tributors in 1851. The first of these was "Sir Nathaniel," the eloquent and judicious critic, whose subsequent notices of the writings of some of the most popular American authors—Hawthorne, Dana, Herman Melville, N. P. Willis, and others—have excited so much attention, and gained so favourable a reception in the United States. The second was Mrs. Bushby, the accomplished poet and translator, who has rendered an enduring service to literature by her survey of the authors whom Denmark has produced. Neither must the able fictions of the author of "The Unholy Wish," which were commenced about this period, pass unnoticed. It was the Exhibition year, and that remarkable event supplied, in "All the World and his Wife," an excellent theme for Dudley Costello's versatile pen. "Father Poodles," too, came out in comic strain,—Charles Hervey, in his "Causeries," gave a new turn to the chit-chat of the saloons of Paris,—Captain Medwin was once more at home in his records of courtly amusements on the Continent,—Captain Levinge, Alfred Cole, William Pickersgill, alias Cornelius Colville, William Brailsford, Charles Mitchell Charles, Mrs. De Crespigny, and Madame Colmache, sent contributions in prose and verse, the Dean of York furnished a highly interesting Memoir of the late Sir Robert Peel, and ""A German Soldier" began those "Pictures of Barrack Life" which, running through a long series, have never failed to be read with pleasure.
In 1852, "Sir Nathaniel," by his "Literary Leaflets," made the public acquainted, in a fine and generous spirit of criticism, with several of our own writers whose merits have not been sufficiently recognised: he added, besides these valuable labours, a series of admirable critical essays on the Female Novelists of England, and continued, with even improved judgment and increased felicity of expression, his review of American Authorship. But it was not alone the literature of America, as represented by the published works of her sons, that found a place in the New Monthly; more truthful and just accounts of the American people, their great undertakings, their newly-built cities, their extensive railways—all, in short, that pertained to the national industry and character, was recorded by two English travellers. Dr. Surtees and Mr. Hengiston, and we think we are scarcely venturing too far, when we say that, for pictures of American life, the graphic sketches of the last-named writer have never been surpassed.
Amongst our more recent contributors are Mr. Lascelles Wraxall, whose long residence in Germany has familiarised him with its literature, and well qualified him to be an exponent of its progress ; Mr. G. W. Thornbury, the young and ardent poet; Mr. Basil May, the author of the piquant "Tales of my Dragoman;" and last, but not least, the acute observer of life, to whom we are indebted for the "Chronicles of a Country Town."
The year which has just closed—the Thirty-Third of the existing series of the New Monthly—has witnessed no diminution of the exertions of those who for the last nine years have been associated with the Editor in the pleasant task of catering for the literary entertainment of the public; and he has that reliance on their ability to aid him, which justifies him, he trusts, in promising that the Hundredth Volume of the Magazine, commenced in the present Number, shall in no respect fall short of the attractions which have given the New Monthly a permanent place in the periodical literature of the country.
