From the very outset the brothers were thrown entirely on their own resources; they had no literary jealousy, and eagerly enlisted on their staff most of the young aspirants in Scotland, who have since achieved a world-wide reputation. It was, however, to Mr. Robert Chambers’ contributions that the _Journal_ was primarily indebted for success, his delightful essays, æsthetic and humorous, permanently fixing the work in public esteem. Gifted with a keenly-accurate observation, with a grave yet kindly humour, his vignettes of life and character, under the _nom de plume_ of Mr. Baldestone, were so truthful and so “telling,” that they met with a very favourable reception, when republished separately, in seven volumes, in 1844. “It was my design,” he says in the preface, “from the first, to be the essayist of the middle class--that in which I was born and to which I continue to belong. I, therefore, do not treat their manners and habits as one looking _de haut en bas_, which is the usual style of essayists, but as one looking round among the firesides of my friends.” This was, doubtless, the primary secret of their success. When Leigh Hunt, in 1834, established his _London Journal_, he announced that he intended to follow the plan of Chambers’ _Edinburgh Journal_, “with a more southern element” added. This compliment, from a veteran so famous and so experienced, led to an interchange of editorial courtesies, in the course of which Robert Chambers claimed the distinction for his brother William--which had been somewhere awarded to Leigh Hunt--of having been the first to introduce cheap periodical literature of a superior class. Leigh Hunt, in reply, while upholding his own title to priority by the indubitable evidence of the dates of his _Indicator_, _Tatler_, &c., cordially admitted that his young rivals had more wisely achieved the desired end by interesting a wider and less educated public. In a few years all Edinburgh proved to be equal only to produce the Scotch edition of the _Journal_, a branch house was established in the English metropolis, the command of which was entrusted to a younger brother, Mr. David Chambers, who was born in the year 1820, and who was afterwards taken into partnership. Unlike his brothers, he had little taste for literature. In connection with the subsequent conduct of the _Journal_, we may mention the names of T. Smibert and Leich Ritchie (both deceased), and Mr. W. H. Wills, and Mr. James Payn, the sensational novelist, who for many years has had the leading conduct.