LOOKING FOR THE DAWN.—The Spring issue of _Art and Letters_ has been long enough out to have had its run for its money. Consequently I am free to say that it is not only not so good as the first issue, but that the descent has been steep as well as rapid. This decline from the almost sublime to the more than ridiculous was inevitable from the peculiar characteristics of our immediately contemporary epoch; for it is the sober truth that our contemporary world does not supply youthful stuff enough to make more than a single issue of a literary magazine of high pretension. I have looked about me with the eye of an eagle and the appetite of a raven to discover youthful talent possibly budding into genius. A few sprigs and sprays have fallen within my vision, and I have counted myself recompensed for hours and years of trouble. But at this present moment such apparitions and premonitions of the future are fewer than ever I have known them to be. Whether it is that more than individual—_collective_ talent—has fallen in the war; whether the increasing pre-occupation of men’s minds with economics has proportionately impoverished the will to literature of our young men; or whether a critical taste is losing generosity, the number of fresh talents just being committed to us appears utterly unequal to the unequalled opportunity for employing them. There never was a time when it was easier for a young writer to find publication in one form or another. The number of new magazines projected and issued recently has been legion. I have examined most of them; for it is my hobby to collect the earliest specimens, and it is my unpleasant opinion that most of them would be better for never having been born.