came into prominence at the close of the war, and who at this time (1786) was engaged in the composition of the _Anarchiad_ and other satirical verse, aimed at the disorder of the time, contributed to _The Museum_ his poem on the "Happiness of America." Francis Hopkinson's gentle prose satires and his poems of revolutionary incidents reappeared in its pages. Anthony Benezet uttered his oft-repeated protest against the iniquity of slavery. Philip Freneau's odes found place almost monthly in the poet's corner. Through several numbers ran a series of articles, though not for the first time published, "On the Character of Philadelphians," signed Tamoc Caspipina, the pseudonym of the Rev. Jacob Duché, brother-in-law of Francis Hopkinson, and derived from the initial letters of his title as "the assistant minister of Christ's Church and St. Peter's in Philadelphia, in North America."

I cull from volume five a few specimen articles to illustrate the wealth of local and national history embedded in this popular periodical:

VOL. V, p. 185.--Report on the petition of Hallam and Henry to license a theatre in Philadelphia.

P. 197.--Account of the battle of Bunker Hill.

P. 220.--Letters of "James Littlejohn"--_i.e._, Timothy Dwight.

P. 233.--Franklin on food.

P. 235.--Duché's Description of Philadelphia.

P. 263.--Insurrection in New Hampshire.

P. 293.--Dr. Franklin's Prussian Edict.

P. 295.--Impartial Chronicle, by W. Livingstone.

P. 300.--Poetical address to Washington, by Governor Livingstone.

P. 363.--Earthquake in New England.

P. 400.--Battle of Long Island.

P. 473.--Franklin's idea of an English school.

P. 488.--"How to Conduct a Newspaper,"--Dr. Rush.

The same cause that led to the suspension of the _Columbian Magazine_ put a period also to the _American Museum_, and in the same month. On December 31, 1792, Matthew Carey, in bidding farewell to the public that had supported his undertaking, ascribed its failure to "the construction, whether right or wrong, of the late Post-Office law, by which the postmaster here has absolutely refused to receive the _Museum_ into the Post-Office on any terms." Although the circulation of the magazine had been large for those days, the publisher had derived small profit from his venture. The subscription price, $2.40 per annum for two volumes, making together more than one thousand pages, was too low; and during the six years, between 1786 and 1792, Carey was always poor, and in his _Autobiography_ declares that during those years he was never at any one time the possessor of four hundred dollars. But in those years of personal penury and public turmoil, Matthew Carey laid the foundation of the American system of social science.

Six years after the suspension of the magazine, Carey attempted to re-animate it, and published _The American Museum, or Annual Register of Fugitive Pieces, Ancient and Modern_, for the year 1798, printed for Matthew Carey. Philadelphia: W. & R. Dickson, Lancaster. Matthew Carey, whose introduction was dated June 20, 1799, wrote of the renascent publication, "If this _coup d'essai_ be favorably received, I shall publish a continuation of it yearly." No other volume was ever issued.

_The Medical Examiner_ was published in 1787, and made one volume octavo of 424 pages. It was edited by J. B. Biddle.

_The Philadelphia Magazine_, the first that ever bore the name of the city, made two volumes. The first volume extended from February to December, 1788, and contained 448 pages. The second volume began in January, 1789, and closed in November of the same year (416 pages). The magazine is said to have been edited by Elhanan Winchester. His "Lectures on Prophecies" are bound up with the second volume of the periodical. The lectures were originally issued in each volume.

_The Arminian Magazine_, Vol. I, 1789, pp. 600; Vol. II, 1790, pp. 620, was published by Prichard and Hall, in Market Street, and was edited by John Dickins, the scholarly pastor of the church that he named the "Methodist Episcopal."

In magazines addressed to women, Philadelphia has always been fertile and successful. "The first attempt of the kind made in this country" was "_The Lady's Magazine and Repository of Entertaining Knowledge_, Vol. I, for 1792. By a Literary Society. Philadelphia: W. Gibbons, North Third Street, No. 144."

The motto chosen by the editors was "the mind t'improve and yet amuse;" and the fair sex, who are supposed to have received the proposals for the work with "extraordinary marks of applause," are assured that "the greatest deference shall be paid to their literary communications," and they are promised month by month offerings of "the most _lively prose_ and _pathetic verse_."

The magazine contains anecdotes, poems, female correspondence, similitude between the Egyptians and Abyssinians, manners and customs of the Egyptians, schemes for increasing the power of the fair sex, essays on ladies' feet, etc., etc. It began June, 1792, and lived until May, 1793.

_The Philadelphia Minerva_ was filled with old and new fugitive pieces. It was published weekly by W. T. Palmer, at No. 18 North Third Street, beginning in 1795 and ceasing in July, 1798.

_The Pennsylvania Magazine_, of the very slightest significance, was issued in 1795, and made one volume.

_The American Monthly Review or Literary Journal_. Jan.-Aug., 1795. Phila.: S.[amuel] H.[arrison] Smith.

_The American Annual Register, or Historical Memoirs of the United States_, made one volume in 1796.

_The Literary Museum, or Monthly Magazine_. Jan.-June, 1797. "Printed by Derrick and Sharples, and sold by the principal booksellers in Phila. Price, one quarter of a dollar."

_The Methodist Magazine_ was founded by John Dickins in January, 1797, and was edited by him until his death, in 1798 (September 27). It was printed by Henry Tuckness. It was chiefly made up of sermons.

_The American Universal Magazine_ consisted chiefly of selections from other periodicals. The first volume began Monday, January 2, 1797, and was completed March 20, 1797. It was embellished with Du Simitiere's portrait of William Penn. It was "printed by S.[amuel] H.[arrison] Smith for Richard Lee, No. 131 Chestnut Street." It was commenced as a weekly journal, but after January 23 it was published biweekly. After February 6 it was printed by Budd and Bartram, and contained frequent articles favoring the abolition of slavery. It was taken in hand by new printers on March 6, and sent out by Snowden and McCorkle.

The second volume ran from April 3 to June 13, and was printed by the proprietor, Richard Lee, at No. 4 Chestnut Street.

The third volume, July 10, to November 15, 1797, informed the patrons of the publication that the editor "would be assisted by a gentleman whose literary abilities have been frequently sanctioned by public approbation." It was printed by "Samuel H. Smith and Thomas Smith."

The fourth volume, with which the publication ended, lived from December 5, 1797, to March 7, 1798.

Philadelphia, in 1793, had been visited by the terrible scourge of yellow fever. In 1798 the pestilence returned, and repeated in Philadelphia the horrors recorded of London in the previous century.

During this year certain magazines were published in the city that may almost be called journals of the plague.

_The Philadelphia Monthly Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge and Entertainment_, was begun in January, 1798, and printed for Thomas Condie, stationer in Carter's Alley (No. 20). It lasted through the year, and made two volumes. The publishers appended to the second volume "A History of the Pestilence, commonly called Yellow Fever, which almost desolated Philadelphia in the months of August, September and October, 1798. By Thomas Condie and Richard Folwell." The history contains 108 pages, an appendix of 31 pages, and a list of all the names of those who died of the fever--3,521 in all. In the month of September alone 2,004 persons died of the plague, being one in every twenty-five of the total population.

This magazine contained the first long biographical sketch of Washington. The "Memoirs of George Washington, Esq., Late President of the U. S.," ran through the months of January, February, March, May and June, 1798.

It is in this magazine that we find the earliest notice of Mrs. Merry, who was the first eminent actress that crossed the ocean. "Biographical Anecdotes of Mrs. Merry of the theatre, Philadelphia, by Thomas Condie," April, 1798 (Vol. I, p. 187). With a reputation in England second only to Mrs. Siddons, this brilliant actress was added to the American stage by Mr. Wignal, of the Philadelphia Theatre, who had gone abroad in 1796 to recruit his company and, if possible, to engage some first-rate actors in London. Mrs. Merry arrived at New York in October, 1796, and made her first appearance in the Western World in December in the character of _Juliet_. She was the daughter of John Brunton, of the Norwich Theatre, and the wife of "Della Crusca" Merry, the well-known playwright and author.

_The Weekly Magazine of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces and Interesting Intelligence_, was begun February 3, 1798. It was conducted by James Watters, of Willing's Alley, a young man who was the manager for Dobson's American edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The first article in the periodical introduces us to the first professional man of letters in America. It is "The Man at Home," by Charles Brockden Brown. Although unsigned, no one familiar with Brown's style could read a page without discerning him in the short snap-shot sentences of the story. On page 228 of the first volume three pages of the "Sky-Walk" are "extracted from Brown's MSS." The singular title of this unfinished story, which was afterward woven into the web of "Edgar Huntley," seems to have been as puzzling to readers then as now, and it is explained in a stray note on page 318 of the magazine as "a popular corruption of Ski-Wakkee, or Big Spring, the name given by the Lenni Lennaffee (sic) or Delaware Indians to the district where the principal scenes of this novel are transacted." "The Man at Home" ran through thirteen numbers of the first volume, which closed on April 28.

In the second volume (page 193) Brown commenced the publication of his first important novel, "Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of the Year 1793," the first chapter of which appeared June 16, 1798. It contained vivid descriptions of the scenes during the pestilence of 1793-8. Brown's genius naturally dealt with weird and sombre subjects and extraordinary passions and experiences. While occupied with this romantic narrative of the horrors of the plague, his intimate friend, Elihu Hubbard Smith, who had introduced him to the "Friendly Club," in New York, died of the fever, and his own life was for a time in danger by it.

The third volume of the magazine (August 4, 1798-April 6, 1799) was printed by Ezekiel Forman, the young and gifted editor, James Watters, having died of the fever. A commemorative note of the stricken editor 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 ejected his venomous superfluity upon Dr. Benjamin Rush, comparing him to Doctor Sangrado, in Gil Blas, because he advocated blood-letting as a remedy for the fever. Rush, stung into retaliation, sued Cobbett, and recovered from him five thousand dollars. This, together with an additional three thousand dollars, the cost of the suit, ruined Cobbett, and he removed to Bustleton, August 29, 1799, where he continued for a short time to publish his "_Gazette_," weekly. The last barbed arrow, quivering with scorn, was fired from Bustleton, January 13, 1800, and the author returned to England.

Cobbett also published, in Philadelphia, _The Political Censor_, or _Monthly Review_, which lasted from March, 1796, to March, 1797.

A German magazine was published in Philadelphia, in 1798: _Philadelphisches Magazin für die deutschen in Amerika_. Philadelphia: H. and J. R. Kämmerer.

_The Dessert to the True American_ measures a year from July, 1798 to July, 1799.

The last magazine published in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century was the _Philadelphia Magazine and Review, or Monthly Repository of Information and Amusement_. It was begun in January, 1799, and printed for Benjamin Davies, 68 High Street. In announcing this work, the editor alluded to the unsuccess that had attended all efforts to establish magazines in Philadelphia, and he believed the cause to be the spurious patriotism that led the editors to reject whatever was not of native production. The magazine was strongly "anti-Gallican" in character. It closed its career with its first volume.

I have made no mention in this necessarily incomplete enumeration of the eighteenth century magazines of an early religious publication, _The Royal Spiritual Magazine_, by Joseph Crukshank, 8vo, 1771. A few stray numbers exist, but I have never seen a copy of it. How long it was published I do not know.

Christopher Sauer printed, at irregular intervals, in 1764, the _Geistliches Magazien_. There are fifty numbers in the first volume. Sauer cast his own type, and this magazine is therefore printed, as he himself says on page 136 of the second volume, with the first type made in America.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

THE PORT FOLIO.

At the beginning of this century Philadelphia was the most attractive city in America to a young man of brains and ambition. It was the seat of an active social, political and literary life. Poet George Webbe noticed in 1728 the leadership of Philadelphia in all matters pertaining to the higher life of the country, and prophesied:

Rome shall lament her ancient fame declined,
And Philadelphia be the _Athens_ of mankind.

General Lee might petulantly exclaim in 1779, "Philadelphia is not an Athens," and Neal might write in _Blackwood's Magazine_ that the Philadelphians were "mutton-headed Athenians," but the name became a favorite one with which to characterize the thriving Pennsylvania town which exercised such sovereign sway and masterdom over its sister cities. Benjamin West, in a letter to Charles Willson Peale (September 19, 1809), predicts that Philadelphia will in time "become the seat of refinement in all accomplishments ... the _Athens_ of the Western Empire." Harrison Hall and the gentlemen who published and maintained the _Port Folio_ always styled Philadelphia the "_Athens_ of America."

As the capital of the government it was the centre of wealth and fashion. Fine old mansions and gardens adorned Chestnut and High Streets; Judge Tilghman in the Carpenter Mansion, Israel Pemberton in Clarke Hall, Thomas Willing, the merchant prince, at Third and Walnut, and his partner, Robert Morris, at Sixth and High Streets, Edward Shippen at Fourth and Walnut, the Norris family in their home upon the site of the U. S. Bank and Custom House, and in their great mansion at Fair Hill, the Hamiltons at Bush Hill and the Woodlands, dispensed lavish hospitality.

William Bingham, father-in-law of the eminent banker Alexander Baring, who was afterwards Lord Ashburton, entertained in grand style. General Washington drove out from the Morris mansion along the unpaved streets south of Chestnut Street in a coach drawn by six horses and attended by two footmen. In his stables on Minor Street was a stud of twelve or fourteen horses. General John Cadwallader, father-in-law of the second Lord Erskine, in his great house at Second and Spruce, made liberal use of his immense fortune.

In the first year of this century the University of Pennsylvania, which had played so great a part in the Revolution, and to which Louis XVI had, in 1786, made so generous a donation, was removed to its new home in the spacious buildings erected for the executive mansion. The Philadelphia Library, which had been Franklin's first scheme for public improvement, and which had been enriched by the generous gifts of James Logan, was furnishing such opportunities for literary work as were unknown elsewhere. John Quincy Adams sought in vain to cultivate in Boston the "Wistar parties" that Caspar Wistar had made so famous in Philadelphia. One hundred years ago there was only one scientific foundation within this Republic that was not in Philadelphia, and that was the American Academy in Boston. The American Philosophical Society in its venerable hall in State House Yard numbered Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Adams among its members. The best scholars of Europe and America read its "Transactions" or contributed to its "Proceedings." From his private observatory David Rittenhouse made the earliest astronomical observations in this country, and rested his transit instrument upon the ancient stanchions that still maintain their place in the Philosophical Society window looking out upon the fine old trees planted by the father of John Vaughan, secretary and librarian of the society. The only Natural History Museum in this country was opened in 1802 at Third and Lombard by Charles Willson Peale; and far out on the Schuylkill at Gray's Ferry, John Bartram, whom Linnæus called "the greatest natural botanist of the world," had planted the first botanic garden.

The number of foreign exiles who at this time were moving in Philadelphia society gave a cosmopolitan character to the city, and lent to it the air of foreign capitals. Talleyrand, Beaumais, Vicomte de Noailles and his brother-in-law Lafayette, Volney, the Duc de Liancourt, and General Moreau, and at a later date Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, were but a few of the distinguished members of the "French colony."

JOSEPH DENNIE, the most interesting figure among American editors, came to Philadelphia in 1799 as clerk to Timothy Pickering, who was then Secretary of State, and his brilliant social qualities soon won him recognition in the city. "The American Addison" he was called then, a title he had won by the easy grace and pleasing melody of his style.[9] He was born in Boston, August 30, 1768, and was sent to Harvard College, where he proved a jibbing pupil, and was rusticated for a term of six months. He industriously read all the books that were proscribed by the Faculty, and ignored those studies that were recommended to him. His was a brilliant but undisciplined mind, strongly independent, impetuous, fond of contradiction, full of surprises, "studious of change and fond of novelty," as he often defined himself. Soon after beginning the study of law, Dennie wrote, "In the infancy of a profession 'tis chimerical to talk of undeviating integrity. Let hair-brained enthusiasts prate in their closets as loudly as they please to the contrary, a young adventurer in any walk of life must take advantage of the events and weaknesses of his fellow-mortals, or be content to munch turnip in a cell amidst want and obscurity." Of course, all this is very outrageous, but altogether what we should expect from such "unimproved mettle, hot and full." He abandoned the law, and was among the first men in America to devote himself to literature.

[9] When British reviewers styled Dennie "the American Addison," the _Aurora Gazette_ broke forth into the following horse-laugh: "Exult, ye white hills of New Hampshire, redoubtable Monadnock and Tuckaway! Laugh, ye waters of the Winiseopee and Umbagog Lakes! Flow smooth in heroic verse, ye streams of Amorioosack and Androscoggin, Cockhoko and Coritocook! And you, merry Merrimack, be now more merry!"

His first experience in journalism was as editor of the _Tablet_ in Boston, May 19, 1795. The paper lived just thirteen weeks.

Dennie next tried his Bohemian fortunes in Walpole, N. H., and contributed to the _Farmer's Weekly Museum_, a good and popular journal that had been founded in 1790, the papers entitled "The Lay Preacher," upon which rests his literary fame. Of this magazine he became editor in 1796, and at once gathered about him a number of noble swelling spirits who contributed racy and original reading to the "Farmer's" subscribers.[10]

[10] Dennie always remained faithful to his New England friends. T. G. Fessenden had been one of the contributors to the _Farmer's Museum_; when his "Terrible Tractoration" appeared, Dennie wrote to the _Port Folio_, "To Connecticut men studious either of Hudibrastic or solemn poetry, we look with eager eyes for the most successful specimens of the inspiration of the Muse." Fessenden was the last to maintain the fame of the "Hartford Wits;" and the glory of "McFingal," and "The Conquest of Canaan" and the "Anarchiad," and the "Political Green house" and "The Echo" faded with the failing of the _Farmer's Museum_.

The publisher became bankrupt in 1798, and Dennie pilgrimaged to Philadelphia, without fortune and without a patron. His service under Pickering was of short duration.

In connection with Asbury Dickins, a son of John Dickins of the _Methodist Magazine_, he began, January 3, 1801, the publication of the _Port Folio_, by Oliver Oldschool, Esq., the best of Philadelphia magazines, which he continued to edit until his death, in 1812. Dennie's strong personality and engaging qualities of mind and heart attracted attention, and made him many friends. With genuine editorial tact and skill he drew to himself all the literary ability of the city, which was then "the largest and most literary and most intellectually accomplished city in the Union," to quote the words of a later editor of the _Port Folio_, Dr. Charles Caldwell. There was scarcely a more picturesque figure in Philadelphia in the first decade of this century than that presented by the editor of the _Port Folio_. It would be necessary to go to London and to Oliver Goldsmith to find another to outshine this Oliver Oldschool as Buckingham saw him slipping along Chestnut Street to his office "in a pea-green coat, white vest, nankeen small-clothes, white silk stockings and pumps, fastened with silver buckles which covered at least half the foot from the instep to the toe." Dennie was but 44 years of age when he died; Buckingham says he was "a premature victim to social indulgence." Those were the days of hard drinking and of high thinking. Nothing so frugal as a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg would satisfy Dennie's epicurean soul. He was a social creature, and those _noctes ambrosianæ_ of the Tuesday Club when Tom Moore, who celebrated the club in his eighth epistle, or some other lover of Anacreon was the guest, were often kept up until it was too late to go to bed. Wine songs and Martial-like epigrams of pointed indecencies are correspondingly brisk and plentiful in the pages of the _Port Folio_.

In the introduction to the magazine Dennie stated that the word _Port Folio_ was not to be found in Johnson's Dictionary, and proceeded to define it as "a portable repository for fugitive papers." "Editors," he continued, slyly satirizing his contemporaries, "ambitious of sonorous or brilliant titles, frequently select a name not intimately connected with the nature of their work. We hear of the _Mirror_ and the _Aurora_; but what relation has a literary essay with a _polished plane of glass_, or what has politics to do with the _morning_?[11]" The editor began with a "lilliputian page" because he was warned by "the waywardness of the time." "A waywardness which," he explains, "alludes to our indifference to elegant letters, the acrimony of our party bickerings, and to the universal eagerness for political texts and their _commentary_.... Amid such 'wild uproar' the gentle voice of the Muse is scarcely audible." In these early years of the century literature was wretchedly paid. John Davis, the vivacious English writer of travels, offered, in 1801, two novels to any bookseller in the country who would publish them, on the condition of receiving fifty copies. The booksellers of New York could not, he said, undertake them, for they were dead of the fever. It is interesting to find Dennie writing in his introduction, "Literary industry, usefully employed, has a sort of draught upon the bank of opulence, and has the right of entry into the mansion of every Mæcenas.... Authors far elevated above the mire of low avarice have thought it debasement to make literature common and cheap."

[11] The editor of the _Aurora_ retorted in kind, and dubbed the _Port Folio_ "Portable Foolery."

The _Port Folio_ at once sprang into popular favor. In the life of Josiah Quincy, by his son, we read, "The _Port Folio_ was very far superior in literary ability to any magazine or periodical ever before attempted in this country. Indeed, it was no whit behind the best English magazines of that day, and would bear no unfavorable comparison with those of the present time on either side of the water. Its influence was greatly beneficial in raising the standard of literary taste in this country, and in creating a demand for a higher order of periodical literature and for more exact and careful editorship."

Dennie was a daring and devoted lover of England. He had no patience with American innovations that, as it seemed to him, were certain to lose history by being severed from the traditions of England. When the doctrine of social equality was flaunted before him, or the glittering clauses of the Declaration of Independence were quoted to him, his indignation forgot all discretion. He was soon bandying hot words with the _Aurora_, and marking with his scorn every new phase of Americanism. Speaking in his editorial person he declared:

"To gratify the malignancy of fanatics he will not asperse the Government or the Church, the laws or the literature of England. Remembering that we are _at peace_ with that power--that the most wholesome portions of our polity are modelled from hers--that we kneel at shrines and speak a language common to both, he will not flagitiously and foolishly advert to ancient animosities, nor with rash hand attempt to hurl the brand of discord between the nations." In the same connection he attacks Gallic philosophy and the equality of man, the latter of which he styles an "execrable delusion of hair-brained philosophy." Others might speak of "the _Republic_ of letters;" with Dennie it was the _Monarchy_ of letters. Several articles ran through the _Port Folio_ of 1801 on the sentiment and style of the Declaration of Independence, characterizing that famous document as a "false and flatulent and foolish paper." In the same volume (page 215) Dennie, offended by the introduction of some new Americanism into politics, writes:

"Unsatisfied with _acting_ like fools, men begin to enlarge their scheme and talk and write from the vocabulary of folly. All this, however, quadrates with the character of a good republican; as he hates England, why not murder _English_?" In April, 1803, Dennie denounced Democratic Government, and prophesied that of it would come "civil war, desolation and anarchy." His pranks had now become too broad to bear with, and on the Fourth of July this latest publication of his was condemned as "an inflammatory and seditious libel," and a bill of indictment was found. The case was tried in November, 1805, Ingersoll and Hopkinson appearing for the defence. The verdict reached was "not guilty," and Mr. Joseph Dennie had the triumphant pleasure the next week in his report of the case to define democracy for the benefit of his enemies as "a fiend more horrible than any that the imagination of the classical poets ever conjured up from the vasty deep of their Pagan Hell."

When Dennie learned that a certain Noah Webster was to publish "A Columbian Dictionary" containing "American corrections of the English language," he had a few suggestions to offer. The Columbian language he understood to be an elegant dialect of the English, but, he went on, "there is one remark which I would wish with deference to submit to our great lexicographer before I finish this paper. As his dictionary, I understand, is to be the dictionary of the vulgar tongue in New England, would it not be better to prefix to it the epithet _Cabotian_ instead of Columbian? Sebastian Cabot first discovered these Eastern States, and ought not to be robbed of the honor of giving his name to them. I would, therefore, propose calling New England Cabotia, the other States America, and the Southern continent Columbia." He then proposed, in irony, a list of a few "Cabotian words"--happify, gunning, belittle, quiddle, composuist, sot, etc. _Lengthy_ he stigmatizes as "a foolish, flat, unauthorized, unmusical Indian word".[12] In conclusion (_Port Folio_, I, page 370), "let then the projected volume of _foul and unclean_ things bear his own Christian name and be called NOAH'S ARK!"

[12] "Lengthy" is the American for long. It is frequently used by the _classical_ writers of the New World.--(John Davis' "Travels in the United States," page 126.)

We meet the first notice of Benjamin West, as a boy of 19 years, in Bradford's second _American Magazine_. In the first volume of the _Port Folio_ we find the first of a long series of sketches in praise of West's genius and generosity. "It is a melancholy and miraculous circumstance," the satirical writer begins, "that this American artist, after experiencing the good fortune to be born and educated in Pennsylvania, should sullenly retreat to England and exchange the glorious privileges of our happy, tranquil and rising Republic for the smoke and servility of the city of London. It is perfectly inexplicable that he should barter citizenship for knighthood, that he should receive a king's money, and, more provoking still, be soothed by regal praise. What are titles, honours and gold to an independent Republican who, remaining at home, might have had the noblest and amplest opportunities of _giving away_ as many pictures as he pleased."

It is a singular history, that of the boy from Chester County, whom Byron called--

The dotard West,
Europe's worst daub, and poor England's best.

The Archbishop of York, for whom he had painted his "Agrippina landing with the Ashes of Germanicus," presented the young American to George III. "The Departure of Regulus from Rome" won for him the royal favor. In 1768 he was one of the founders of the Royal Academy, and in 1792 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of that institution.

The _Port Folio_ is full of accounts of "Christ Healing the Sick," West's generous gift to the Pennsylvania Hospital, and of his "Death on the Pale Horse," and his "Paul and Barnabas" in the Pennsylvania Academy.

In a letter from West to Charles Willson Peale, dated November 3, 1809, and published in the _Port Folio_ of the following year, reference is made to a young gentleman, studying under his directions, "whose talents only want time to mature them to excellence," and West desires his friends in Philadelphia to procure for the young man the means of studying another year. That rising artist, who had early felt the generous assistance of Benjamin West, was Thomas Sully, who had the honor, in 1837-8, of painting the scene of Queen Victoria's coronation, and his daughter, to save her Majesty fatigue, stood for her, wearing the royal robes.

John Trumbull, son of "Brother Jonathan" the patriot, who painted the famous "Declaration of Independence," was imprisoned for treason in London, and was only released by Benjamin West, to whom he had been introduced by Franklin, becoming his surety. Gilbert Stuart, greatest of American portrait painters, who has graven the face of Washington upon our memories, learned his art and received his earliest encouragement in the English home of Benjamin West. It is a matter of interesting and singular memory that a Boston boy, John Singleton Copley, sent anonymously to West, in 1760, a portrait which at once attracted attention. It was "The Boy and the Flying Squirrel," the boy representing Copley's half-brother, Henry Pelham. Through West's influence the picture was exhibited at Somerset House. Through West again, Copley was elected a fellow of the Society of Artists of Great Britain. When he crossed the ocean to make his home near West, he took with him his Boston-born son, John Singleton, Jr., who became in 1827, the year that the _Port Folio_ suspended, Lord Chancellor of England, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Lyndhurst. To Lyndhurst, as the greatest of orators, Lord Lytton dedicated his _St. Stephen's_.

The leading article of the _Port Folio_ of May 28, 1803, is devoted to young Leigh Hunt, and treats him as an American poet, and assures the public that he "is a deserving object of patronage." Again, in June 11, 1803, some sonnets and odes are quoted from Hunt's _Juvenilia_, Hunt being then a lad of 19 years, and the author is said to be a "blossom from our own garden." Although the editor lays claim to Leigh Hunt as a Philadelphian and to his works as American, he is advised to abide in London: "Let him remain in London, 'the metropolis of the civilized world,' and remember with the judicious Sancho that St. Peter is very well at Rome.... It affords the editor the purest pleasure to have it in his power to advance the claims of a child of genius, a nephew of Sir Benjamin West, an honor to that country from which he is descended and to that which protects him."

Isaac Hunt, the father of the author of "The Story of Rimini," and Benjamin West married sisters, daughters of Stephen Shewell, merchant, in Philadelphia. Leigh Hunt, in 1810, writing in the _Monthly Mirror_, gave an eloquent and tender description of his mother, Mary Shewell, which was reprinted in the _Analectic Magazine_ of Philadelphia, in 1814. "Here, indeed," he exclaimed, "I could enlarge both seriously and proudly; for if any one circumstance of my life could give me cause for boasting, it would be that of having had such a mother. She was indeed a mother in every exalted sense of the word, in piety, in sound teaching, in patient care, in spotless example." The father, Isaac Hunt, came to Philadelphia from the Barbadoes, was graduated at the College of Philadelphia, read law in the city, and was admitted to the bar in 1765. He was an uncompromising Tory. It is said that on one occasion he pointed out to a bookseller a volume of reports of trials for high treason as a proper book for John Adams to read. Alexander Graydon, one of the faithful contributors to the _Port Folio_, in his "Memoirs of a Life Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania," relates the following incident which, no doubt, led to the accident of Leigh Hunt's birth in England, and to the loss of "Abou ben Adhem" to America: "A few days after the carting of Mr. Kearsley, Mr. Isaac Hunt, the attorney, was treated in the same manner, but he managed the matter much better than his precursor. Instead of braving his conductors, like the Doctor, Mr. Hunt was a pattern of meekness and humility; and at every halt that was made he rose and expressed his acknowledgments to the crowd for their forbearance and civility. After a parade of an hour or two, he was set down at his own door, as uninjured in body as in mind. He soon after removed to one of the islands, if I mistake not, to Barbadoes, where, it is understood, he took orders."