When Brown began to write "the churchyard romance" was in fashion, and novelists revelled in tales of horror and of terror, dwelling long and painfully upon the most loathsome details of some ghastly bit of fancy. It was the time of Lewis's "Tales of Terror," of Walpole's "Castle of Otranto," of Beckford's "Vathek," and of Mrs. Radcliffe's "Mysteries of Udolpho" and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein." William Godwin, too, wrote ghostly stories of crime and supernatural agencies, and from Godwin, Charles Brockden Brown caught his style. The influence of Godwin is noticeable in Brown's first work, "Alcuin, a Dialogue on the Rights of Women" (1797). Godwin's "Falkland" and "Caleb Williams" are the models of "Wieland" and "Ormond." It is interesting to find young Percy Bysshe Shelley confessing his obligations to the Philadelphia novelist, and saying that Brown's novels had influenced him beyond any other books. Traces of "Wieland" are to be found deeply stamped upon "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne." It is a singular chapter of literary history that records the progress of William Godwin's social theories and tales of horror across the Atlantic to an obscure house in Philadelphia and their return in a new literary form into the hands of William Godwin's son-in-law, Percy Bysshe Shelley, himself a poet of American descent. The British magazines of 1804 contain flattering notices of Brown, and his novels were reprinted and read with interest and critical approval in England. At home he has fallen into undeserved oblivion, and the attempts in 1857 and 1887 to revive the interest in his works proved fruitless. His style had in it no elements of permanent life, but he was the first to discover the capabilities of romance in America, and used in all his books American characters and scenery. Sir Walter Scott so greatly admired the works of the American novelist that he named the hero of Guy Mannering after him and gave to another of the characters of the same story the familiar name of "Arthur Mervyn." Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815), a nephew of David Rittenhouse, and the successor of Benjamin Rush as professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, edited the _Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal_ from November 1, 1804, to May, 1807. It was published irregularly by J. Conrad and Co. The _Evening Fireside, or Literary Miscellany_, Philadelphia, 1805-1806, was established by a literary club, and published by Joseph Rakestraw. The second volume, which began January 4, 1806, completed the work. DRAMATIC MAGAZINES.