Henry Laurens, Esq." And Dr. Witherspoon, who was President of Princeton College when Brackenridge was a student there, supplied his former pupil during his year's editorship with many a sly sarcasm and bit of grave philosophy.

"The Cornwalliad, an Heroic Comic Poem," was begun in March, 1779, and was continued through several numbers. It described various incidents in the British retreat to New York after the battles of Trenton and Princeton.

In the January number was begun a series of articles under the title of "The Cave of Vanhest," concerning which the following letter was written October 2, 1779, by Mrs. Sarah Bache to Benjamin Franklin: "The publisher of The United States Magazine wrote to you some time ago to desire you would send him some newspapers, and sent you some of his first numbers. I suppose you never received them. I now send six, not that I think you will find much entertainment in them, but you may have heard that there was such a performance, and may like to see what it is; besides, its want of entertainment may induce you to send something that may make the poor man's magazine more useful and pleasing. Tell Temple 'The Cave of Vanhest' is a very romantic description of Mr. and Mrs. Blair's house and family; the young ladies that the traveller describes and is in love with are children, one seven months younger than our Benjamin, and the Venus just turned of five."

The most amusing episode in the history of the magazine was the quarrel that arose between its editor and General Charles Lee. Brackenridge published in full, in Vol. I, p. 141, a letter written by "an officer of high rank in the American service to Miss F——s (Franks), a young lady of this city." The letter contained a humorous challenge growing out of a merry war in which Miss F. had said that "he wore green breeches patched with leather," and the writer declared that he wore "true sherry vallies," that is, trousers reaching to the ankle with strips of leather on the inside of the thigh. Lee immediately published in the Pennsylvania Advertiser an angry letter upon "the impertinence and stupidity of the compiler of that wretched performance with the pompous title of the magazine of the United States." In reply, Brackenridge compared Lee, as usual, to his favorite ourang-outang, and added: "You are neither Christian, Jew, Turk nor Infidel, but a metempsychosist! You have been heard to say that you expect when you die to transmigrate to a Siberian fox-hound, and to be messmate to Spado." Upon this Lee, in a rage, called at the office with the intention of assaulting the editor. Brackenridge's son cleverly relates what followed. General Lee "knocked at the door, while Mr. Brackenridge, looking out of the upper-story window, inquired what was wanting. 'Come down,' said he, 'and I'll give you as good a horse-whipping as any rascal ever received.' 'Excuse me, General,' said the other, 'I would not go down for two such favors.'"

Besides the publication of the State Constitution and a windy war over female head-dress and hard money, there is little else to say of The United States Magazine. But near the close of the volume the appearance of an imitation of Psalm 137, with the foot-note, "by a young gentleman to whom, in the course of this work, we are greatly indebted," brings for the first time into notice, if not into prominence, a writer destined to display the finest sense of poetic form and the nicest delicacy of poetic sentiment to be found among his contemporaries in America, and who, through his opposition to Hamilton and the Federalists, should win from Washington the epithet of "that rascal Freneau."

Philip Freneau was born in New York in 1752; he had been a classmate at Princeton of James Madison and Brackenridge, and on his return from the Bermudas in 1779, he assisted the latter in his editorial work in Philadelphia. The first edition of his poems was prepared in Philadelphia by Francis Bailey, the publisher of The United States Magazine, in 1786.

Freneau was one of the first American poets to be read and appreciated in England. At the time when Byron was making merry with the notion of an American poet bearing the name of Timothy (Dwight), Campbell was appropriating a line, "The hunter and the deer—a shade" from Freneau's "Indian Burying Ground," and knitting it into "O'Connor's Child," and Sir Walter Scott in "Marmion," by altering a single word, was transparently concealing his theft from "The Heroes of Eutaw."

In December, 1779, the suspension of the magazine was announced, the editor declaring in explanation that the publication was "undertaken at a time when it was hoped the war would be of short continuance, and the money, which had continued to depreciate, would become of proper value. But these evils having continued to exist through the whole year, it has been greatly difficult to carry on the publication; and we shall now be under the necessity of suspending it for some time—until an established peace and a fixed value of the money shall render it convenient or possible to take it up again."

For seven years no one attempted another magazine, and then in September, 1786, by a combination of publishers, The Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany, modelled upon the Gentleman's Magazine and the London Magazine, began its career. It was the most ambitious enterprise of the kind that had yet been undertaken in America. The printing facilities were still very limited, and the subscription lists for all publications small. In 1786 there was one daily paper printed in Philadelphia, and but three or four weekly ones. In the same year four printers after much deliberation agreed to print a small edition of the New Testament. "Before the Revolution a spelling-book, impressed upon brown paper, with the interesting figure of Master Dilworth as a frontispiece, was the extent of American skill in printing and engraving." Improvements came very rapidly, and before the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century Barlow's Columbiad was magnificently printed in Philadelphia, and the great undertakings of Rees' "Cyclopædia" and Wilson's "Ornithology" entered upon. The monthly expense of printing the Columbian was said to be £100, which was paid to mechanics and manufacturers of the United States. The magazine was inaugurated by Matthew Carey, T. Siddons, C. Talbot, W. Spotswood and J. Trenchard.

Carey published, in the first number, "The Life of General Greene," whose portrait was the first in the volume. He also contributed "The Shipwreck," "A Philosophical Dream" (a vision of 1850), and "Hard Times." In the "Philosophical Dream" Carey made the first suggestion of a canal to unite the waters of the Delaware and Ohio. He withdrew from the Columbian Magazine in December, 1786, finding that the quintuple team could not work well together.

Charles Cist, another of the combination, was born at St. Petersburg, August 15, 1738, was graduated at Halle, and, upon coming to Philadelphia in 1773, entered into partnership with Melchior Steiner, with whom he published Paine's "Crisis"—"These are the times that try men's souls." He died in Philadelphia, December 2, 1805.

John Trenchard became sole proprietor of the publication in January, 1789. He was an engraver by profession, having studied under James Smithers, and engraved most of the plates for the magazine. His son, Edward Trenchard, entered the navy, visited England and induced Gilbert Fox, then a 'graver's apprentice, to return with him to America. In this country Fox became an actor, and for him Joseph Hopkinson wrote "Hail Columbia."

"The Foresters,