Footnote 9: “The first chapter of this ‘Diary’—The Early Struggles—was offered by me successively to the conductors of three leading Magazines in London, and rejected as ‘unsuitable for their pages’ and ‘not likely to interest the public.’ In despair, I bethought myself of the great Northern Magazine. I remember taking my packet to Mr Cadell’s, in the Strand, with a sad suspicion that I should never see or hear any thing more of it; but at the close of the month I received a letter from Mr Blackwood, informing me that he had inserted the chapter, and begging me to make arrangements for immediately proceeding regularly with the series. It expressed his cordial approval of the first chapter, and predicted that I was likely to produce a series of papers well suited for his Magazine, and calculated to interest the public.”—Extract from Preface to the Fifth Edition of the _Diary of a Late Physician_. In the year 1839, just nine years after the publication of the first number of the “Diary,” appeared also in these pages the first part of Mr Warren’s tale of “Ten Thousand a-Year.” The second production derived no false lustre from the confirmed success of its predecessor. The new tale presented itself in the columns of the Magazine, as the rule is—anonymously. Mr Warren obtained no advantage whatever from his previously well-earned and conscientiously sustained reputation. His second venture had nothing to rely upon but itself; yet, before six months had elapsed, “Ten Thousand a-Year,” by the mere force of its own unquestioned merit, succeeded in arresting public attention to an extent seldom equalled, and never surpassed by publications of a serial nature. For two years that attention never flagged; the public can attest to this remarkable fact: we are ourselves conscious of the avidity with which number after number of this Magazine was sought, whilst one chapter of the History of Tittlebat Titmouse still remained to be told. “Ten Thousand a-Year” was a wholly different performance from the “Diary of a Late Physician.” The latter contained the fruitful germs of at least a dozen novels. Its short histories, designed to convey a solemn and abiding moral, performed their office with the least possible elaboration. Intricacy and subtlety of plot were not considered, in a scheme in which mankind was to be moved and taught by the influence of example. The faults, the weaknesses, the vices of humanity, were displayed in their simplest forms, and no pains were taken to involve them in the entanglements of an artfully contrived narration. Not so, altogether, in the case of “Ten Thousand a-Year.” Here plot became not a subordinate ingredient in the composition; here the salient and strongly-marked features of individual character were not alone considered. It cannot be denied that the second creation of Mr Warren’s genius indicated at once increased strength of mind, experience more extended, knowledge more ripened.