PREFACE TO THE FOURTH VOLUME.
The conclusion of the Fourth Volume of a periodical may be accepted as a sign of its permanent establishment. The proprietors of the International Magazine have the satisfaction of believing that, while there has been a steady increase of sales, ever since the publication of the first number of this work, there has likewise been as regular an augmentation of its interest, value, and adaptation to the wants of the reading portion of our community. While essentially an Eclectic, relying very much for success on a reproduction of judiciously selected and fairly acknowledged Foreign Literature, it has contained from month to month such an amount of New Articles as justified its claim to consideration as an Original Miscellany. And in choosing from European publications, articles to reprint or to translate for these pages, care has been taken not only to avoid that vein of licentiousness in morals, and skepticism in religion, which in so lamentable a degree characterize a large portion of the popular literature of this age, but also to extract from foreign periodicals that American element with which the rising importance of our country has caused so many of them to be infused; so that, notwithstanding the fact that more than half the contents of the International are from the minds of Europeans, the Magazine is essentially more American than any other now published.
For the future, the publishers have made arrangements that will insure very decided and desirable improvements, which will be more fully disclosed in the first number of the ensuing volume; eminent original writers will be added to our list of contributors; from Germany, France, and Great Britain, we have increased our literary resources; and more attention will be given to the pictorial illustration of such subjects as may be advantageously treated in engravings. Among those authors whose contributions have appeared in the International hitherto, we may mention:
Miss Fenimore Cooper,
Miss Alice Carey,
Mrs. E. Oakes Smith,
Mrs. M. E. Hewitt,
Mrs. Alice B. Neal,
Bishop Spencer,
Henry Austin Layard,
Parke Godwin,
John R. Thompson,
W. C. Richards,
W. Gilmore Simms,
Bayard Taylor,
Robert Henry Stoddard,
Alfred B. Street,
Thomas Ewbank,
E. W. Ellsworth,
G. P. R. James,
Dr. John W. Francis,
Maunsell B. Field,
Dr. Starbuck Mayo,
John E. Warren,
A. Oakey Hall,
Horace Greeley,
Richard B. Kimball,
The Author of "Nile Notes,"
The Author of "Harry Franco."
Rev. J. C. Richmond,
Rev. H. W. Parker,
James T. Fields,
R. S. Chilton.
The foreign writers, from whom we have selected, need not be enumerated; they embrace the principal living masters of literary art; and we shall continue to avail ourselves of their new productions as largely as justice to them and the advantage and pleasure of our readers may seem to justify.
New-York, December 1, 1851.