employed prominent contributors, who gave it an important position. Such
magazines as the _Metropolitan_ (1831-50) and _Bentley's Miscellany_
(1837-68) set the standards for similar periodicals since that time.
Charles Dickens' experience with _Bentley's_ led to the publication of
his weeklies, _Household Words_ (1850 to date) and _All the Year Round_
(1859), which was incorporated in 1895 with the former. _Macmillan's
Magazine_, first of the popular shilling monthlies, began in 1859 and
was soon followed by Thackeray's _Cornhill Magazine_ (1860) and _Temple
Bar_ (1860). All of these magazines are still in progress. The
occasional publication of an article by a literary critic hardly
justifies their inclusion within the category of critical reviews, as
their essential purpose is to instruct and entertain, rather than to sit
in judgment upon contemporary letters.

There are in course of publication to-day numerous literary periodicals
of varying scope and importance that have not even been mentioned by
title in our hasty survey. Enough has been said, however, to give some
idea of the magnitude of the field, and to show that most of the great
names of modern English literature have been more or less closely
associated with the history of the literary reviews. Those reviews have
usually sought to foster all that is highest and best in our
intellectual development; and although English literary criticism has
been, on the whole, less convincing, less brilliant and less
authoritative than that of France, it has during the past century set a
fairly high standard of excellence. It seems difficult to understand why
the literary conditions in England, instead of developing critics like
Sainte-Beuve, Gaston Paris, Brunetière and others whose utterances
redound to the lasting glory of French criticism, should be steadily
tending toward a lower and less influential level. Mr. Churton Collins
in his pessimistic discussion of "The Present Functions of Criticism"