PREFACE.
The Knickerbocker Magazine has been established for nearly a quarter of a century, and it is the oldest monthly of its class now or ever in America. It has been conducted with uniform ability and industry, and among its contributors have been a large proportion of our best contemporary writers. Our periodical literature has not been eminently successful, and the friends of the veteran and popular editor of the Knickerbocker have known without surprise, but with regret, that his pecuniary recompense has been altogether disproportioned to his long-continued labors, so that only a loving devotion to the work, which he has led from its infancy up to a famous maturity, could have induced him to persevere in those toils which, otherwise applied, would have brought a suitable reward of fortune.
The popular actor on the stage receives from the public substantial "benefits," and the painter or sculptor whose productions have been more celebrated than profitable, not unfrequently collects them in an exhibition which the lovers of art gladly support for his sake as well as for its attractive merits; but the editor has no such resort, as a test
