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338 V.112

Atil

LONDON: J. B. NICHOLS AND SON, PRINTERS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET.

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PREFACE.

WE are not aware, since we last addressed our readers, that any event of such literary importance has taken place, or any work in art of such peculiar merit has been published, as to demand from us a separate consideration. The stream of knowledge keeps flowing on, and the very silence and steadiness of its course, shews its freedom from impediments. This is the situation in which we may expect to find literature after it has been long established in a country, and has been freed alike from the trammels of power and the fatal influence of superstition and bigotry. Great works first appear-the produce of original and powerful minds-containing bold and rapid outlines of the various provinces of knowledge: the ingenuity of later times is employed in filling up the original sketches, completing the vigorous but rude designs, and correcting and supplying the omissions and imperfections, from later sources of information. This we take to be the present state of our literary progress; and the establishment of our numerous societies, each appropriated to some particular line of inquiry, shows the presumed advantage to be drawn from their formation; while the success which has attended them, is fully evinced in the rapid progress they have made, and the numerous rivals they have called forth. This proves that, though the first achievements in science and art are made by one mind, the completion must be owing to the combination of many. But to be effective, it is necessary that exertion should be duly regulated and confined within due limits. He who attempts too much, will probably fail in all. We therefore have considered it wise, to adhere, as much as possible, to our original plan; or if we have deviated from it, it is rather in the line of contraction than of expansion: for when our Magazine was first founded, many institutions of science and societies of art and literature were in their infancy, and possessed no peculiar and appropriate channels of public communication. So that much in

GENERAL LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

ATHENS GEORGIA

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