ment, and for giving his manly assistance to the common good. The very toothpick of the dandy, should this man, or any man like him meet with it, poor or rich, shall suggest to him, if he pleases, a hundred agreeable thoughts of foreign lands, and elegance and amusement,-of tortoises and books of travels, and the comb in his mistress's hair, and the elephants that carry sultans, and the real silver mines of Potosi, with all the wonders of South American history, and the starry cross in its sky; so that the smallest key shall pick the lock of the greatest treasures; and that which in the hands of the possessor was only a poor instrument of affectation, and the very emblem of indifference and stupidity, shall open to the knowing man a universe.

We must not pursue the subject further this week, or trust our eyes at the smallest objects around us, which, from long and loving contemplation, have enabled us to report their riches. We have been at this work now, off and on, man and boy, (for we began essay-writing while in our teens,) for upwards of thirty years: and excepting that we would fain have done far more, and that experience and suffering have long restored to us the natural kindliness of boyhood, and put an end to a belief in the right or utility of severer views of any thing or person, we feel the same as we have done throughout; and we have the same hope, the same love, the same faith in the beauty and goodness of nature and all her prospects, in space and in time; we could almost add, if a sprinkle of white hairs in our black would allow us, the same

youth; for whatever may be thought of a consciousness to that effect, the feeling is so real, and trouble of no ordinary kind has so remarkably spared the elasticity of our spirits, that we are often startled to think how old we have become, compared with the little of age that is in our disposition: and we mention this to bespeak the reader's faith in what we shall write hereafter, if he is not acquainted with us already. If he is, he will no more doubt us than the children do at our fire-side. We have had so much sorrow, and yet are capable of so much joy, and receive pleasure from so many familiar objects, that we sometimes think we should have had an unfair portion of happiness, if our life had not been one of more than ordinary trial.

The reader will not be troubled in future with personal intimations of this kind; but in commencing a new work of the present nature and having been persuaded to put our name at the top of it, (for which we beg his kindest constructions, as a point conceded by a sense of what was best for others,) it will be thought, we trust, not unfitting in us to have alluded to them. We believe we may call ourselves the father of the present penny and three-halfpenny literature,—designations, once distressing to "ears polite," but now no longer so, since they are producing so many valuable results, fortunes included. The first number of the new popular review, the "Printing Machine," in an article for the kindness and cordiality of which we take this our best opportunity of expressing our gratitude, and can only wish we could

turn these sentences into so many grips of the hand to show our sense of it,-did us the honour of noticing the "Indicator " as the first successful attempt (in one respect) to revive something like the periodical literature of former days. We followed this with the "Companion," lately republished in connection with the "Indicator ;" and a few years ago, in a fit of anxiety at not being able to meet some obligations, and fearing we were going to be cut off from life itself without leaving answers to still graver wants, we set up a halfreviewing, half-theatrical periodical, under the name of the "Tatler," (a liberty taken by love,) in the hope of being able to realize some sudden as well as lasting profits! So little, with all our zeal for the public welfare, had we found out what was so well discerned by Mr. Knight and others, when they responded to the intellectual wants of the many. However, we pleased some readers, whom it is a kind of prosperity even to rank as such; we conciliated the good-will of others, by showing that an ardent politician might still be a man of no ill-temper, nor without good-will to all; and now, once more setting up a periodical work, entirely without politics, but better calculated, we trust, than our former ones to meet the wishes of many as well as few, we are in hearty good earnest, the public's very sincere and cordial friend and servant,

LEIGH HUNT.

UNION OF THE "LONDON JOURNAL" AND THE "PRINTING MACHINE."

ON Saturday, June 6, at Mr. Knight's, 22, Ludgate Street, by the speciallest of all licenses (and the most reasonable) to wit, their own, will be married the parties above-mentioned; after which, the happy couple will set off for all parts of the world, and pass four thousand nine hundred and sixty honeymoons, such being, by the most moderate computation, the term of their natural lives.

Yes, dear Reader, the LONDON JOURNAL is about to "change its condition : "—not itself, observe; for why should it? It will never be more itself than at this moment; as a married journal ought to be. It only changes, or rather enriches, its condition, its relative circumstances; and being a paper, it naturally marries a printing-machine ; and its partner, being a machine of the most unmechanical and intelligent description, is to be very generous and amiable, and accommodate its humours to it in so charming a manner, that there would be an end of its having any will of its own, if the two wills did not thus become one, and merge will into pleasure. And thus what a happy pair shall we be; and how glad our ninety-nine thousand hosts will be to see us every Saturday morning, like some immortal and ubiquitous Monsieur and Madame Dacier, clubbing their stocks of scholarship, and presenting themselves in all those quarters at once, chatting and to chat, and with hands full of flowers, after the fashion of those

groups on the old curtains, in which the same identical shepherd and shepherdess are reiterated through the whole district of chintz !

But marriage is expensive; and we are very much of the honest opinion of that custom in Wales, by which young couples are set up in life by the joint contributions of their friends, the favours to be returned on the like occasion; so, in a like beautiful spirit of reciprocity, we plainly tell our loving Readers, that they must assist us, and prepare themselves for a magnanimous rise in the estimation of our worth, to the value of One Halfpenny ;-with this difference, however, from the Welsh state of the case-that the benefit to be received from us in return is not prospective, but immediate, and that our halfpennyworth of increased attraction and entertainment will have evinced a modesty (not to mince the matter) astonishing, in rating its value so low.-To drop the metaphor, and state the case simply to the readers both of the LONDON JOURNAL and the PRINTING MACHINE, we would have them consider, that such as have already taken in both those papers, and therefore paid four-pence halfpenny for the two, may now have the essence of both for less than half the money, and that such as have only taken in one, may now have two instead of one, at the least possible increase of price in one case, and a great lowering of it in the other. The worth of each paper will be augmented, we conceive, by concentration,-none of the best matter of either being lost, and none of doubtful value being required in order to fill up; so that here will be the