Politics as well as history had a part in the labours of our earlier years, and in the days of William Pitt the younger, Sylvanus Urban used to make his yearly boast of the staunch loyalty of his principles, and of his unwearied efforts in the support of our constitution in church and state:
Mersatus adhuc civilibus undis,
Virtutis veræ custos rigidusque satelles.
We are content in our older days to leave it to others to follow with graphic illustrations the marches of armies, and to relate with copious fidelity the debates of senates. The institutions of our country need not our defence, and we have no arms for the service of party. We have long devoted our strength and directed the labours of our contributors to the field of historical and antiquarian literature. In the course of our long service we may boast of having preserved some fragments of history which would otherwise have been lost, and of having rescued some monuments which the hand of Time would else have obliterated.
It is needless to describe the nature of our present work. We desire, without launching into a wider field, to continue to employ ourselves usefully in that which we have chosen. We shall continue our brief chronicle of passing events: by our obituary we aim at preserving the accurate details not only of public but of private and family history; and our pages will always be gratefully open to letters of correspondents who have any valuable observations to communicate, or any curious information to be preserved. In our own portion of the work our readers may be assured that our endeavours will not be relaxed to make our periodical the adequate representative of the antiquarian science and historical literature of the country.