Now the first phenomenon worthy of notice is, that this has not always been the case. It was very different eight or nine years ago. The three leading cities of the north, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, had each its Quarterly: the _Knickerbocker_, a New York magazine, boasted a brilliant list of contributors, headed by Irving and Cooper, and its articles were frequently copied (sometimes without acknowledgment,) into English periodicals. This change for the worse is worth investigating, at least as a matter of curiosity. "I don't know that it _is_ a change for the worse," says a prim personage in spectacles. "If your periodical literature dies out entirely, you need not be very sorry. I shouldn't be if ours did." And then come some murmurs of "light," "superficial," "unsound," and more to the same effect. "My good sir, this in the face of Maga! not to mention the _Quarterly_ and the _Edinburgh_. With such _faits accomplis_ against you, what _can_ you say?" "I don't believe in _faits accomplis_. They are the excuse of the timid man, and the capital of the unprincipled man. _Fait accompli_ means, in plain English, that 'because it is so, therefore it ought to be so'--a doctrine which I, for one, will never assent to." "Well, there is something in that last position of yours. We will condescend, therefore, to argue the question. Let me ask you, then, "_First_, Do you see any _primâ facie_ improbability in supposing that a man may write a very good essay, who could not write two good volumes octavo; or a racy and interesting sketch, who could not put together a readable novel; or a few graceful poems, without having matter enough for a volume of poetry? "_Secondly_, Is a treatise necessarily profound, because it is long; or superficial, because it is of practicable dimensions? "_Thirdly_, When you use the term 'superficial,' do you really believe and mean to imply that periodical writers are in the habit of discussing subjects which they do not understand? Would you say, for instance, that Macaulay's reviews denote a man ignorant of history, or that Sedgwick knows less geology than the man who wrote the _Vestiges of Creation_, or that Mitchell knew less Greek than Lord Brougham?