Thackeray, whom we mentioned above, was instrumental in effecting a thorough change in periodical literature. When under his direction, the _Cornhill_ was started, to give for a shilling all that had before been given for two shillings and sixpence, the bookselling world was incredulous of success, and the book-buying world scarcely hopeful. More than 100,000 copies of the first number were sold, and as soon as it was seen that a vastly wide-spread circulation is infinitely more valuable than a narrower sphere at a much higher rate, a crowd of other shilling magazines were produced, among which it is enough to mention _Temple Bar_, _London Society_, _Macmillan’s_, _Belgravia_, and a score of others, some of which were doubtless successful, but many more or less ephemeral. One detrimental fact has of course arisen from such a multiplicity of organs; the available talent of the day, such as it is, cannot now be concentrated. The same curse haunts the theatre; at present one “star” is as much as the greediest can expect on one stage. [Illustration] [Illustration] _CHAMBERS, KNIGHT, AND CASSELL_: “LITERATURE FOR THE PEOPLE.” We have already seen, in our short sketches of the Bells, the Cookes, the Donaldsons, and the Constables, some endeavour--neither faint nor altogether unsuccessful, yet not more than a trial venture, for education was still a monopoly of rank and riches--to render books the property and the birthright of the people. In our present chapter, however, we come to a new phase in the history of bookselling. The schoolmaster, as Brougham said, was abroad; the repressive taxes on knowledge either were, or were about to be, removed; learning, or a smattering of learning, was within the reach of most. The battle of future progress was to be fought out with the pen, just as the triumphs of early civilization had been achieved with the lance and with the sword. The public writer henceforth was to occupy the preacher’s pulpit, and his congregation, far above the limits of any St. Peter’s or St. Paul’s, was to be told only by millions. Books were to be no longer the curious luxuries of the rich man’s library, or the hoarded and hardly-earned treasures of the student’s closet, but were to be fairly placed at the disposal of the many. Talent certainly, if not genius, is only the product of the requirements of the time and place; and as soon, therefore, as cheap books were in real request, men thoroughly competent and thoroughly earnest came forward to supply the want--fighting bravely, with all the strong energy of their wills, to do the work that each had chosen, and yet each as certainly acted upon invisibly, insensibly, and inevitably, by the true, if word-worn, laws of supply and demand.