Page:The Southern Literary Messenger - Minor.djvu/94

 82 freer and purer light, we have endeavored to foster generous talent wherever we have found it and to present to our readers the thoughts of truthful and loving spirits; in whatever section of our one broad land their fountains have gushed." Such continued the tone and purpose of the Messenger during the whole time of Mr. White's successor.

There are some thirty new contributors, who, with many of those already mentioned, fill up the teeming pages with every variety of composition and some translations. There are two double numbers, May and June and July and August; and there are some very long articles, in both sizes of type; e. g., "A review of Capt, Marryatt and his Diary," probably by Jno. Blair Dabney, one of the best writers for the Messenger, occupies near 24 pages of the smaller type; and another writer takes him to task for having wasted so much on such a trifling subject. Gen. Lewis Cass also requires 24 pages of larger type, for his second paper, which is an account of the Island of Cyprus, the fabled kingdom of Aphrodite. Harry Bluff, too, has large space for No. IV. of his Scraps, in which he insists upon reorganizing the Navy. From the beginning he has been deservedly a pet with the Messenger and none other of its contributors ever gave it such great influence. His probings of the Navy