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EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
Those who write for a section of the community, whose 
sole aim is to promote its interests, and are not carried 
about with every wind and wave of doctrine, must expect to 
give offence to some. In the direction of a public journal 
there is much to awaken both consideration and anxietv; 
•/ ' 
and if, at the close of a given period, the retrospect is 
favorable, we have reason to be thankful, for we are not vain 
enough—as already confessed—to believe that it is our 
unassisted efforts which have produced the satisfactory 
result. We have already stated our firm conviction to be 
that to realise all that will prove conducive to our continued 
onward progress, it is only necessary for co-operation, 
cordial and sincere, to obtain among us, and we think we 
can perceive the germs of this rising up. May no blighting 
influence check their full development. We have again and 
again said the Journal is the profession’s, or what it is pleased 
to make it. The more valuable the matter communicated to 
it is, the greater, consequently, will be its worth; and if 
members cease to contribute to it, its pages will become little 
more than a blank, so far as the profession is concerned. 
For some little time we have given ourselves up to the 
study of the “ black arts” of reading and writing, both for 
our own profit and, we trust, that of our readers. Nor do 
we believe they have made us in the least demoniacal, but, on 
the contrary, they have convinced us how little as yet we 
really know. We therefore intend to continue our studies, 
not forgetting what Horace has said— 
“Prudens futuri temporis exitum 
Caliginosa nocte premit Deus.” 
The dread monarch Death has moved on in his ceaseless 
march during the year, and if he has not taken from our 
numbers so many as in antecedent years, he has withdrawn 
those who connected the past with the present generation, 
and with whom we had been long associated, as well as others 
much younger; thus bidding those that remain prepare for 
his coming, with some of whom the sands of time are fast 
running down, and few, perhaps, can say they glisten like 
diamond-dust as they fall. 
