"No man was ever more beloved by his friends--and among them were those who were great and good in all that constitutes intellectual greatness and moral goodness--than Charles J. Peterson, whose death occurred on Friday night last. He was one of that group of men who half a century ago began to make Philadelphia famous as the literary centre of the country. Liberally educated, trained to the law, he turned naturally to literature, to which his brilliant mind, his ripe scholarship, his fervid imagination, his refined taste directed and impelled him. He survived nearly all of those who had but a brief while before or after him entered upon the world of letters in this city. At that time the best literary thought of the nation was expressed through the medium of _Graham's Magazine_, of which Mr. Peterson was the editor. Among his learned and brilliant associates were James Russell Lowell, Edgar Allan Poe, Dr. Rufus Griswold, Dr. Bird, Richard Penn Smith, Professor J. K. Mitchell, Judge Conrad, Morton McMichael and Louis A. Godey. Of all these men with whom Mr. Peterson worked and lived upon the most intimate terms of literary companionship Mr. Lowell now alone survives. Fifty years ago they were the names which gave to American literature distinction, and made Philadelphia the most prominent centre of genius and talent. Among his contemporaries Mr. Peterson held distinguished rank, and had he continued his literary career there can be no doubt that he would have continued to hold it even in the army of writers who in recent years have become so famous. "But Mr. Peterson put aside writing to become a publisher, in which he achieved remarkable and deserved success, and subsequently he wrote but infrequently, and then only brief brochures intended solely for private circulation among his friends, but which showed the fertility of his mind, his rare fancy, fine taste and ripe judgment.