The _Atlantic Monthly_ was set up by men in revolt against this reign of mush, as _Putnam’s_ had been a few years before, but the business of reform proved to be difficult and hazardous, and it was a long while before a healthier breed of authors could be developed, and a public for them found. “There is not much in the _Atlantic_,” wrote Charles Eliot Norton to Lowell in 1874, “that is likely to be read twice save by its writers, and this is what the great public likes.... You should hear Godkin express himself in private on this topic.” _Harper’s Magazine_, in those days, was made up almost wholly of cribbings from England; the _North American Review_ had sunk into stodginess and imbecility; _Putnam’s_ was dead, or dying; the _Atlantic_ had yet to discover Mark Twain; it was the era of _Godey’s Lady’s Book_. The new note, so long awaited, was struck at last by _Scribner’s_, now the _Century_ (and not to be confused with the _Scribner’s_ of to-day). It not only threw all the old traditions overboard; it established new traditions almost at once. For the first time a great magazine began to take notice of the daily life of the American people. It started off with a truly remarkable series of articles on the Civil War; it plunged into contemporary politics; it eagerly sought out and encouraged new writers; it began printing decent pictures instead of the old chromos; it forced itself, by the sheer originality and enterprise of its editing, upon the public attention. American literature owes more to the _Century_ than to any other magazine, and perhaps American thinking owes almost as much. It was the first “literary” periodical to arrest and interest the really first-class men of the country. It beat the _Atlantic_ because it wasn’t burdened with the _Atlantic’s_ decaying cargo of Boston Brahmins. It beat all the others because it was infinitely and obviously better. Almost everything that is good in the American magazine of to-day, almost everything that sets it above the English magazine or the Continental magazine, stems from the _Century_.