The young poet now retired to Mount Pleasant, where doubtless he quietly remained until the autumn of the following year. In August, 1778, he published with Bell in Philadelphia the pamphlet poem "America Independent." On January 1, 1779, Brackenridge issued in Philadelphia the first number of the _United States Magazine_,[6] and Freneau at once became an important contributor. His work in prose and verse may be found in nearly every number. There are prose papers on the West Indies, purporting to be extracts from the letters of "a young philosopher and _bel esprit_ just returned from several small voyages amongst these islands." There are several early poems for the first time put into print, like "Columbus to Ferdinand" and "The Dying Elm," and there are several notable long poems, like "Santa Cruz" and "The House of Night." At least three of the poetical contributions were written expressly for the magazine: "George the Third's Soliloquy," "Psalm cxxxvii Imitated,"--signed "Monmouth, Sept. 10,"--and the "Dialogue between George and Fox." It is evident, however, that Freneau, though his work very greatly strengthened the periodical, was only a "valued contributor." The psalm in the September issue, the first of the poems to bear his name, had a foot-note explaining that the author was "a young gentleman to whom in the course of this work we are greatly indebted." The _United States Magazine_ is a notable landmark in American literary history. Its methods, as we view them to-day, seem singularly modern, and its materials and arrangement are indeed remarkable when we view them against the background of their times. It was a spirited, intensely patriotic, and highly literary periodical; the single fact that "The House of Night" first appeared in its columns is enough to stamp it as no ordinary work. It died with its twelfth issue, owing to the troubled state of the country and the unsettled nature of the currency. Then, too, the audience to which it appealed was found to be a small one. In his valedictory the editor complains bitterly of the unliterary atmosphere in America. A large class, he declares, "inhabit the region of stupidity, and cannot bear to have the tranquility of their repose disturbed by the villanous shock of a book. Reading is to them the worst of all torments, and I remember very well that at the commencement of the work it was their language, 'Art thou come to torment us before the time?' We will now say to them, 'Sleep on and take your rest.'"