T. W. WHITE, PRINTER AND PROPRIETOR. FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM.
PUBLISHER'S NOTICE.
The Publisher has the pleasure of announcing to his friends and patrons that he has made an arrangement with a gentleman of approved literary taste and attainments, to whose especial management the editorial department of the "Messenger" has been confided.—This arrangement, he confidently believes will increase the attractions of his pages,—for besides the acknowledged capacity of the gentleman referred to, his abstraction from other pursuits will enable him to devote his exclusive attention to the work.
With this ample assurance therefore, that the public patronage will be met by renewed efforts to give general satisfaction, the publisher earnestly hopes that his friends will aid him in extending the circulation of the Messenger. A reasonable enlargement of the subscription list will afford the means of occasionally embellishing its pages with handsome drawings and engravings—and especially sketches of some of those remarkable natural curiosities and picturesque scenes, with which Virginia, and the Southern country generally, abounds. In this way the publisher hopes to make his periodical a repository of not only every thing elegant in literature, but tasteful in the arts; and his generous and intelligent supporters may rest assured, that whilst a moderate reward for his own labors is indispensable—his principal aim is to multiply the sources of intellectual pleasure, and increase the facilities for improvement.
It is due to the gentleman who has acted as editor up to the present period, that the publisher should, in parting with him, express that deep feeling of gratitude which his disinterested friendship could not fail to inspire. At the commencement of the Messenger, when the prospect of its success was doubtful, and when many judicious friends augured unfavorably of the enterprise, the late editor volunteered his aid to pilot the frail bark if possible into safe anchorage—nor did he desert it until all doubt of success had ceased. The efforts of that gentleman are the more prized, because they were made at a considerable sacrifice of ease and leisure, in the midst too of avocations sufficiently arduous to occupy the entire attention of most men,—and because they were rendered without hope or expectation of reward. And the publisher embraces this occasion, to declare that the success of the Messenger has been greatly owing to the judicious management of the editorial department by that gentleman. For services of so much value, rendered with no other object than a desire to promote the establishment of a literary periodical in Virginia, the publisher is deeply indebted to him—and the readers of the work will, we doubt not, long remember his efforts in their behalf. To him belongs the merit of having given his disinterested aid in the season of its early feebleness. His successor has but to follow in the path which has thus been marked out by a hardy and skilful literary pioneer.
T. W. WHITE, Publisher and Proprietor.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.