To Old Friends and New

THE union of The Galaxy with The Atlantic gives us the pleasure of welcoming the friends of the former to the wide circle of our own readers. Not all of them are strangers; many of them have read both The Galaxy and The Atlantic, which more than any other two American magazines have appealed to kindred tastes ; and it is our purpose that they shall not have to regret anything but the name that vanishes. The Galaxy, like The Atlantic, trusted to the interest of its literature unaided by the sister art (often step-sister art) of illustration, and it differed from it chiefly in those qualities in which priority placed the elder magazine beyond its generous rivalry. Each had its advantages, and these advantages are now united. It is for the periodical whose name survives to claim the public favor only upon the firmest grounds, and to seek more and more to merit that favor in the field where, it is no disparagement of its contemporaries to say, it now stands alone. Its position is well defined as that of a thoroughly national magazine, sustained solely by American authorship, and confiding to the appreciation of its readers whatever is best in American thought and literary art. The freshness, the brightness, the alertness, that gave tone to The Galaxy will not cease, we hope, in the alliance which makes The Galaxy and The Atlantic one, — and I he Atlantic that one, — but will hereafter be constantly recognized and enjoyed in our pages. Certain features of the former necessarily disappear; but, retaining its chief writers, we shall aim to perpetuate the finest characteristics of a magazine which for eleven years has been a presence in our periodical literature so distinctly agreeable and useful that it could not wholly pass away without great public regret.