In 1848 Mr. Sartain purchased the _Union Magazine of Literature and Art_, edited in New York by Caroline Matilda Kirkland, the American Miss Mitford. The name of the magazine was changed, and _Sartain's Union Magazine_ appeared in January, 1849, edited by Mrs. Kirkland and Professor John S. Hart, of the Central High School. For a few months Dr. Reynell Coates acted as editor, but in the third year of its history Mr. Sartain assumed complete charge of his magazine. In 1852 it again returned to New York, when it was merged into the _National Magazine_.
Longfellow contributed frequently to the magazine. His translation of "The Blind Girl of Castèl Cuillè" appeared here in January, 1850. Poe contributed "The Bells" (November, 1849) and his "Poetic Principle" (October, 1850). Harriet Martineau wrote for _Sartain's_ her "Year at Ambleside," which ran through the year 1850, and T. Buchanan Read, George Henry Boker and Frederika Bremer were frequently in the pages of the magazine.
Since the final revision of these pages I have learned that Samuel Stearns was the editor of the second volume (1789) of the _Philadelphia Magazine_. He was a physician and astronomer, born in Bolton, Mass., in 1747, and died in Brattleborough, Vt., in 1819. He made the calculations for the first nautical almanac in this country, which he published in New York, December 20, 1782. Twenty-eight years of his life were spent upon a "Medical Dispensatory," which he left unfinished at his death.
Of one publication of the eighteenth century, the _Philadelphia Nimrod_ (1798), I have made no mention. Although for a long time a hot questrist after it, I have not been fortunate enough to come by a copy, and of its history I am mainly ignorant.
My list of the medical, theological and scientific periodicals of the present century is by no means complete, but it may be serviceable for future correction and extension.
There was a publication in Philadelphia, in 1811, entitled the _Cynic_, "by Growler Gruff, Esquire, aided by a Confederacy of Lettered Dogs." It wore the motto:
We'll snarl, and bite, and play the dog, For dogs are honest.
It was published weekly from September 21 to December 12. The principal purpose of the little paper was to censure and abuse the theatrical managers of the city for abolishing the old theatre boxes.