To Our Readers.

FELLOW STUDENTS:-In assuming the conduct of the Yale Literary Magazine for the coming year, we have but few remarks to make in the way of promises and pledges. While we thank you most heartily for the honor which you have conferred upon us, yet at the same time we hope you will not feel you have discharged all your duty to this periodical, by having elevated us to our position, but will endeavor to assist us, so far as lies in your power. While we enter upon our work with enthusiasm, it is also with a zeal according to knowledge. Without your help, we know we can do nothing with it, we justly feel confident that the character of the Magazine, for the coming year, will not be such as to bring any dishonor upon the reputation of a College, which we all believe to be the foremost in the United States.

EDITORS.

VOL. XXIII.

18

The Yale Literary Magazine.

THE Yale Literary Magazine has now nearly completed its twenty-third volume. During the comparatively long period which has passed by since its first number was issued, in which almost six college generations have come and gone, it has had on a small scale its full share of earthly trials and changes of fortune, with their successes and reverses. It has seen times in which its further continuance appeared questionable, times in which nothing seemed to exist. which would prevent it from being as long-lived as the institution from which it proceeds. Changing editors every year, the ability with which it has been conducted has never been uniform for any number of successive volumes; nor can it be denied, that there have been periods in which it has sunk far below the level which a Magazine, coming from the representative College of the New World, ought always to attain. Yet there is no reason to be ashamed of its past history as a whole. In it some of the foremost writers of our country have made their first appearance, and from it articles have often been copied into many of the leading periodicals in the

United States. Throwing out of consideration the lack of money, and of sufficient interest in its prosperity, its imperfections and want of success have usually been owing to the mistaken views of what is the design of a College Magazine on the part of its editors, and exaggerated expectations on the part of its subscribers, and their consequent disappointment. Too much is demanded on the one side; on the other, too little attention is paid to the principles which govern such a publication as ours, and the peculiar character it should sustain.

The theory of a College Magazine is one thing; the practical working of that theory is quite another. It is an easy matter to imagine the talents of five hundred enthusiastic young men, in the first flush and glory of opening life, combining to produce a periodical which would never suffer for lack of novelty, of wit, or even of deep original thought. The actual facts of the case, however, have a tendency, at least with us, to mar somewhat this picture of the fancy. In the first place, analogy might teach us to moderate our expectations. If publications, professedly of the most ambitious character, with hundreds of men of the highest intellectual powers, either as paid or voluntary contributors, often fail of being interesting, it is surely not at all wonderful that the productions of students, written while their minds are as yet immature, and amid the press of many other duties, should often prove dull, and should be open to much ill-natured criticism. In the second place, the number of men from whom to obtain contributions must, with us, be limited from five hundred to not many more than five. Scarcely any besides Seniors furnish contributions to the Magazine, excepting, of course, Juniors during the third term of their year. Not a dozen articles from members of other classes have appeared in the last two volumes and even the few Seniors who do contribute, write not because they have something to say, but usually on account of the "much entreaty" and "continual coming" on the part of the Editors.

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What is the design of College Magazines,-what is the kind of literature suitable for their pages,-are questions which come home to all of us with the power of a personal interest. Many seem to consider them as convenient receptacles of Sophomore compositions. Others appear to view them in the light of Tract Society publications, in which it is their duty to instruct their fellow creatures, less advantageously brought up, in the principles of sound morality.