passed unread, or has failed of the examination it merits.
Editors are not men of infallible judgment, but they do use their
judgment, and it is usually good.

The young author who wins recognition in a first-class magazine
has achieved a double success, first, with the editor, and then
with the best reading public. Many factitious and fallacious
literary reputations have been made through books, but very few
have been made through the magazines, which are not only the best
means of living, but of outliving, with the author; they are both
bread and fame to him. If I insist a little upon the high office
which this modern form of publication fulfils in the literary
world, it is because I am impatient of the antiquated and
ignorant prejudice which classes the magazines as ephemeral.
They are ephemeral in form, but in substance they are not
ephemeral, and what is best in them awaits its resurrection in
the book, which, as the first form, is so often a lasting death.
An interesting proof of the value of the magazine to literature
is the fact that a good novel will have wider acceptance as a
book from having been a magazine serial.

I am not sure that the decay of the book is not owing somewhat to
the decay of reviewing. This does not now seem to me so
thorough, or even so general as it was some years ago, and I
think the book oftener comes to the buyer without the warrant of
a critical estimate than it once did. That is never the case
with material printed in a magazine of high class. A
well-trained critic, who is bound by the strongest ties of honor
and interest not to betray either his employer or his public, has
judged it, and his practical approval is a warrant of quality.