Day after day, in voiceless penance turn;
Silence the holy cell and calm retreat
In which unseen their meek devotions burn;
Life is to them a vigil that none share,
Their hopes a sacrifice, their love a prayer.
‘Our Ancient,’ the editor of the handsome ‘Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine’ hight ‘The Columbian,’ (which is to run a brisk competition, as we learn, with the other ‘pictorials,’ Godey’s, Graham’s, and Snowden’s,) should have enabled us to speak of it from an examination of our own copy, instead of being obliged to filch an idea of its merits from the counter of those most obliging gentlemen, Messrs. Burgess and Stringer. The work is a gay one externally, and spirited internally; having several good articles from good writers, male and female. One of the best things in it, however, is the paper on ‘Magazine Literature,’ by the Editor. How many writers, now well known both at home and abroad, who began and continue their literary career in the Knickerbocker, can bear testimony to the truth of the following remarks:
‘We have said that this is the age of magazines; adverting not merely to their number, but even more especially to their excellence. They are the field, chiefly, in which literary reputation is won. Who ever thinks of John Wilson as the learned professor, or as the author of bound volumes? Who does not, when Wilson’s name is mentioned, instantly call to mind the splendid article-writer, the Christopher North of Blackwood? Charles Lamb was long known only as the Elia of the New Monthly. Most of the modern French celebrities; Sue, Janin, and half a hundred others, have made their fame in the feuilletons of the Parisian journals; a more decided graft, by the way, than is elsewhere seen, of the magazine upon the newspaper. In our own country, how many there are whose names are known from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, that are as yet innocent of books, but have nevertheless contributed largely and well to the growing stock of American literature. How many more who are bringing themselves into notice by their monthly efforts in the pages of some popular magazine. In fact, the magazine is the true channel into which talent should direct itself for the acquisition of literary fame. The newspaper is too ephemeral; the book is not of sufficiently rapid and frequent production. The monthly magazine just hits the happy medium, enabling the writer to present himself twelve times a year before a host of readers, in whose memories he is thus kept fresh, yet allowing him space enough to develope his thought, and time enough to do his talent justice in each article. Then, too, on the score of emolument, justly recognised now as a very essential matter, and legitimately entitled to grave consideration, the magazine offers advantages not within the reach of either book or newspaper. ••• But after all, the great point is, that magazines are more read than any other kind of publications. They just adapt themselves to the leisure of the business man, and the taste of the idler; to the spare half hours of the notable housewife and the languid inertia of the fashionable lady. They can be dropped into a valise or a carpet-bag as a welcome provision for the wants of a journey by steam-boat or rail-road, when the country through which the traveller passes offers nothing attractive to be seen, or the eyes are weary of seeing; they while away delightfully the tedious hours of a rainy day in summer, and afford the most pleasant occupation through the long evenings of winter.’
Touching the matter of payment for magazine articles: Mr. Willis informs us that many of the American magazines pay to their more eminent contributors nearly three times the amount for a printed page that is paid by English magazines to the best writers in Great-Britain; and he instances Godey and Graham as paying often twelve dollars a page to their principal contributors. This refers to a few ‘principal’ writers only, as we have good reason to know, having been instrumental in sending several acceptable correspondents to those publications, who have received scarcely one-fourth of the sum mentioned. Mr. Willis adds, however, that many good writers write for nothing, and that ‘the number of clever writers has increased so much that there are thousands who can get no article accepted.’ All this is quite true. There is no magazine in America that has paid so large sums to distinguished native writers as the Knickerbocker. Indeed, our most distinguished American writer was never a contributor to any other of our Monthlys than this. The books of this Magazine show, that independent of the Editor’s division of its profits as joint proprietor, or his salary as editor, (a matter which its publishers have always kept distinct from, and in all respects unconnected with, the payments to contributors,) annual sums have heretofore been paid for literary matériel greater than the most liberal estimate we have seen of any annual literary payment by our widely-circulated contemporaries. To the first poet in America, (not to say in the world, at this moment,) we have repeatedly paid fifty dollars for a single poem, not exceeding, in any instance, two pages in length; and the cost of prose papers from sources of kindred eminence has in many numbers exceeded fifteen dollars a page. Again: we have in several instances paid twice as much for the MS. of a continuous novel in these pages as the writer could obtain of any metropolitan book-publisher; and after appearing in volumes, it has been found that the wide publicity given to the work by the Knickerbocker has been of greatest service to its popularity, in more than one subsequent edition. We should add, however, that we have had no lack, at any period, of excellent articles for our work at moderate prices; while many of our more popular papers have been entirely gratuitous, unless indeed the writers consider the honorable reputation which they have established in these pages as some reward for intellectual exertion. But ‘something too much of this.’ We close with a word touching the pictorial features of the ‘Columbian.’ It has four ‘plates’ proper, with an engraving of the fashions; is neatly executed by Messrs. Hopkins and Jennings, and published by Israel Post, Number Three, Astor-House. ••• Saint Valentine’s Day is just at hand; and a pleasant correspondent, in enclosing us the following lines, begs us to mention the fact, and to refer to the festivities of the day. We know of one ‘festivity’ that will be a very recherché and brilliant affair, on the evening of that day; namely, ‘The Bachelors’ Ball,’ to be given with unwonted splendor at the Astor-House, under the supervision of accomplished managers, whose taste and liberality have already been abundantly tested. ‘Take it as a matter granted,’ says our friend, ‘that very many of your lady-readers will commit matrimony before the year is done; and tell them so plainly; for it will gratify their palpitating hearts; and even should it not be true in every individual case, the disappointed ones will never complain of you for the pleasing delusion; for it was their own fault, of course, not yours. It behooves you, moreover, as a conservator of the general weal, to give the young wives that are to be some goodly counsel; and to aid you in the laudable office of advice-giver, I send you some appropriate verses, which some fifteen years ago went the rounds of the press, and met with ‘acceptance bounteous.’ The moral of the stanzas, I take it, is unexceptionable, whatever may be said of their execution:’