conducted for some years with great spirit, much display of talent, and conspicuous merit. It would assuredly have succeeded, to the satisfactory emolument of its proprietors, and the lasting fame of its conductors, if its management had been entirely committed to the calm, judicious, and conciliatory control of Mr SMELLIE. But, owing to the harsh irritability of temper, and the severe and almost indiscriminate satire in which Dr GILBERT STUART indulged, several of the Reviews which appeared in that Magazine gave great offence to many leading characters of the day, which occasioned the sales to become so much diminished as to render it a losing concern to the adventurers, insomuch that it was discontinued on the publication of the number for August 1776, after the production of 47 numbers, forming five octavo volumes.

FEW periodical publications of a miscellaneous nature have ever been conducted with more talent, genius, and spirit; perhaps none with less judicious consideration of the circumstances and opinions of the time and place in which it appeared. In both of these attributes of excellence and defect, it was emi

nently beholden to Dr STUART. Possessed of excellent talents and much literary taste, which had been cultivated by a most liberal and extensive education, his genius and spirit, conscious of superior powers and attainments, were bold and regardless almost of every consideration of prudence or discretion. If he had regulated his exertions in the conduct of this Magazine and Review by a similar calm suavity of mind and manners with that which ever adhered to his literary coadjutor Mr SMELLIE, in every difficulty, and through many trying situations, the success of this adventure must have been secure, and, in the present day, could not have failed of being brilliant. But Dr STUART was a disappointed man: thwarted in his early prospects of establishment in life, through the natural and necessary consequences of his own rash and imprudent conduct, he became indignantly hostile against others for the indispensible effects of his own improprieties. In the gratification of his misplaced resentments, he carelessly ruined the cherished offspring of his own conceptions; which, under judicious management, must have grown to giant strength, and splendid fame and fortune.

WITHOUT attempting to institute a comparison between the Edinburgh Magazine and Review and the present unexampledly successful periodical publications of Edinburgh; it may be proper to adduce the introductory address of that former Magazine, as a model of elegant and excellently appropriate composition; and the assertion may be safely hazarded, That, if it had been conducted on the principles there developed, and which Dr STUART and Mr SMELLIE were perfectly qualified to have acted up to, that work would have had few rivals, and fewer superiors.

To the Public.

"THERE has not hitherto appeared in Scotland a periodical publication which has been conducted with liberal views and on an extensive plan. Schemes, partial and imperfect, have been formed, and have been carried into execution, without even the merit of which they were capable. These could not be continued with success among a people remarkable for the purity of their taste and the solidity of their understanding. Many works, accordingly, of this nature have been drop

ped; and of those of them which still are published, it cannot be said, by their warmest partizans, that they awaken curiosity, or are worthy of applause.

BUT, from the imperfections of former attempts, some instructive lessons may be learned. They evince the difficulty of such publications; they point out the dangers to be avoided; and they ought to excite to greater vigour of execution. These circumstances have not escaped the undertakers of the present work. They have remarked the obstacles they have to encounter, and have endeavoured to put themselves in a situation to surmount them. Nor is it chiefly from their own resources and their own preparation that they hope for the public favour and encouragement: They have secured the correspondence of many respectable and ingenious men in different quarters of the kingdom; and several authors of high and approved merit have given the promise of occasional aid.

THE great object of the plan they have adopted is Variety. To be generally useful and entertaining, they mean to suit themselves to readers of every denomination.It

is not solely their intention to paint the manners and the fashions of the times, to interest the passions, and to wander in the regions of fancy. They propose to blend instruction with amusement; to pass from light and gay effusions to severe disquisition; to mingle erudition with wit; and to contrast the wisdom and the folly of men. They wish equally to allure and to please the studious and the grave; the dissipated and the idle. To the former they may suggest matter for reflection and remark; into the latter they may infuse the love of knowledge; and to both, they may afford a not inelegant relaxation and amusement.

UNDER one division of their work, they will present historical anecdotes and details, state papers, singular characters and inscriptions, extraordinary adventures, and facts and relations descriptive of mankind in the different stages of civilization and refinement; they will record useful projects and inventions, improvements in agriculture and manufactures, the proceedings of the British Parliament, interesting decisions of the courts of justice, and remarkable cases in surgery and medicine; and they will com