DIAMOND JUBILEE

In the turbulence and restlessness of the last fifteen years the Atlantic Monthly has been a definitely submerged current, yet is has remained a subtle force in American life. The time has long since passed when Oliver Wendell Holmes' magazine was the great periodical forum of America. Then everyone of literary distinction contributed to it, and it had a special place on the reading-tables of all those who were creating American literature. Though it has never lost its popularity, its audience has changed: the literati of the East no longer suport it as they did, and the time-honored subscription blank has been inherited in great part by the school-teachers and cultured ladies of the Middle West. The Atlantic has existed for some time in its own by no means ineffectual twilight, and even when it discussess modern problems, it seems to be at one saving remove from reality.

Despite this retiring temper, the Atlantic has never been provincial, except perhaps in its earliest days. Avoiding the pitfalls of a conceited brahminism, it has always selected and passed on to its readers the best of Boston's achievement, and has succeeded at the same time in representing all sections of the country and the most diverse aspects of its life and civilization. Despite its conservative background, it was consistently and admirably liberal in all fields, from the time of the abolitionists to the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti.

What at length made the Atlantic a magazine on the periphery rather than at the center of the public eye was no change in its own policy, but the new journalistic trends in which it refused to participate. No longer did it offer the highest rates in the country for its manuscripts, nor did it join the scramble for illustrious names which has characterized even the best American editorship in the recent past. It has never entered any bids for the favor of the wider and less lettered public on which many magazines are now thriving. Instead it has kept its place by its literary "finds" and by a certain dun and academic distinction.

But there will always be about the pages of the Atlantic a certain rodcoming charm, the charm of an essay tradition of particular grace and rambling interest, of pages of excellent poetry, and of a truly civilized outlook on life. "Fall of visionary ideals, impressed by a certain dogmatic scholarship, and when not riding any one of its literary hobbies, profoundly intellectual," a twentieth century critic described it, it was a fair and keen analysis.