"With the exception of some scores of verses 'tempered with lovers' sighs' and oozing from the brains of 'lunatics, lovers and poets,' the last volume contains very few communications from any friend to us and our cause. In the days of our first predecessors such was the number and zeal of contributors that the editor was obliged to exchange the labor of composition for that of selection, and he often expatiated with gratitude upon the learning, the liberality and the industry of his voluntary assistants. Although they wore their visors up before the public, most of them are now known to us, and we can recognize many of them at home and abroad, pushing their fortunes at the bar, in the desk or the academy, or serving their country in high and honorable stations. They were all quickened with the fervid spirit of enterprise and adventure. They combined learning and wit and genius with industry, perseverance and ambition. They laid the foundation of a work which has outlived all its rivals and contemporaries; but they have left few to inherit and emulate their disinterested devotion to the cause of letters.... England, that detestable country where _everyone_ has been starving for the last century, where _everyone_ has been crushed by the load of taxes, and _everyone_ has been flying from home to avoid the oppressions of the Ministry, prints several thousand copies of a magazine, and the whole edition is sold and paid for in twenty-four hours. These matters are ordered differently here. Instead of _purchasing_ our newspapers and magazines we subscribe for them." Alack-a-day! the world went very well in the consulship of Plancus! No doubt even in the best and soundest of their times the magazines did suffer by the subscription plan. The remaining stock of the _Analectic Magazine_ was sold for seven cents a volume in sheets, and the stock of the _Literary Gazette_, its successor, brought but six and a quarter cents per pound. Hall took the opportunity presented by the publication of "The Lives of the Signers," by his friend and contributor, John Sanderson, to trouble the deaf public again with his bootless cries: