In the Clerk's Office in the District Court for the Southern District of New-York.

PUTNAM'S MONTHLY.

A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art.

VOL. I.-JANUARY 1853.-NO. I.

A

INTRODUCTORY.

STRONOMERS assert that the nebulous mist with which the ether is charged is perpetually taking form-that the regions of space are but a celestial dairy, in which the milky way is for ever churned into stars. Nor do the new stars extinguish the old; for, as the thirteenth man in the omnibus always says-there is room for one more. It will not, therefore, surprise the public to see a new Magazine. The reader, like the astronomer cognizant of infinite star-dust, knows very well that in the rapid life of this country there is a constant scintillation of talent, which needs only a nucleus to be combined into beams of light and heat.

Taking the reader, therefore, by the hand, or rather by the eye, here at the portal, we invite a moment's conversation before he passes within.

A man buys a Magazine to be amused-to be instructed, if you please, but the lesson must be made amusing. He buys it to read in the cars, in his leisure hours at home-in the hotel, at all chance moments. It makes very little difference to him whether the article date from Greece or Guinea, if it only interest him. He does not read upon principle, and troubles himself little about copyright and justice to authors. If a man goes to Timbuctoo and describes his visit picturesquely and well, the reader devours the story, and is not at all concerned because the publisher may have broken the author's head or heart, to obtain the manuscript. A popular Magazine must amuse, interest and instruct, or the public will pass by upon the other side. Nor will it be persuaded to " come over and help us" by any consideration of abstract right. It says, very justly, "if you had no legs, why did you try to walk?"

It is because we are confident that neither Greece nor Guinea can offer the American reader a richer variety of instruction and amusement in every kind, than the country whose pulses throb with his, and whose every interest is his own, that this Magazine presents itself to-day. The genius of the old world is affluent; we owe much to it, and we hope to owe more. But we have no less faith in the opulence of our own resources. Not alone in the discussion of those graver contemporary interests of every kind, which is the peculiar province of the foreign Quarterly Review, but in the treatment of minor matters of daily experience, which makes so much of the distinctive charm of a Magazine, we hold to the conviction that our genius is as good as it is in practical affairs. To an American eye, life in New-York, for instance. offers more, and more interesting, aspects, than life in London or Paris. Or, again, life VOL. I.-1

in London and Paris is more interesting and intelligible to an American when reported by an American, than by the man of any other country. America practically goes to Europe with every American. We do not mean, of course, with every man whose birth chanced to fall in America, and to whom Europe is Paris, and Paris a Jardin Mabille, or a Magasin des Modes, but with every man who sees through "American spectacles," as a late anonymous author expresses it. We all understand his impres sions and estimates, because they are made by a standard common to ourselves. And if we add to this, the essential freshness of feeling and true poetic sense of the American, we find some reason for the opinion that not only does an American know how to travel, but he knows how to tell his travels well. Hence, in a popular Magazine, which is a running commentary upon the countless phenomena of the times as they rise-not, as in a newspaper, in the form of direct criticism, but in the more perma nently interesting shapes of story, essay, poem and sketch-this local reality is a point of the utmost importance. If there are as sharp-eyed and cunning-handed men in New-York or Cincinnati, or New Orleans, for instance, who can walk into the markets, and search all the mysteries of characteristic life in those cities, and then with emphasis and skill, make all of us see as they saw, why is it not as interesting as the same thing done in London ?

This is true in other spheres of thought, as well as life. We trust to show not only the various aspects of life, but to hint at their significance. In what paper or periodical do you now look to find the criticism of American thought upon the times? We hope to answer that question, too, by heaping upon our pages the results of the acutest observations, and the most trenchant thought, illustrated by whatever wealth of crudition, of imagination and of experience, they may chance to possess.

A Magazine, like a poet, we know must be born and not made. That is, it must be founded upon fact. No theory of what a good Magazine should be, will make a Magazine good, if it be not genuine in itself and genuinely related to the time. And it has been already announced in our prospectus, that we have no desire to try an experiment.

Are we then so sure? Has not the long and dreary history of Magazines opened our eyes? Is there some siren seduction in theatres and periodicals that for ever woos managers and publishers to a certain destruction? Why do we propose another twelve-month voyage in pea-green covers, toward obscurity and the chaos of failures?

These are fair and friendly questions, while we stand chatting at the portal. With the obstinacy of Columbus,-if you please we incredulously hear you, and still boLiove in the West. No alchemist, after long centuries of labor, ever discovered the philosopher's stone, nor found that any thing but genius and thrift would turn plaster and paper into gold. But, if even he had withstood his consuming desire, he would have perished at first of despair, as he did, at last, of disappointment.

So our Magazine is a foregone conclusion. Columbus believed in his Cathay of the West-and discovered it.

We pray the reader to enter, and pardon this delay at the door. Within he will find poets, wits, philosophers, critics, artists, travellers, men of erudition and science, all strictly masked, as becomes worshippers of that invisible Truth which all our efforts and aims will seek to serve. And as he turns from us to accost those masks wo remind the reader of the young worshipper of Isis. For in her temple at Säis, upon the Nile, stood her image, for ever veiled. And when an ardent neophyte passionate ly besought that he might see her, and would take no refusal, his prayer was granted The veil was lifted, and the exceeding splendor of that beauty dazzled him to death. Let it content you, ardent reader, to know that behind these masks are those whom you much delight to honor-those whose names, like the fame of Isis, have gone into other lands.