In respect of periodicals the change, as compared with even the generation immediately preceding 1830, has been very great. The _Edinburgh Review_ was for some years the only great critical periodical in Britain. The _Quarterly Review_ was established to redress the political balance, shaken by the organ of the Whigs. A little later, _Blackwood's Magazine_ gave scope to the fun and humour for which there was no place in the graver pages of its contemporaries. The _London Magazine_ and the _Westminster Review_ likewise did valuable service to literature and thought. But the great development of the magazines and critical journals has taken place during the last sixty years. In the course of it two tendencies have become manifest: first, a tendency to shorten the intervals of publication; and secondly, a tendency to multiply the organs of this periodical literature. The old quarterly has almost given place to the monthly magazine; the latter in its turn has had to abandon no small share of its province to the weekly journal; and recently the daily newspaper has been encroaching more and more upon the sphere of the weekly. Partly, no doubt, the change has been due to differentiation of function; partly too it has been brought about by impatience, and necessarily implies greater hurry and less mature consideration. The multiplication of organs has been equally remarkable. In early days a few magazines held the field alone; now their name is legion. One result is that there will probably never again be concentrated on a single paper as much talent and genius as we find in the early numbers of _Fraser's Magazine_. Another is that in ever growing ratio the literary talent of the age finds its outlet in the periodical. If Horace was right in his celebrated maxim, the change is not one to rejoice over. The increase of the magazines has influenced all literature, but especially fiction. It has greatly stimulated the demand, and it has changed the manner of publication. In earlier days a book was as a matter of course finished before the publication began. Chiefly by reason of the example of Dickens it became common to publish in parts; and the magazines have made this the normal rather than the exceptional form of publication, at least for authors of sufficient reputation to command an audience first in the periodical and afterwards when the parts are gathered into a volume. Lately there have been indications that this may come to be the mode of publication, not of fiction only, but of serious historical and biographical works as well.