FROM EASTERN VIRGINIA.
"I shall endeavor to avail myself of the offer of your columns, and if, as you propose, your periodical shall be issued monthly, I may probably contribute my full quota to every number. In doing so, I shall try to remember that I am writing for a literary work, and one which leans much on the support of light readers. I shall therefore endeavor to treat grave topics with as little gravity as the nature of the case may admit of; drawing my reasons less from authority than from common sense and the nature of things, and addressing them to the untaught feelings of the heart, rather than to what is falsely contradistinguished as reason and judgment. I say falsely, because when the mind is once broken in by the discipline of a spurious philosophy, it is too apt to throw out its view all considerations incapable of being established by any regular chain of reasoning. Yet these are often entitled to be regarded as first principles; and their proof is found in nature, and in the universal acquiescence of mankind, the more conclusive, because it does not rest on reason, but on a sort of moral instinct. If men wrote less for fame and more for effect, I am persuaded they would find it rarely necessary to conduct the reader through a long process of ratiocination, and that the important end (conviction) would be often best accomplished by those striking exhibitions of truth which make it manifest at a glance. Such is the case with most of those great truths on which the rights, and duties, and happiness of men depend. On such subjects truth vindicates her title to respect by her very presence. 'She walks a queen,' and the heart gives its homage, and compels the acquiescence of the understanding, without stopping to look into her patent of royalty. Does any man doubt such truths? No. Can they be proved? No; and therefore they are the more certainly true. The fact that they are universally accepted, is a fact to reason from; and it is the philosophy that teaches to overlook such facts that I call false.
"How often, when a man takes up his pen to elaborate a long course of reasoning, does he find himself attempting to lead his reader along a track that his own mind did not travel. Can he wonder that his reader will not consent to be so led? Does he think that he alone has the privilege of travelling the high road of common sense, which levels mountains and lifts up vallies, and that others will permit themselves to be led a roundabout way, picking their steps with painful accuracy along the dividing ridge between 'right hand extremes and left hand defections?' And why does he attempt this? Merely to show that he is too profound, and too philosophical to take any thing for granted."
"Accept my thanks for the Southern Literary Messenger. Its contents I have perused with pleasure. Its execution is not to be surpassed in accuracy and neatness. Can a discerning public withhold encouragement, especially when the benefits will be mutual? Indeed I consider the advantages more likely to be on the side of the public provided a liberal spirit prevail, and the well stored minds of the South contribute to establish, through the Messenger, that high literary reputation which is within their power to erect. The pride of the Old Dominion should respond to your appeal by a generous contribution of subscriptions and mental effusions. Please consider me a subscriber."
"The reception of your Literary Messenger gave me much pleasure, and I thank you for your polite attention in sending it. The cause you have in hand is one very dear to my heart, and I sincerely wish you success; I must not omit, however, to testify my zeal in a more substantial way, and accordingly send you five dollars, and desire to be considered a subscriber, and promise to use every exertion to procure you others."
FROM MIDDLE VIRGINIA.
"... Taking now as many papers as I can well pay for, I am induced to support the Messenger nevertheless, from the great anxiety which I feel for the progress of literature in the South, and to show to the country that the soil of the Old Dominion, so fertile in the production of patriots and statesmen, can also support and rear to age the bright scions which adorn smoother and more ornamented fields. I feel that this is a solemn duty, which the youth of Virginia owe to the memory of their fathers,—the mantles of whose patriotism have descended upon them unsoiled; to men who were cast upon so rough a sea as to have little time to think of any thing else save the dangers around them: their whole lives having been spent in bringing the noble vessel, freighted with every thing dear to American bosoms, into a safe harbor, where she has ever since continued to ride triumphantly in prosperity and glory, it can be nothing more than sheer justice in us to raise this 'tardy bust' to buried merit. As almost the pioneer in this noble undertaking, I bid you God speed, and I trust that the success of your paper may not only blot out the only spot on the escutcheon of Virginia, but in every way equal your most sanguine expectations."