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.