No better proof of all this could be sought than the renaissance in our own times of the reviews and the weeklies, probably the most remarkable phenomenon in the history of American publishing since the birth of yellow journalism. By the weeklies I do not mean journals like _The Outlook_, _The Independent_, _Vanity Fair_, which are merely special varieties of the typically American magazine. I refer, of course, to _The New Republic_, _The Nation_, _The Freeman_, _The Weekly Review_ in its original form, periodicals formed upon an old English model, devoted to the spreading of opinion, and consecrated to the propagation of intelligence. The success of these weeklies has been out of proportion to their circulation. Like the old _Nation_, which in a less specialized form was their predecessor, they have distinctly affected American thinking, and may yet affect our action in politics, education, and social relations generally. They are pioneers, with the faults of intellectual pioneers, over-seriousness, over-emphasis, dogmatism, and intolerance. Yet it may be said fairly that their chief duty, as with the editorial pages of newspapers, is to be consistently partisan. At least they have proved that the American will take thinking when he can get it. And by inference, one assumes that he will take strong feeling and vigorous truth in his literary magazines. The reviews also show how the wind is blowing. The review, so- called, is a periodical presenting articles of some length, and usually critical in character, upon the political, social, and literary problems of the day. The distinction of the review is that its sober form and not too frequent appearance enable it to give matured opinion with space enough to develop it. Clearly a successful review must depend upon a clientele with time and inclination to be seriously interested in discussion, and that is why the review, until recently, has best flourished in England where it was the organ of a governing class. In America, an intellectual class who felt themselves politically and socially responsible, has been harder to discover. We had one in the early days of the Republic, when _The North American Review_ was founded. It is noteworthy that we are developing another now and have seen _The Yale Review_, the late lamented _Unpartisan Review_, and others join _The North American_, fringed, so to speak, by magazines of excerpt (of which much might be written), such as _The Review of Reviews_, _Current Opinion_, and _The Literary Digest_, in which the function of the review is discharged for the great community that insists upon reading hastily.