glimpses of the anxieties and disorders of the critical years of party
strife that attended the making and adoption of the Constitution. The
social order was weak, there was a general revolt against taxation. "I
am uneasy and apprehensive, more so than during the war," wrote Jay to
Washington, June 27, 1786. David Humphreys, one of the "Hartford Wits,"
who came into prominence at the close of the war, and who at this time
(1786) was engaged in the composition of the _Anarchiad_ and other
satirical verse, aimed at the disorder of the time, contributed to _The
Museum_ his poem on the "Happiness of America." Francis Hopkinson's
gentle prose satires and his poems of revolutionary incidents reappeared
in its pages. Anthony Benezet uttered his oft-repeated protest against
the iniquity of slavery. Philip Freneau's odes found place almost
monthly in the poet's corner. Through several numbers ran a series of
articles, though not for the first time published, "On the Character of
Philadelphians," signed Tamoc Caspipina, the pseudonym of the Rev. Jacob
Duché, brother-in-law of Francis Hopkinson, and derived from the initial
letters of his title as "the assistant minister of Christ's Church and
St. Peter's in Philadelphia, in North America."
I cull from volume five a few specimen articles to illustrate the wealth
of local and national history embedded in this popular periodical:
VOL. V, p. 185.--Report on the petition of Hallam and Henry to license a
theatre in Philadelphia.
P. 197.--Account of the battle of Bunker Hill.
P. 220.--Letters of "James Littlejohn"--_i.e._, Timothy Dwight.
P. 233.--Franklin on food.
P. 235.--Duché's Description of Philadelphia.
P. 263.--Insurrection in New Hampshire.
P. 293.--Dr. Franklin's Prussian Edict.
P. 295.--Impartial Chronicle, by W. Livingstone.
P. 300.--Poetical address to Washington, by Governor Livingstone.
P. 363.--Earthquake in New England.
P. 400.--Battle of Long Island.
P. 473.--Franklin's idea of an English school.
P. 488.--"How to Conduct a Newspaper,"--Dr. Rush.
The same cause that led to the suspension of the _Columbian Magazine_
put a period also to the _American Museum_, and in the same month. On
December 31, 1792, Matthew Carey, in bidding farewell to the public that
had supported his undertaking, ascribed its failure to "the
construction, whether right or wrong, of the late Post-Office law, by
which the postmaster here has absolutely refused to receive the _Museum_
into the Post-Office on any terms." Although the circulation of the
magazine had been large for those days, the publisher had derived small
profit from his venture. The subscription price, $2.40 per annum for two
volumes, making together more than one thousand pages, was too low; and
during the six years, between 1786 and 1792, Carey was always poor, and
in his _Autobiography_ declares that during those years he was never at
any one time the possessor of four hundred dollars. But in those years
of personal penury and public turmoil, Matthew Carey laid the foundation
of the American system of social science.
Six years after the suspension of the magazine, Carey attempted to
re-animate it, and published _The American Museum, or Annual Register of
Fugitive Pieces, Ancient and Modern_, for the year 1798, printed for
Matthew Carey. Philadelphia: W. & R. Dickson, Lancaster. Matthew Carey,
whose introduction was dated June 20, 1799, wrote of the renascent
publication, "If this _coup d'essai_ be favorably received, I shall
publish a continuation of it yearly." No other volume was ever issued.
_The Medical Examiner_ was published in 1787, and made one volume octavo
of 424 pages. It was edited by J. B. Biddle.
_The Philadelphia Magazine_, the first that ever bore the name of the
city, made two volumes. The first volume extended from February to
December, 1788, and contained 448 pages. The second volume began in
January, 1789, and closed in November of the same year (416 pages). The
magazine is said to have been edited by Elhanan Winchester. His
"Lectures on Prophecies" are bound up with the second volume of the
periodical. The lectures were originally issued in each volume.
_The Arminian Magazine_, Vol. I, 1789, pp. 600; Vol. II, 1790, pp. 620,
was published by Prichard and Hall, in Market Street, and was edited by
John Dickins, the scholarly pastor of the church that he named the
"Methodist Episcopal."
In magazines addressed to women, Philadelphia has always been fertile
and successful. "The first attempt of the kind made in this country" was
"_The Lady's Magazine and Repository of Entertaining Knowledge_, Vol. I,
for 1792. By a Literary Society. Philadelphia: W. Gibbons, North Third
Street, No. 144."
The motto chosen by the editors was "the mind t'improve and yet amuse;"
and the fair sex, who are supposed to have received the proposals for
the work with "extraordinary marks of applause," are assured that "the
greatest deference shall be paid to their literary communications," and
they are promised month by month offerings of "the most _lively prose_
and _pathetic verse_."
The magazine contains anecdotes, poems, female correspondence,
similitude between the Egyptians and Abyssinians, manners and customs of
the Egyptians, schemes for increasing the power of the fair sex, essays
on ladies' feet, etc., etc. It began June, 1792, and lived until May,
1793.
_The Philadelphia Minerva_ was filled with old and new fugitive pieces.
It was published weekly by W. T. Palmer, at No. 18 North Third Street,
beginning in 1795 and ceasing in July, 1798.
_The Pennsylvania Magazine_, of the very slightest significance, was
issued in 1795, and made one volume.
_The American Monthly Review or Literary Journal_. Jan.-Aug., 1795.
Phila.: S.[amuel] H.[arrison] Smith.
_The American Annual Register, or Historical Memoirs of the United
States_, made one volume in 1796.
_The Literary Museum, or Monthly Magazine_. Jan.-June, 1797. "Printed by
Derrick and Sharples, and sold by the principal booksellers in Phila.
Price, one quarter of a dollar."
_The Methodist Magazine_ was founded by John Dickins in January, 1797,
and was edited by him until his death, in 1798 (September 27). It was
printed by Henry Tuckness. It was chiefly made up of sermons.
_The American Universal Magazine_ consisted chiefly of selections from
other periodicals. The first volume began Monday, January 2, 1797, and
was completed March 20, 1797. It was embellished with Du Simitiere's
portrait of William Penn. It was "printed by S.[amuel] H.[arrison] Smith
for Richard Lee, No. 131 Chestnut Street." It was commenced as a weekly
journal, but after January 23 it was published biweekly. After February
6 it was printed by Budd and Bartram, and contained frequent articles
favoring the abolition of slavery. It was taken in hand by new printers
on March 6, and sent out by Snowden and McCorkle.
The second volume ran from April 3 to June 13, and was printed by the
proprietor, Richard Lee, at No. 4 Chestnut Street.
The third volume, July 10, to November 15, 1797, informed the patrons of
the publication that the editor "would be assisted by a gentleman whose
literary abilities have been frequently sanctioned by public
approbation." It was printed by "Samuel H. Smith and Thomas Smith."
The fourth volume, with which the publication ended, lived from December
5, 1797, to March 7, 1798.
Philadelphia, in 1793, had been visited by the terrible scourge of
yellow fever. In 1798 the pestilence returned, and repeated in
Philadelphia the horrors recorded of London in the previous century.
During this year certain magazines were published in the city that may
almost be called journals of the plague.
_The Philadelphia Monthly Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge
and Entertainment_, was begun in January, 1798, and printed for Thomas
Condie, stationer in Carter's Alley (No. 20). It lasted through the
year, and made two volumes. The publishers appended to the second volume
"A History of the Pestilence, commonly called Yellow Fever, which
almost desolated Philadelphia in the months of August, September and
October, 1798. By Thomas Condie and Richard Folwell." The history
contains 108 pages, an appendix of 31 pages, and a list of all the names
of those who died of the fever--3,521 in all. In the month of September
alone 2,004 persons died of the plague, being one in every twenty-five
of the total population.
This magazine contained the first long biographical sketch of
Washington. The "Memoirs of George Washington, Esq., Late President of
the U. S.," ran through the months of January, February, March, May and
June, 1798.
It is in this magazine that we find the earliest notice of Mrs. Merry,
who was the first eminent actress that crossed the ocean. "Biographical
Anecdotes of Mrs. Merry of the theatre, Philadelphia, by Thomas Condie,"
April, 1798 (Vol. I, p. 187). With a reputation in England second only
to Mrs. Siddons, this brilliant actress was added to the American stage
by Mr. Wignal, of the Philadelphia Theatre, who had gone abroad in 1796
to recruit his company and, if possible, to engage some first-rate
actors in London. Mrs. Merry arrived at New York in October, 1796, and
made her first appearance in the Western World in December in the
character of _Juliet_. She was the daughter of John Brunton, of the
Norwich Theatre, and the wife of "Della Crusca" Merry, the well-known
playwright and author.
_The Weekly Magazine of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces and Interesting
Intelligence_, was begun February 3, 1798. It was conducted by James
Watters, of Willing's Alley, a young man who was the manager for
Dobson's American edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The first
article in the periodical introduces us to the first professional man of
letters in America. It is "The Man at Home," by Charles Brockden Brown.
Although unsigned, no one familiar with Brown's style could read a page
without discerning him in the short snap-shot sentences of the story. On
page 228 of the first volume three pages of the "Sky-Walk" are
"extracted from Brown's MSS." The singular title of this unfinished
story, which was afterward woven into the web of "Edgar Huntley," seems
to have been as puzzling to readers then as now, and it is explained in
a stray note on page 318 of the magazine as "a popular corruption of
Ski-Wakkee, or Big Spring, the name given by the Lenni Lennaffee (sic)
or Delaware Indians to the district where the principal scenes of this
novel are transacted." "The Man at Home" ran through thirteen numbers of
the first volume, which closed on April 28.
In the second volume (page 193) Brown commenced the publication of his
first important novel, "Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of the Year 1793," the
first chapter of which appeared June 16, 1798. It contained vivid
descriptions of the scenes during the pestilence of 1793-8. Brown's
genius naturally dealt with weird and sombre subjects and extraordinary
passions and experiences. While occupied with this romantic narrative of
the horrors of the plague, his intimate friend, Elihu Hubbard Smith, who
had introduced him to the "Friendly Club," in New York, died of the
fever, and his own life was for a time in danger by it.
The third volume of the magazine (August 4, 1798-April 6, 1799) was
printed by Ezekiel Forman, the young and gifted editor, James Watters,
having died of the fever. A commemorative note of the stricken editor is
to be found in the number bearing date February 2, 1799 (page 129).
In consequence of Watters' death, no number of the magazine was
published between August 25, 1798, and February 9, 1799. The property
was then bought from the late editor's mother, and was continued until
June 1, 1799, when it came abruptly to an end, leaving the fourth volume
unfinished and with only 256 pages.
_The Weekly Magazine_ had carried upon its covers in 1798 a proposal to
publish the novel, "Sky Walk, or the Man Unknown to Himself," a few
pages of which had been given in the magazine. The manuscript was known
to be with James Watters, but its fate is unknown; it probably was
destroyed with the rest of the unfortunate editor's papers.
One other Philadelphia publication was terminated in consequence of the
plague, which, although properly classified as a newspaper, is yet of so
much literary and historical interest that it would seem to deserve a
place in this narrative. _Porcupine's Gazette and United States Daily
Advertiser_ was published by William Cobbett on Second Street, opposite
Christ Church. It was first issued on Saturday evening, March 4, 1797.
Up to that time no such cut and thrust weapon had been seen in America,
and no such truculent foul-mouthed editor had plucked a pen out of his
pilcher by the ears on this side of the Atlantic. We had known editors
who were learned in profanity and gifted in vulgarity, but none that had
just such a bitter trick of invective as William Cobbett, or "Peter
Porcupine," as he was pleased to call himself. He was born at Farnham,
in Surrey, in 1762, within a stone's throw of Sir William Temple's Moor
Park, where lived for ten years the greatest master of virile and
virulent English in all the long annals of our literature. It is a
curious coincidence that the first book that fell into the well-nigh
penniless hands of Cobbett was "The Tale of a Tub," and in it he
discovered and appropriated the secret of Jonathan Swift's burning
English.
In Philadelphia, Cobbett advocated the extremest Tory principles, and
requested the contributors to his paper, "whether they write on their
business or mine, to pay the postage, and place it to my account. This
is a regulation I have been obliged to adopt to disappoint certain
Democratic blackguards, who, to gratify their impotent malice and put me
to expense, send me loving epistles full of curses and bawdry."
During the prevalence of the plague, Cobbett ejected his venomous
superfluity upon Dr. Benjamin Rush, comparing him to Doctor Sangrado, in
Gil Blas, because he advocated blood-letting as a remedy for the fever.
Rush, stung into retaliation, sued Cobbett, and recovered from him five
thousand dollars. This, together with an additional three thousand
dollars, the cost of the suit, ruined Cobbett, and he removed to
Bustleton, August 29, 1799, where he continued for a short time to
publish his "_Gazette_," weekly. The last barbed arrow, quivering with
scorn, was fired from Bustleton, January 13, 1800, and the author
returned to England.
Cobbett also published, in Philadelphia, _The Political Censor_, or
_Monthly Review_, which lasted from March, 1796, to March, 1797.
A German magazine was published in Philadelphia, in 1798:
_Philadelphisches Magazin für die deutschen in Amerika_. Philadelphia:
H. and J. R. Kämmerer.
_The Dessert to the True American_ measures a year from July, 1798 to
July, 1799.
The last magazine published in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century
was the _Philadelphia Magazine and Review, or Monthly Repository of
Information and Amusement_. It was begun in January, 1799, and printed
for Benjamin Davies, 68 High Street. In announcing this work, the editor
alluded to the unsuccess that had attended all efforts to establish
magazines in Philadelphia, and he believed the cause to be the spurious
patriotism that led the editors to reject whatever was not of native
production. The magazine was strongly "anti-Gallican" in character. It
closed its career with its first volume.
I have made no mention in this necessarily incomplete enumeration of the
eighteenth century magazines of an early religious publication, _The
Royal Spiritual Magazine_, by Joseph Crukshank, 8vo, 1771. A few stray
numbers exist, but I have never seen a copy of it. How long it was
published I do not know.
Christopher Sauer printed, at irregular intervals, in 1764, the
_Geistliches Magazien_. There are fifty numbers in the first volume.
Sauer cast his own type, and this magazine is therefore printed, as he
himself says on page 136 of the second volume, with the first type made
in America.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
THE PORT FOLIO.
At the beginning of this century Philadelphia was the most attractive
city in America to a young man of brains and ambition. It was the seat
of an active social, political and literary life. Poet George Webbe
noticed in 1728 the leadership of Philadelphia in all matters pertaining
to the higher life of the country, and prophesied:
Rome shall lament her ancient fame declined,
And Philadelphia be the _Athens_ of mankind.
General Lee might petulantly exclaim in 1779, "Philadelphia is not an
Athens," and Neal might write in _Blackwood's Magazine_ that the
Philadelphians were "mutton-headed Athenians," but the name became a
favorite one with which to characterize the thriving Pennsylvania town
which exercised such sovereign sway and masterdom over its sister
cities. Benjamin West, in a letter to Charles Willson Peale (September
19, 1809), predicts that Philadelphia will in time "become the seat of
refinement in all accomplishments ... the _Athens_ of the Western
Empire." Harrison Hall and the gentlemen who published and maintained
the _Port Folio_ always styled Philadelphia the "_Athens_ of America."
As the capital of the government it was the centre of wealth and
fashion. Fine old mansions and gardens adorned Chestnut and High
Streets; Judge Tilghman in the Carpenter Mansion, Israel Pemberton in
Clarke Hall, Thomas Willing, the merchant prince, at Third and Walnut,
and his partner, Robert Morris, at Sixth and High Streets, Edward
Shippen at Fourth and Walnut, the Norris family in their home upon the
site of the U. S. Bank and Custom House, and in their great mansion at
Fair Hill, the Hamiltons at Bush Hill and the Woodlands, dispensed
lavish hospitality.
William Bingham, father-in-law of the eminent banker Alexander Baring,
who was afterwards Lord Ashburton, entertained in grand style. General
Washington drove out from the Morris mansion along the unpaved streets
south of Chestnut Street in a coach drawn by six horses and attended by
two footmen. In his stables on Minor Street was a stud of twelve or
fourteen horses. General John Cadwallader, father-in-law of the second
Lord Erskine, in his great house at Second and Spruce, made liberal use
of his immense fortune.
In the first year of this century the University of Pennsylvania, which
had played so great a part in the Revolution, and to which Louis XVI
had, in 1786, made so generous a donation, was removed to its new home
in the spacious buildings erected for the executive mansion. The
Philadelphia Library, which had been Franklin's first scheme for public
improvement, and which had been enriched by the generous gifts of James
Logan, was furnishing such opportunities for literary work as were
unknown elsewhere. John Quincy Adams sought in vain to cultivate in
Boston the "Wistar parties" that Caspar Wistar had made so famous in
Philadelphia. One hundred years ago there was only one scientific
foundation within this Republic that was not in Philadelphia, and that
was the American Academy in Boston. The American Philosophical Society
in its venerable hall in State House Yard numbered Presidents
Washington, Jefferson and Adams among its members. The best scholars of
Europe and America read its "Transactions" or contributed to its
"Proceedings." From his private observatory David Rittenhouse made the
earliest astronomical observations in this country, and rested his
transit instrument upon the ancient stanchions that still maintain their
place in the Philosophical Society window looking out upon the fine old
trees planted by the father of John Vaughan, secretary and librarian of
the society. The only Natural History Museum in this country was opened
in 1802 at Third and Lombard by Charles Willson Peale; and far out on
the Schuylkill at Gray's Ferry, John Bartram, whom Linnæus called "the
greatest natural botanist of the world," had planted the first botanic
garden.
The number of foreign exiles who at this time were moving in
Philadelphia society gave a cosmopolitan character to the city, and lent
to it the air of foreign capitals. Talleyrand, Beaumais, Vicomte de
Noailles and his brother-in-law Lafayette, Volney, the Duc de
Liancourt, and General Moreau, and at a later date Joseph Bonaparte and
Murat, were but a few of the distinguished members of the "French
colony."
JOSEPH DENNIE, the most interesting figure among American editors, came
to Philadelphia in 1799 as clerk to Timothy Pickering, who was then
Secretary of State, and his brilliant social qualities soon won him
recognition in the city. "The American Addison" he was called then, a
title he had won by the easy grace and pleasing melody of his style.[9]
He was born in Boston, August 30, 1768, and was sent to Harvard College,
where he proved a jibbing pupil, and was rusticated for a term of six
months. He industriously read all the books that were proscribed by the
Faculty, and ignored those studies that were recommended to him. His was
a brilliant but undisciplined mind, strongly independent, impetuous,
fond of contradiction, full of surprises, "studious of change and fond
of novelty," as he often defined himself. Soon after beginning the study
of law, Dennie wrote, "In the infancy of a profession 'tis chimerical to
talk of undeviating integrity. Let hair-brained enthusiasts prate in
their closets as loudly as they please to the contrary, a young
adventurer in any walk of life must take advantage of the events and
weaknesses of his fellow-mortals, or be content to munch turnip in a
cell amidst want and obscurity." Of course, all this is very outrageous,
but altogether what we should expect from such "unimproved mettle, hot
and full." He abandoned the law, and was among the first men in America
to devote himself to literature.
[9] When British reviewers styled Dennie "the American Addison," the
_Aurora Gazette_ broke forth into the following horse-laugh: "Exult, ye
white hills of New Hampshire, redoubtable Monadnock and Tuckaway! Laugh,
ye waters of the Winiseopee and Umbagog Lakes! Flow smooth in heroic
verse, ye streams of Amorioosack and Androscoggin, Cockhoko and
Coritocook! And you, merry Merrimack, be now more merry!"
His first experience in journalism was as editor of the _Tablet_ in
Boston, May 19, 1795. The paper lived just thirteen weeks.
Dennie next tried his Bohemian fortunes in Walpole, N. H., and
contributed to the _Farmer's Weekly Museum_, a good and popular journal
that had been founded in 1790, the papers entitled "The Lay Preacher,"
upon which rests his literary fame. Of this magazine he became editor
in 1796, and at once gathered about him a number of noble swelling
spirits who contributed racy and original reading to the "Farmer's"
subscribers.[10]
[10] Dennie always remained faithful to his New England friends. T. G.
Fessenden had been one of the contributors to the _Farmer's Museum_;
when his "Terrible Tractoration" appeared, Dennie wrote to the _Port
Folio_, "To Connecticut men studious either of Hudibrastic or solemn
poetry, we look with eager eyes for the most successful specimens of the
inspiration of the Muse." Fessenden was the last to maintain the fame of
the "Hartford Wits;" and the glory of "McFingal," and "The Conquest of
Canaan" and the "Anarchiad," and the "Political Green house" and "The
Echo" faded with the failing of the _Farmer's Museum_.
The publisher became bankrupt in 1798, and Dennie pilgrimaged to
Philadelphia, without fortune and without a patron. His service under
Pickering was of short duration.