Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), January 4, 1845, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 15

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THE MAGAZINES,

Among all our M. P's. (as George Cruikshank calls the monthly periodicals,) the Knickerbocker is the oldest. This nobody will deny. The London Literary Gazette says it is the1best, which somebody probably will dispute, for it is the fate of every body and everything in this world to have enemies as well as friends. If old age is an evidence of a good constitution in a man, it is no less so in a magazine. The Knickerbocker must have something good about it, or it never could have lived to its present age. The January number contains an admirable essay on Plagiarists and Plagiarisms by Polygon, who is always instructive and amusing; and a delicate piece of verse by John Waters, whose prose essays are more like poetry than his verses. These two writers would alone give value to a magazine.

The Democratic Review comes next to the Knickerbocker in point of age, but it has not yet come to hand, with us; the election of Mr. Polk, we believe, retarded the publication of the last two numbers in some way. The Democratic Review for this month, contains a paper on the inequalities of wealth, which has merit enough to sanctify all its other contents.

The Columbian, for January, appears to have been out of print before the month arrived, for we have seen an advertisement in all the papers, informing all those ladies and gentlemen who were disappointed in obtaining their numbers, that a new edition had been struck off.

We have heard of but one new monthly journal being started in the country, Mr. Simms's Southern Magazine; but a good many new ones will make their appearance on the first of January, in London: among them are “The Shilling Magazine,” by Douglas Jerrold, published by the Punch proprietors, and “Geo. Cruikshank's Table Book,” edited by Gilbert A. a Becket. Chapman & Hall also announce a new monthly series of cheap fiction and history, among which will be a life of Talleyrand, by Thackeray. The “New Edinburgh Review,” for the million, price a shilling,’ which has been published a few months, appears to be thriving, and a new Edinburgh publication, on the million principle, has been announced, to be called the “Edinburgh Tales,” by Mrs. Johnstone, price three half pence. A new weekly paper will also be started in London, price sixpence, to be called the Historical Register.

Bentley's Miscellany, for December, contains the first of a series of papers headed, “Notes of a Loiterer in New York. By Henry Cooke.”

But judging from the first specimen of these new Notes on America, we should think they were taken by somebody who had never been out of the sound of Bow-bells. The following is said of the captain of one of our London packets: “The little captain no sooner took command than lie began to guess and calculate, speak through his nose, and brag — affording us an amusing specimen of his class. His ship ‘was a pretty considerable go-ahead ship, she was; she would tear slick through it like a scalded hog, she would; greased lightning was a fool to her, it was.’ “It would be as impossible for any sailor to talk in this manner, to say nothing of the impossibility of the master of a ship doing so, as it would for a Russian prince. It is the Cockney imitation of a Western boatman. This is given as the reply of the bar-keeper of a steam-boat, which took the writer from the Quarantine to the Battery: “Well, now, I calculate, stranger, you’ll get any drink in that there printed list, fixed right away, from a sherry cobbler to a common cocktail.” Such talk as this was never heard on our seaboard, and if ever heard in America at all, it must have been in a region which we have never visited. If Mr. Bentley is anxious to enrich his pages with specimens of Americanisms, he can find an abundance of them in American works within his reach; or he will find a plenty of American pens that could be employed in his service, for a very moderate compensation.