Text: N. P. Willis, Notice of Freeman Hunt, Weekly Mirror (New York), November 23, 1844, vol. 1, no. 6, p. 105, cols. 2-3

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FREEMAN HUNT. — A candle burns darkest nearest the wick, and the shining lights of mankind are oftenest least celebrated in the immediate neighborhood of their toils. The 65th No. of the ‘Merchants’ Magazine’ was handed to us, half an hour since, and the similitude above expressed crossed our mind, as we glanced at the cover of the periodical, and remembered what we know of its Editor. Hunt has been glorified in the Hong-kong Gazette, is regularly complimented by the English mercantile authorities, has every Banker in the world for an eager subscriber, every Council, every Ship-owner, and Navigator, is filed away as authority in every library, and thought of, in half the countries of the world, as early as No. 3 in their enumeration of distinguished Americans — yet, who seeks to do him honor in the city he does honor to? The Merchants’ Magazine, though a prodigy of perseverance and industry, is not an accidental development of Hunt's energies. He has always been singularly sagacious, and original in devising new works and good ones. He was the founder of the first “Ladies’ Magazine,” of the first “Children's Periodical,” he started the “American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge,” compiled the best known collection of American anecdotes, and is an indefatigable writer — the author, among other things, of “Letters about the Hudson.” A mutual friend of Hunt and ourself says of him — “His most important labor was the projection and successful establishment of the “Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review.” Having had the means of ascertaining the precise wants of the commercial public, and knowing that almost every other class of our population possessed its appropriate work, he conceived that a magazine and review, devoted to the interest of that large, wealthy, and respectable class, the merchants — a work which should be thoroughly practical and national in its character, embodying commercial matter, literary and statistical, having a national bearing upon their interests and intelligence, and supported by ripe and disciplined minds, would be a desideratum. This national work, tending to inform us of the causes which had acted upon the trade and commerce in times past, and the expanding growth of our country, he has at length brought out with full success. — In this periodical he has opened a new vein of thought, especially adapted to the peculiar cast of our American minds, and erected a monument which will endure.”

Hunt was a playfellow of ours in round jacket days, and we have always looked at him with a reminiscent [column 3:] interest. His luminous eager eyes, as he goes along the street keenly bent upon his errand, would impress any observer with an idea of his genius and determination, and we think it is quite time his earnest head was in the engraver's hands, and his daily passing-by, a mark for the digito monstrari. Few more valuable or more note-worthy citizens are among us.