242 Literary Journals. 



Chronicle, after a few months was discontinued. 

 Since that time many similar undertakings have 

 solicited the public patronage, and have gained 

 attention and currency for a time, but have seldom 

 protracted their existence beyond four, six, or, at 

 most, eight years. 



The influence of these miscellaneous publica- 

 tions has been as remarkable and extensive as their 

 number. This influence has been in many respects 

 advantageous. They have excited a taste for read- 

 ing in many who could never have endured it un- 

 der any other form than that of amusement They 

 have inspired many youthful minds with a spirit of 

 literary ambition and enterprize, which $vas after- 

 wards productive of the most brilliant and success- 

 ful exertions. They have recorded a number of 

 facts, hints, observations and discussions, instruc- 

 tive at the time they were made, and invaluable to 

 posterity; but which would inevitably have been 

 lostvhad they been presented to the public in a 

 more evanescent form. And, finally, they have 

 shed, in a gradual and almost insensible manner, 

 numberless rays of knowledge among all descrip- 

 tions of persons in the community, even indirectly 

 among millions who never enjoyed the perusal of 

 them, and have thus greatly enlarged 'the public 

 understanding, and astonishingly increased the sum 

 of popular information. 



But the great popularity, and the unexampled 

 circulation of these periodical works, have also 

 been attended with some disadvantages. They 

 have made thousands of light, ostentatious and 

 superficial scholars, and have evidently operated 

 unfavourably to sound and deep erudition. They 

 have led many a self-sufficient pedant to content 

 himself with shining in borrowed plumes, and to 

 indulge in the deceitful expectation of finding short 

 and easy paths to real scholarship. They have dis- 



