The new recruits of the Magazine who were added to the strength of the regiment in Mr Blackwood's last years were not many. But two at least whom we may pick out in the first place from the records of a very voluminous correspondence, and in the other from a few very careless and hurried letters, were after his own heart, producing the sensation he loved and stirring up again the endless discussions and public criticism which he was well aware were of so much importance to a periodical publication, as well as in both cases striking a new and exciting note among the harmonies and discords of current literature. The capital sea-stories, fresh, vivid, and ingenious, which even in the age of Marryat were second to none, of ‘Tom Cringle,’ and the even more striking Sketches, some of them full of genuine terror and pity, of the ‘Diary of a Late Physician,’ produced a startling and immediate effect, and gave to the ever-anxious editor the exhilarating consciousness that his Magazine continued to command the new blood and fresh talent which from the beginning he had been so determined to secure. These Sketches may not now have the same hold on the public, but they were very new at the period of their publication, and attracted a great deal of attention on account of their subjects and treatment, as well as much discussion and speculation as to their authorship and the truthfulness of their extraordinary delineations.