Yet even this would not have succeeded with the public generally, at any period, and it perhaps could have had less chance at no period than it has at present, when the rapid spread of intercourse and information is, in spite of all official and other efforts to the contrary, diffusing a more rational taste even down to the very humblest classes of society. Men in office, however inferior and second-rate that office may be, and however mean may be their own tastes, and grovelling their own habits, will not--dare not, continue long to pride themselves in, or even privately to encourage, that from which the peasantry turn away in disgust; and, ere many additional years have been added to the Kalendar, it will be found that those superior spirits who lent themselves to this work for a time, in the hope that it would serve them as a stepping-stone for getting into office, will become ashamed of it in consequence of having obtained their objects, or disgusted, because that which they must have felt as a degradation, has to them, also, proved a deception. But, whatever of good or of evil, of liveliness or of licentiousness, of the misapplication of talent, or the miserable labour of that which is no talent at all, may be found in the school of writing, of which Blackwood’s Magazine hitherto forms the chief specimen, the Athens assuredly has neither the merit nor the demerit of originating that school; and if all support, except what the Athens could give it, were to be withdrawn, the remainder of its existence would not exceed one month.