You are about embarking in a literary voyage, calculated, if ably and prudently conducted, to subserve the best interests of society. Previously, however, to your taking a final leave of terra firma, and before its shores shall recede from your view, it may be the part of wisdom to contemplate the nature and object of your journey, by the steady lights of experience. The legitimate end of every enterprise of the kind, is to enlighten the understanding, and improve the heart. To produce a result so important, no exertion should be omitted, and no means neglected, to impart a useful interest to your miscellany. Of the truth of these preliminary observations, you are no doubt sufficiently impressed. To please every taste, however fastidious, or to gratify in all respects, the wishes of the million, would be a task altogether hopeless; and which a temperament the most sanguine, would scarcely indulge. However transcendent may be the merit of any periodical journal, and however brilliant its success, should the editor listen at all the avenues of public opinion, his ear will notwithstanding be saluted by many an ungrateful sound. Some readers will complain of what they are pleased to call its dull monotony; while others will lament the sacrifice of what they conceive to be matters of importance, in the pursuit of endless variety.--Those who seek for novelty alone, will sometimes be disappointed; while others will start objections, because sufficient respect is not accorded to the venerated opinions of the olden time. The gay may sometimes meet with nothing to excite the smile of merriment, and the grave and reflecting may regret to find so little solid food for the mind. He, however versatile his talents, who would be a favourite with them all, must first be successful in his chase of the ignis fatuus; or obtain from that fairy region in which the rainbow reposes its brilliant arch upon the earth, its treasures of gold. But if your labours should happily tend to give "energy to virtue, and confidence to truth," you will not fail to gratify the wishes of those whose approbation alone is worth desiring--_the well principled_ of all parties.