Blackwood was now, from the profits of the old-book trade and the success of his own publishing ventures, in a fair way to success, and in 1816 he took the bold step of selling off all his old stock and migrating to Prince’s Street. “He took possession,” says Lockhart, in “Peter’s Letters,” “of a large and airy suite of rooms in Prince’s Street, which had formerly been occupied by a notable confectioner, and whose threshold was, therefore, familiar enough to all the frequenters of this superb promenade.... Stimulated, I suppose, by the example and success of John Murray, whose agent he is, he determined to make, if possible, Prince’s Street to the High Street, what the other had made Albemarle Street to the Row.” It was not without much forethought, we may be sure, that this step was undertaken, and the speedy establishment of the famous magazine clearly shows us what was the chief motive to such a venturous change. The magazine literature of the day was wofully weak. The vitality with which Cave had endowed the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, had long since died away. No more such “hack-writers” as Johnson and Goldsmith came forward to enliven its pages, at the meagre payment of four guineas a sheet, and now it only-- “Hopped its pleasant way from church to church, And nursed its little bald biography.” Such was the type of English periodical literature, and the Scotch were certainly no better off. The _Scots Magazine_ stood Constable, it is true, in good stead, but only as a nursery ground, from which writers might be trained for transplantation to a stronger soil. Vastly different was the condition of the rival quarterlies; but still, in Scotland at all events, the _Edinburgh_ carried everything after its own desire. Wit the writers had in plenty--learning, too, and the gift of open-speaking; but to fairness, biassed as they were by party ties, they never laid the least claim, and yet all Edinburgh was enthralled by the opinions of the _Edinburgh Review_, for intellectual attainments at that time commanded for their possessors the leading place in the society of the Modern Athens, and, as the principles advocated in its pages were decidedly opposed to those of the existing administration, the success it indubitably had attained, the vast following it was gathering, not only irritated but alarmed the Scotch Tory party. Of course, the actual inventorship of the new project is a disputed point, but the evidence seems to tell us that, however the idea of a new Conservative organ had been talked over in literary coteries (and what scheme has not been planned a thousand times before execution whenever literary men meet together?), the plan had long been entertained and spoken of by Blackwood; and, as he proceeded to carry it into execution, the scheme may to all intents and purposes be regarded as his own.