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foster native literature of all kinds, and to this end speculative essays were welcomed on account of the writers rather than from the merits of the subjects treated. Verse, and some of it of a very high character, was another feature of those publications. In this way, however, much was printed that did not interest the great body of readers, or when it did interest it failed to instruct. Too much energy was applied to little purpose. An early instance of this was seen in the "Amaranth," published by Robert Shives, in the forties. It was a very good magazine of its kind, but it has no value today except as a curiosity. Its articles, of themselves, give no information which renders them worthy of preservation. "Stewart's Quarterly" was on a better plan, and was an admirable publication to which some of the best writers in Canada contributed, but it too included the whole field of literature and there was necessarily much of the abstract and speculative in its composition, though, unlike the "Amaranth", it has a value today for the many good things it did contain. Had it been continued and developed by Mr. Stewart to the present time, there would have been no field for The New Brunswick Magazine.
The present publication does not aim to be a vehicle for purely literary effort outside of the lines laid down in the prospectus. It is on a wholly different plan from any previous publication in thes provinces, for it is devoted to the diffusion of information in respect to the country and its people. It will be an educator in the highest sense of the term, and it will contain much that can be had from no other source. The contributors include those who go out of the beaten paths for their material, and who gather their facts from original sources which are not easily accessible to the general student. For this reason every volume of The Magazine will be a book of rare information and