the time; many volumes of memoirs and biographythe Memoirs of Metternich and Miot de Melito, the Reminiscences of Carlyle and Froude's Life of him, the Lives of Kingsley by his wife, of Frederic Mau rice by his nephew, of Lord Lawrence, of Dean Stanley by Dean Bradley; Keats's Letters to Fanny Brawne; some important and highly successful libraries and collections like the Library of Travel, edited by Bayard Taylor; the Bric-a-brac Series, edited by R. H. Stod dard, whose collected poems were also published at this time, and a list, in fact, that might be indefinitely pro longed. It was a time, too, when the accession began of a larger number of younger fiction-writers to the list of the house-a company which has since included Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris, H. C. Bun

ner, Robert Grant, Richard Harding Davis Harold Frederic, Brander Matthews, F. J. Stimson, G. P. Lathrop, H. H. Boyeson, George A. Hibbard, Octave Thanet, and many more.

That side of the firm's business which was devoted to the importation of books had

gone on through all these years with a prosperity equal to the rest.

Probably few men with a greater fund of knowledge or skill in choice have ever been connected with such a house than Mr. Charles Welford, who, living in London, conducted the business of buying there in a way which led book collectors, of whom some of the foremost have been valued clients of the house almost from its beginning, to learn to look to it for valuable prizes, and book-lovers to deal with it for fine editions and the standards of foreign publication. By the time of his death, in 1885, his traditions and knowledge, in addition to the years of experience of others in that department, had become a capital which this portion of the business is never likely to lose; and Mr. L. W. Bangs, for many years manager of the Importation Department in New York, has, since Mr. Welford's death, carried on the work in London with the same success.

N 1881, circumstances arising which it seemed might hamper the firm in its entire independence in the conduct of the Magazine of which it had been a founder, it decided to sell its interest in the Monthly to a new corporation; and the sale was made under a stipulation that the Scribner name should be withdrawn from the periodical, which then became the Century Magazine and its publishers the Century Company, the Scribners agree

ing to abstain for five years from the publication of any magazine that should be a competitor in the same field. Thus it was not until January, 1887, after an interval a year longer than the agreement provided, that the present Magazine was established, under the editorship of Mr. Edward L. Burlingame-a new publication in every sense, in no way a revival of any part of the past, but filling once more the whole complement of the departments of the business of the house, and adding again to the lines of its activity one with which it had so long been identified.

The new venture, like the old, was successful from the beginning; and in its own pages may perhaps be most fitly left to speak for itself. It has carried on the traditions of the house both in making itself a magazine of general literature, and, it is believed, in the character of that literature; and it is fortunate in having won a place for its own individuality which it owes to these things.

In the sixteen volumes now ended there is a sufficient proportion of the good literature which during the last eight years has found publication through periodicals, to gratify its conductors and in their belief to furnish a favorable augury for the future. To recall any large part in this space would be impossible unless by a bare list of names; but two

or three matters which have been literary events may be cited-such certainly as the hitherto unpublished Letters of Thackeray, edited by Mr. James Russell Lowell, one of the Magazine's first publications, which added, as a critic said, "a new classic to English literature;" passages from the remarkable Diaries of Gouverneur Morris (now forming part of the two volumes published by his granddaughter); the long series of reminiscences and personal relations of many notable men Sheridan, Stanley, Minister Washburne, Lester Wallack, Hugh McCulloch, Archibald Forbes, and many others, which have given to the Magazine perhaps a special prominence in this field of autobiography and personal narrative; the great groups of articles on three of the most important factors in modern progress, widely known as the "Railway Articles," the "Electric Articles," and the "Steamship Articles," probably the most successful series ever published by a periodical in satisfying popular interest upon these subjects by the work of men of the highest authority; the novels and essays of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the short stories which have included many of those most notable in the whole history of American short-story writing. The number of new writers now widely popular whose work the Magazine was the first to publish has been very great; but it has not outnum

bered the list of older and already wellknown names which it counts among its contributors.

The mention of the Magazine brings the history of the house down to the present. It goes into its new quarters holding the pleas antest relations with a very large number of the foremost contemporary writers, with a list of books upon its catalogue to which several hundreds are added each year, and with continually widening lines of activity. It has a natural pride in its record; and there is probably no house in the country in which a heartier esprit de corps prevails throughout its staff. Its prosperity has been gained not by the perfunctory but by the cordial and interested co-operation of many men, chosen originally for their competence and forming a picked body with excep tional capacities and experience, possessing and reciprocating the confidence of their chiefs.

IN the new building, which was buit for the firm by Mr. Ernest Flagg. the architect of the new St. Lukes Hospital and many other pul buildings, and of which the dignified a striking façade is already familiar to passe on Fifth Avenue, the ground floor is entir occupied by the bookstore, which differs a