Notwithstanding the good offices of the Doctor, and the strenuous exertions of the association to get itself into notice, it met with no very great success until I joined it.  The truth is, the members indulged in too flippant a tone of discussion.  The papers read every Saturday evening were characterized less by depth than buffoonery.  They were all whipped syllabub.  There was no investigation of first causes, first principles.  There was no investigation of any thing at all.  There was no attention paid to that great point, the “fitness of things.”  In short there was no fine writing like this.  It was all low —­ very!  No profundity, no reading, no metaphysics —­ nothing which the learned call spirituality, and which the unlearned choose to stigmatize as cant. [Dr. M. says I ought to spell “cant” with a capital K —­ but I know better.]

When I joined the society it was my endeavor to introduce a better style of thinking and writing, and all the world knows how well I have succeeded.  We get up as good papers now in the P. R. E. T. T. Y. B. L. U. E. B. A. T. C. H. as any to be found even in Blackwood.  I say, Blackwood, because I have been assured that the finest writing, upon every subject, is to be discovered in the pages of that justly celebrated Magazine.  We now take it for our model upon all themes, and are getting into rapid notice accordingly.  And, after all, it’s not so very difficult a matter to compose an article of the genuine Blackwood stamp, if one only goes properly about it.  Of course I don’t speak of the political articles.  Everybody knows how they are managed, since Dr. Moneypenny explained it.  Mr. Blackwood has a pair of tailor’s-shears, and three apprentices who stand by him for orders.  One hands him the “Times,” another the “Examiner” and a third a “Culley’s New Compendium of Slang-Whang.”  Mr. B. merely cuts out and intersperses.  It is soon done —­ nothing but “Examiner,” “Slang-Whang,” and “Times” —­ then “Times,” “Slang-Whang,” and “Examiner” —­ and then “Times,” “Examiner,” and “Slang-Whang.”

But the chief merit of the Magazine lies in its miscellaneous articles; and the best of these come under the head of what Dr. Moneypenny calls the bizarreries (whatever that may mean) and what everybody else calls the intensities.  This is a species of writing which I have long known how to appreciate, although it is only since my late visit to Mr. Blackwood (deputed by the society) that I have been made aware of the exact method of composition.  This method is very simple, but not so much so as the politics.  Upon my calling at Mr. B.’s, and making known to him the wishes of the society, he received me with great civility, took me into his study, and gave me a clear explanation of the whole process.