In examining the causes of the inferiority of American periodical literature, the most readily assignable, and generally applicable is, that its contributors are mostly unpaid. It is pretty safe to enunciate as a general rule, that, when you want a good thing, you must pay for it. Now the reprints of English magazines can be sold for two dollars _per annum_, whereas a properly supported home magazine or review cannot be afforded for less than four or five. Hence no one will embark a large capital in so doubtful an undertaking; and periodical editorship is generally a last resource or a desperate speculation. One of the leading magazines in New York--perhaps, on the whole, the most respectable and best conducted--was started with a _borrowed_ capital of 300 dollars, (say £65.) But it is hardly necessary to remark that the proprietors of a periodical should have a fair sum in hand to begin with, that they may secure the services of able and eminent men to make a good start. The syllogistic conclusion is obvious. At the same time, the editor finds at his disposal a most tempting array (so far as quantity and variety are concerned) of gratuitous contributions; for there is in America a mob of--not "gentlemen" altogether--men and women who "write with ease," and whose "easy writing" seldom escapes the correlative proverbially attached to easy writing. This is, in a great measure, owing to the system of school and collegiate education, which, by working boys and girls of fourteen and upwards at "compositions" and "orations" about as assiduously as Etonians are worked at "longs and shorts," makes them "writers" before they know how to read, and gives them a manner before they can have acquired or originated matter. Most of these people are content to write for nothing; they are sufficiently paid by the glory of appearing in print; many of them could write no better if they were paid. And it certainly is a temptation to be offered a choice gratis among a variety of articles not absolutely unreadable, while you would be compelled to pay handsomely for one good one.