The editors of these papers must have a most onerous task. It is not the writing of the leading article itself, but the obligation to write that article every day, whether inclined or not, in sickness or in health, in affliction, distress of mind, winter and summer, year after year, tied down to one task, remaining in one spot. It is something like the walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours. I have a fellow-feeling for them, for I know how a monthly periodical will wear down one's existence. In itself it appears nothing--the labour is not manifest nor is it the labour--it is the continual attention which it requires. Your life becomes as it were the magazine. One month is no sooner corrected and printed than on comes the other. It is the stone of Sisyphus--an endless repetition of toil--a constant weight upon the mind--a continual wearing upon the intellect and spirits, demanding all the exertion of your faculties, at the same time that you are compelled to do the severest drudgery. To write for a magazine is very well, but to edit one is to condemn yourself to slavery. Magazine writing, as it is generally termed, is the most difficult of all writing, and but few succeed in it; the reason of which is obvious-- it must always be what is termed "up to the mark." Any one who publishes a work in one, two, or three volumes, may be permitted to introduce a dull chapter or two: no one remarks it; indeed, these dull chapters allow the mind of the reader to relax for the time, and, strange to say, are sometimes favourable to the author. But in magazine-writing these cannot be permitted; the reader requires excitement, and whether the article be political or fictitious, there requires a condensation of matter, a pithiness of expression (to enable you to tell your story in so small a space), which is very difficult to obtain. Even in continuations the same rule must be adhered to, for, being read month after month, each separate portion must be considered as a whole and independents of the other; it must not therefore flag for one minute. A proof of this was given in that very remarkable production in "Blackwood's Magazine," styled "Tom Cringle's Log." Every separate portion was devoured by the public--they waited impatiently for the first of the month that they might read the continuation, and every one was delighted, oven to its close, because the excitement was so powerful. Some time afterwards the work was published in two volumes, and then, what was the consequence?--people complained that it was overcharged--that it was too full of excitement--gave no repose. This was true; when collected together it had that fault--a very good one, by the by, as well as a very uncommon one; but they did not perceive that until it was all published together. During the time that it came out in fragments they were delighted. Although, in this instance, the writing was overcharged, still it proved, from the popularity it