The third volume, July 10, to November 15, 1797, informed the patrons of the publication that the editor "would be assisted by a gentleman whose literary abilities have been frequently sanctioned by public approbation." It was printed by "Samuel H. Smith and Thomas Smith." The fourth volume, with which the publication ended, lived from December 5, 1797, to March 7, 1798. Philadelphia, in 1793, had been visited by the terrible scourge of yellow fever. In 1798 the pestilence returned, and repeated in Philadelphia the horrors recorded of London in the previous century. During this year certain magazines were published in the city that may almost be called journals of the plague. _The Philadelphia Monthly Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge and Entertainment_, was begun in January, 1798, and printed for Thomas Condie, stationer in Carter's Alley (No. 20). It lasted through the year, and made two volumes. The publishers appended to the second volume "A History of the Pestilence, commonly called Yellow Fever, which almost desolated Philadelphia in the months of August, September and October, 1798. By Thomas Condie and Richard Folwell." The history contains 108 pages, an appendix of 31 pages, and a list of all the names of those who died of the fever--3,521 in all. In the month of September alone 2,004 persons died of the plague, being one in every twenty-five of the total population. This magazine contained the first long biographical sketch of Washington. The "Memoirs of George Washington, Esq., Late President of the U. S.," ran through the months of January, February, March, May and June, 1798. It is in this magazine that we find the earliest notice of Mrs. Merry, who was the first eminent actress that crossed the ocean. "Biographical Anecdotes of Mrs. Merry of the theatre, Philadelphia, by Thomas Condie," April, 1798 (Vol. I, p. 187). With a reputation in England second only to Mrs. Siddons, this brilliant actress was added to the American stage by Mr. Wignal, of the Philadelphia Theatre, who had gone abroad in 1796 to recruit his company and, if possible, to engage some first-rate actors in London. Mrs. Merry arrived at New York in October, 1796, and made her first appearance in the Western World in December in the character of _Juliet_. She was the daughter of John Brunton, of the Norwich Theatre, and the wife of "Della Crusca" Merry, the well-known playwright and author.