THE WHOLE CAREFULLY COMPILED, Digested, and METHODISED. AND PUBLISHED AT THE EXTRACTOR OFFICE, 150, FLEET STREET. MDCCCXXIX. TO THE READERS OF THE EXTRACTOR. IN completing the first volume of the EXTRACTOR, the Editor takes the opportunity of offering his grateful acknowledgments to his readers, for the liberal support they have extended to his work. The large and increasing popularity which, in the short space from its establishment, the publication has acquired, and is acquiring, clearly indicates that such a compilation was truly a desideratum. But a glance at the existing state of our periodical literature (all the valuable part of which it is the comprehensive design of the EXTRACTOR to embody) will more fully and forcibly exhibit to general view its peculiar value and utility. The "march of mind" is the boast of the era; and if, as has been asserted, the periodical press of a country is to be taken as the criterion, whereby to judge of its progress in mental cultivation, then must it be admitted we are furnished with conclusive grounds to justify this lofty boast. The periodical press, in the present day, has grown into an amplitude and importance, hitherto wholly without a parallel in the history of this department of literature. The higher class of publications of this description, native and foreign, is distinguished by an intellectual vigour of the very first order. Perpetually are these works being made the media for transmitting the valuable results of important scientific investigations, and for disseminating physical and moral truths, the most universally interesting, which the enlightenment of the age is continually developing and eliciting. Talent and ability, more or less eminent, pervade the wide range of the magazines and minor reviews, a natural consequence growing out of the prolific spread of these publications, being to enkindle a spirit of emulation which has raised many of them to first-rate excellence. Such being the state-such the extent and importance of the periodical press, a work like the EXTRACTOR appeared to the Editor pre-eminently useful. Incorporating all its diffused excellencies, a publication at once literary, scientific, and entertaining, the EXTRACTOR is equally calculated to please and to profit all descriptions of readers. It is not assuming too much |