The preface is a

instruction may be derived. critique on Essay-writing; and N° 1, dated March 23d, 1724, is occupied by the discussion of a party assembled to choose a proper name for the paper. As this task, which was a difficulty then, has been rendered still more laborious by the multitude of subsequent publications, it may not be superfluous to present my readers with the proposed list, which includes nine appellations; namely, The Inquisitor; The Truth-Teller; The Secret; The Coquet; The Bagpipe; The Flute; The Good-Fellow; The Sweet-Heart; and The Whirligig. The Plain Dealer was published twice a week, and was concluded on May 7th, 1725, having reached one hundred and seventeen numbers; it was re-printed in 1734, and forms two octavo volumes.

The thirtieth number of the Plain Dealer, which contains an eulogium on Inoculation, and on its benevolent introducer Lady Montague, gives a curious detail of the prejudices and opposition which it had to encounter. "With what violence and malice," remarks the author," has it not been railed at, and opposed?-How many false affirmations have we seen, with unblushing boldness, insulting truth in our public newspapers!-Nay, the pulpits, too, have trembled under the zeal of Reverend Railers; who, in the holy blindness of

their passion, have shewn us Job upon his dunghill, inoculated for the Small-Pox by the Devil for his Surgeon.

"It has been represented as a wilful murder, a new and wicked presumption! an assault on the prerogative of Heaven, and a taking God's own work out of his hands, to be mended by man's arrogance.

"But the common arguments, however despicable, give me diversion and entertainment. When I hear a pious old woman wisely wondering, what this world would come to! and concluding her remarks with the great maxim of resignation, that God's own time is best! I compare this force of female reasoning, to the representation which, a late writer tells us, the old Boyars, or Grandees of Russia, gravely made to the present Czar, when he attempted a communication, by digging a canal, between the Volga and the Tanais. The design, they said, was great;-But they humbly conceived it impious :-For, since God had made the rivers to run one way, man ought not to turn them another."

An opposition equally violent, though not founded upon reasoning quite so ludicrous, is, in the present day, formed against a still more salutary inoculation, that of the Cow-pox.

To every improvement, indeed, however great and important, there has usually been opposed a

host of prejudices, the removal of which requires considerable address, and much patience and perseverance. So incontrovertible, however, is now the nature of the evidence in support of vaccination, that it becomes an imperious duty on the part of government and individuals, to promote, to the utmost of their power, its extension and utility. One important step to this effect, the establishment of the Royal Jennerian Society, has already, under the sanction of the highest authority in the kingdom, been carried into execution. More, however, remains to be done before we can congratulate our country on the probability of beholding the complete extinction of variolous contagion. A second, and most powerful mean, would be, the interdiction of the practice of inoculation for the Small-Por throughout the British Empire; a practice which, if not speedily superseded by authority, must necessarily, from the lingering prejudices of individuals, for a long period keep alive the seeds of a most loathsome and destructive plague. A third, and scarcely less effectual plan, would be, an injunction of the Legislature on every clergyman, and on every sponsor at the font, to take care, both as a religious and moral duty, that every infant be protected from danger by immediate vaccination.*

* At Geneva this very plan has, for some time, I under stand, been strictly enjoined.

These regulations, which with perfect ease and safety might be universally adopted, would speedily, and beyond the power of reversal, establish a preventive, which every fact and every experiment has proved to be as certain and salutary as the warmest wishes of humanity could either hope for or suggest,

As to individuals, whether we consider them as christians, as men, as parents, or as members of society, they are called upon by every consideration due to themselves, their children, and their friends, to embrace and circulate a blessing, which, from the evidence widely propagating in its favour, cannot now be neglected without a violation of piety, of sympathy, and affection.

29. THE LONDON JOURNAL. The Journal was a species of newspaper, including letters and essays on every topic, but too frequently on controversial subjects. It was a great deterioration of the admirable plan of Steele and Addison, and, for a time, the town was deluged with these motley productions. Aaron Hill, in the preface to his Plain Dealer, speaking of the dramatic plan of the Spectator and Guardian, remarks, that “writing under an assumptive character was a fine improvement ;" and he then proceeds to say, that "it must eternally please, if, as new matter is continually rising, some geniuses could be found

cessors.

able to treat it in a manner equal to their predeThough perhaps the stamp-act first, and then the rise and multiplication of Weekly Journals, are now such impediments to a fair hearing in this method, as almost amount to a prohibition of such essays for the future. The invention of Weekly Journals was," he observes, "owing to the taste which the town began to entertain from the writings of the Tatler, Spectator, and others. Small essays were so much liked, that it was imagined worth while to put a little wit, and a great deal of history, in a large quantity of paper, and sell it for the same or a less price than the stamp-duty had raised the half-sheet treatise to.The general way now of communicating our thoughts to the public, is, by distinct and unconnected letters to the author of this or that journal." The London Journal commenced about the year 1726, and its politics were in favour of government. It had been preceded. by Mist's Journal, the Daily Gazetteer, and several others, and was succeeded by the Weekly Medley, and Literary Journal 1728, by the British Journal in 1731, by the Weekly Register 1731, by Fog's Journal in 1732, by Read's Journal, and by the Weekly Miscellany 1736. Of these Journals, therefore, as they are not the legitimate offspring of the periodical papers as established by Steele,