periodicals. He was a favorite contributor to the _Southern Literary
Messenger_, for many years published in Richmond, Virginia, and
deservedly ranking as the best monthly issued in the South before the
Civil War. He was one of the editors of the _Southern Literary
Gazette_, a weekly published in his native city. Afterwards, as a
result of a plan devised at one of Simms's literary dinners, _Russell's
Magazine_, with Hayne as editor, was established, to use the language
of the first number, as "another depository for Southern genius, and a
new incentive, as we hope, for its active exercise." It was a monthly of
high excellence for the time; but for lack of adequate support it
suspended publication after an honorable career of two years.

An article in _Russell's Magazine_ for August, 1857, elaborately
discusses the ante-bellum discouragements to authorship in the South.
Indifference, ignorance, and prejudice, the article asserted, were
encountered on every hand. "It may happen to be only a volume of noble
poetry, full of those universal thoughts and feelings which speak, not to
a particular people, but to all mankind. It is censured, at the South, as
not sufficiently Southern in spirit, while at the North it is pronounced
a very fair specimen of Southern commonplace. Both North and South agree
with one mind to condemn the author and forget his book."

Hayne's critical work as editor of _Russell's Magazine_ is worthy of
note. In manly independence of judgment, though not in ferocity of style,
he resembled Poe. He prided himself on conscientious loyalty to literary
art. He disclaimed all sympathy with that sectional spirit which has
sometimes lauded a work merely for geographical reasons; and in the
critical reviews of his magazine he did not hesitate to point out and
censure crudeness in Southern writers. But, at the same time, it was a
more pleasing task to his generous nature to recognize and praise