knew what I have suffered during this dreadful morning. Every time you looked at me I trembled all over, and felt as cold as death; and when I tried to speak, I was almost choked. I wonder that people do not die with fright when they have done anything wrong, and are taken up by a policeman. What a dreadful thing it is to have a secret! What I have suffered to-day will be a lesson to me as long as I live. I do not mean about the gloves, though I will try to take as much care as I can of the next pair you are so kind as to give me; but I mean I will never be so confident again, and that I will never again boast so conceitedly of what I will do. And, more than all, if I should do wrong, that I will have the courage to come and tell you at once, and to submit to any punishment you may think proper; for I am sure no punishment you would inflict upon me could ever make me feel one-tenth part of the pain I have endured this morning.' STATE OF SCOTLAND A CENTURY AGO. THE following letter, descriptive of the condition of our country a century ago, was written by Mr John Maxwell of Munches, to Mr Herries of Spottes, both in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in the year 1811, when the venerable writer was above ninety. It has been several times printed, but nevertheless is sufficiently curious to merit the extended circulation which the Journal can give it. 'I was born at Buittle, in this parish, which in old times was the fortress and residence of John Baliol, on the 7th day of February, old style, 1720, and do distinctly remember several circumstances that happened in the years 1723 and 1724. Of these particulars, the falling of the bridge of Baittle, which was built by John Frew in 1722, and fell in the succeeding summer, while I was in Buittle garden, seeing my father's servants gathering nettles. That same year many of the proprietors enclosed their grounds to stock them with black cattle; and by that means turned out a vast number of tenants at the term of Whitsunday 1723, whereby numbers of them became destitute, and, in consequence, rose in a mob, when, with pitchforks, gavellocks, and spades, they levelled the park-dikes of Barncailzie and Munches at Dalbeaty, which I saw with my own eyes. The mob passed by Dalbeaty and Buittle, and did the same on the estates of Netherlaw, Dunrod, &c. and the laird of Murdoch, then proprietor of Kilwhaneday, who turned out sixteen families at that term. The proprietors rose with their servants and dependants to quell this mob, but were not of sufficient force to do it, and were obliged to send for two troops of dragoons from Edinburgh, who, upon their appearing, the mob dispersed. After that, warrants were granted for apprehending many of the tenants and persons concerned in the said mob; several of them were tried, those who had any funds were fined, some were banished to the plantations, whilst others were imprisoned; and it brought great distress on this part of the country. At that period justice was not very properly administered; for a respectable man of the name of M'Clacherty, who lived in Balmaghie parish, was concerned in the mob, and, on his being brought to trial, one of the justices admired a handHome Galloway which he rode, and the justice told him if be would give him the Galloway he would effect his acquittal, which he accordingly did. This misfortune, with what happened the Mississippi Company in the year 1720, did most generally distress this quarter of the kingdom. It is not pleasant to represent the wretched state of indiviinals as tirnes then went in Scotland. The tenants in general lived very meanly, on kail, groats, milk, graddon ground in querns, turned by the hand, and the grain dried in a pot, together with a crock ewe now and then about Martinmas. They were clothed very plainly, and their habitations were most uncomfortable. Their general wear was of cloth, made of waulked plaiding, black and white wool mixed, very coarse, and the cloth rarely dyed. Their hose were made of white plaiding cloth sewed together, with single-soled shoes, and a black or blue bonnet, none having hats but the lairds, who thought themselves very well dressed for going to church on Sunday with a black kelt-coat of their wives' making. It is not proper for me here to narrate the distresses and poverty that were felt in the country during these times, which continued till about the year 1735. In 1725 potatoes were first introduced into this stewartry by William Hyland, from Ireland, who carred them on horses' backs to Edinburgh, where he sold them by pounds and ounces. During these times, when potatoes were not generally raised in the country, there was for the most part a great scarcity of food, bordering on famine; for in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright and county of Dumfries there was not as much victual produced as was necessary for supplying the inhabitants; and the chief part of what was required for that purpose was brought from the Sandbeds of Esk in tumbling cars, on the Wednesdays, to Dumfries; and when the waters were high by reason of spates, and there being no bridges, so that these cars could not come with the meal, I have seen the tradesmen's wives in the streets of Dumfries crying because there was none to be got. At that period there was only one baker in Dumfries, and he made bawbee baps of coarse flour, chiefly bran, which he occasionally carried in creels to the fairs of Urr and Kirkpatrick. The produce of the country in general was gray corn; and you might have travelled from Dumfries to Kirkcudbright, which is twentyseven miles, without seeing any other grain except in a gentleman's croft, which, in general, produced bere or big for one-third part, another third in white oats, and the remaining third in gray oats. At that period there was no wheat raised in the country; what was used was brought from Teviot; and it was believed that the soil would not produce wheat. In the year 1735 there was no mill in the country for grinding that sort of grain; and the first flourmill that was constructed within these bounds was built by old Heron, at Clouden, in the parish of Irongray, some years after that date. In these times cattle were also very low. I remember being present at the Bridge-end of Dumfries in 1736, when Anthony M'Kie, of Netherlaw, sold five score of five-yearold Galloway cattle, in good condition, to an Englishman, at L.2, 12s. 6d. each; and old Robert Halliday, who was tenant of a great part of the Preston estate, told me that he reckoned he could graze his cattle on his farms for 2s. 6d. a-head; that is to say, that his rent corresponded to that sum. At this period few of the proprietors gave themselves any concern anent the articles of husbandry, their chief one being about black cattle. William Craik, Esq. of Arbigland's father died in 1735, and his son was a man of uncommon accomplishments, who, in his younger days, employed his time in grazing of cattle, and studying the shapes of the best kinds, his father having given him the farm of Maxwelltown to live upon. The estate of Arbigland was then in its natural state, very much covered with whins and broom, and yielding little rent, being only about 3000 merks a-year.* That young gentleman was among the first that undertook to improve the soil; and the practice of husbandry which he pursued, together with the care and trouble he took in ameliorating his farm, was very great. Some of it he brought to such perfection, by clearing off all weeds and stones, and pulverised it so completely, that I, on walking over the surface, sunk as if I had trodden on new-fallen snow. The estate of Arbigland was bought by his grandfather, in 1722, from the Earl of Southesk, for 22,000 merks. In 1735 there were only two carts for hire in the town of Dumfries, and one belonging to a private gentleman. About the years 1737 and 1738 there was almost no lime used for building in Dumfries, except a little shell-lime, made of cockle-shells, burned at Colvend, and brought to Dumfries in bags, a distance of twenty miles; and in 1740, when Provost Bell built his house, the under storey was built with clay, and the upper storeys with lime, brought There was then no from Whitehaven in dry-ware casks. lime used for improving the land. In 1749 I had daylabourers at 6d. per day, and the best masons 1s. This was at the building of Mollance House, the walls of which cost L.49 sterling. DOMESTIC RELATIONS IN ITALY. The duties of husband and wife are in England observed with even more sanctity than they obtain credit for. But in how many instances do our affections and duties begin and end there, with the exception of those exercised by the parents towards their very young children. We all know that when a son or daughter marries, they literally fulfil the dictum of Adam, 'therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife. Our family affections centre in the small focus of the married pair, and few and ineffectual are the radii that escape and go beyond. Now, it must be acknowledged that, however endearing at * Eighteen merks make L.1 sterling, or L.12 Scots. BONNY BONALY. * * the outset, however necessary and proper to a certain ex-management of so liquid and adhesive a thing as honey, tent such a state of things may be, it often degenerates from which they issue forth to their work as if they had after a little time into the most sordid selfishness. The nothing to do with it; their combination with honey-makItalians are deficient in this self-dedication to one; but they ing of the elegant manufacture of wax, of which they make have wider extended family attachment, of a very warm their apartments, and which is used by mankind for none and faithful description. We consider it a necessity of life but patrician or other choice purposes; their orderly to have a ménage to ourselves; each couple in its nest can- policy; their delight in sunshine; their attention to one not understand the harmony and affection nourished in a another; their apparent indifference to anything purely relittle republic, often consisting of grandfather and grand-garding themselves, apart from the common good. mother, who may be said to have abdicated power, and In the morning, the bee is honey; in the evening, the live in revered retirement-their days not counted and waxen taper; in the summer noon, a voice in the garden, grudged, as with us is too frequently the case; then come or in the window; in the winter, and at all other times, a father and mother respected and loved, and then brothers meeter of us in books. She talks Greek to us in Sophocles and sisters. If a sister marries, she becomes a part of an- and Theocritus; Virgil's very best Latin in his Georgics; other family, and goes away. The son brings his wife under we have just heard her in Italian; and besides all her his father's roof; but the size of their houses renders them charming associations with the poets in general, one of the independent in their daily life. The younger sons are not Elizabethan men has made a whole play out of her, a play apt to marry, because, in addition to their want of fortune, in which the whole dramatis persona are bees!--- Ainsworth's too many women, essentially strangers, would thus be Magazine. brought under one roof, and would be the occasion of discord. We know how readily the human heart yields to a law which it looks on as irrefragable: submitting to single life, uncles learn to love their nephews and nieces, as if they were their own offspring, and a strong family chain is thus formed. A question may arise as to how much of family tyranny turns these links into heavy fetters. In the first place, their families are seldom as numerous as with us. The necessities of their position fall lightly on the males. All over the world, younger sons seldom marry, or only do so to exchange luxury for straitened circumstances; and younger sons who continue to grow old under the paternal roof, sharing by right the luxuries to which they were born, and in which they were educated, are better off than our younger sons, who are often thrust forth from the luxurious home of their youth, to live on a bare pittance in a wretched lodging. Unmarried women all over the continent have so much the worst of it, that few remain single. How they contrive to dispose of their girls, now convents are in disuse, I cannot tell; but, as I have said, there are not so many as with us, and they usually contrive to marry. At times you may find a maiden aunt, given up to devotion, who sheds a gentle and kindly influence over the house. It does not strike me that, as regards daughters who survive their parents, things are better managed with us. This family affection nurtures many virtues, and renders the manners more malleable, more courteous and deferential. For the rest, though I cannot pretend to be behind the scenes-and though, as I have said, their morality is confessedly not ours -I am sure there is much both to respect as well as love among the Italians.-Mrs Shelley's Rambles. A MONEY-MAKER. About twelve years ago, a poor Frenchwoman, residing at Buenos Ayres, being exceedingly perplexed with regard to the ways and means,' set her inventive genius to work, and hit upon the following expedient :---Observing a vast quantity of bones and animal offal thrown away from the slaughter-houses with which Buenos Ayres abounds, a thought struck her that she might turn this waste to a profitable account. Having procured a large iron pot, and collected a quantity of bones, &c. she commenced operations by boiling them, and skimming off the fat, which she sold at the stores in Buenos Ayres. Finding the proceeds of her industry amply reward her labour, she persevered, advancing from a pot to a boiler, and from a boiler to a steaming-vat, until she possessed a magnificent apparatus capable of reducing a hundred head of cattle to tallow at one steaming. Four years ago she sold her manufactory, retired from business, and now rolls through the streets in one of the handsomest carriages in Buenos Ayres. There is now scarcely a respectable merchant in that place, or in Monte Video, but is in some way connected with cattlesteaming.-Cape Frontier Times. ELEGANT HABITS OF BEES. Did any one ever sufficiently admire---did he, indeed, ever notice---the entire elegance of the habits and pursuits of bees? their extraction of nothing but the quintessence of the flowers; their preference of those that have the finest and least adulterated odour; their avoidance of everything squalid (so unlike flies); their eager ejection or exclusion of it from the hive, as in the instance of carcases of intruders, which, if they cannot drag away, they cover up and entomb; their love of clean, quiet, and delicate neighbourhoods-thymy places with brooks; their singularly clean BONNY Bonaly's wee fairy-led stream MANGOLD-WURZEL. A French newspaper tells the following story of the introduction of this root into cultivation in Flanders :--When Napoleon was endeavouring to protect himself against the inconveniences felt from the impossibility of obtaining colonial produce, in consequence of the activity of the English cruisers, an order was given that measures should be taken to induce the Flemings to grow beet, for sugar-making. The prefect of the department of Jemappes, accordingly, invited all the farmers of his district to set about the cultivation of the root, and distributed seed among them. The Flemish farmers hit upon its management immediately, and the first season gave them a large crop. But when the roots were ready, nobody knew what to do with them; so the farmers resolved to cart them to the prefecture. And accordingly, one fine morning, the prefect was surprised by the arrival of heavy carts, bringing him some hundred thousand kilogrammes of beet. Having no means of taking it in-for the buildings in which it was to be manufactured had not been thought of-he had no resource but to pay for the crop, and get the country people to cart it away again. This led them to consider whether cattle could not be fed upon it; and the result we all know. GENTLENESS. Gentleness which belongs to virtue, is to be carefully distinguished from the mean spirit of cowards and the fawning assent of sycophants. It removes no just right from fear; it gives up no important truth from flattery; it is, indeed, not only consistent with a firm mind, but it necessarily requires a manly spirit and a fixed principle in order to give it any real value.-Blair. *.* Complete sets of the Journal, First Series, in twelve volumes, and also odd numbers to complete sets, may be had from the publishers or their agents. A Stamped Edition issued for transmission, post free, price Twopence halfpenny. Printed by William Bradbury, of No. 6, York Place, and Frederick Mullett Evans, of No. 7, Church Row, both of Stoke Newington, in the county of Middlesex, printers, at their office, Lombard Street, in the precinct of Whitefrins, and city of London': and Published (with permission of the Proprietors, W. and R. CHAMBERS.) by WILLIAM SOMERVILLE ORR. Publisher, of 3. Amen Corner, at No. 2. AMEN CORNER, both in the parish of Chris church, and in the city of London-Saturday, January 11, 1845. EDINBURG/ JOURNAL CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c. No. 55. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 1845. THE NEWSPAPER PRESS IN AMERICA. PRICE 1d. with each of them, the number of daily impressions despatched into the surrounding townships is fully In no other country in the world, perhaps, is the news-equal to that of the weekly editions. They are all to paper press so powerful an engine as in the United States. Nowhere else is it so omnipresent in its action, so omnipotent in its influence. It addresses itself not to a class or a section of the people, but universally to the nation. In the social structure of America, there is no great class devoid of the first elements of education. In the northern states especially, the ability to read and write is universal. In a state of society which converts every man into an active politician, the species of information most in demand, and most greedily devoured, may be readily surmised. The constant yearning for political intelligence is incredible to any but an eye-witness. The newspaper offices may be said to be, to the Americans generally, what the gin-palaces are to a section of the London population-the grand source whence they derive the pabulum of excitement. Such being the case, it is no wonder that journals should multiply amongst them. Almost every shade of opinion, political, social, or religious, has now its representative organ or organs. The press in America speaks to every one, and of every one. Its voice is heard in every cabin in the land; its representatives are found thickly scattered over every settlement; it is a power irresistible, and which must be conciliated; making itself felt in every public department, and at the same time exercising a tremendous influence over private life. be met with in the bar-rooms of taverns, and in private houses, according to the political bias of the inmates; and there are few houses, amongst the farmers especially, which are not thus provided. The inhabitants of this town have also a weekly medical paper, a weekly paper exclusively agricultural, another exclusively literary, and another of a satirical character. All these have existed for years, and keep their ground well. Superadded to these, hundreds of daily papers, issued from Albany or New York, arrive by post for subscribers resident in the town-the latter being taken principally for the more authentic information, and the better comments they contain upon matters of general policy, which their readers are thus in possession of before the local papers can copy them. The universal interest taken in politics is not the only means of accounting for the astonishing variety and number of American newspapers. The cheap rate at which they can be obtained, and the extensively available channel which they open for advertising, contribute materially to the increase of their number. A daily paper of the first class can be procured for eight dollars annually-less than two pounds sterling. Many are furnished for six dollars; and some respectable daily prints are published in New York as low as three. A daily English paper costs more than three times the price of the highest of these, or from six to seven pounds. Some are sold in the streets of New York at the rate of a cent a number-that is, a fraction more than an English halfpenny. The character of the American papers, their general tone and literary ability, in comparison with those of England, are not at present under consideration. With all the trashy and pernicious stuff which the majority of them diffuse throughout the community, they circulate a vast mass of useful and solid information, creating a degree of intellectual activity which cannot but be beneficial to a people. In England, the daily papers are confined to the metropolis. In America, the daily press may be said to be the rule, the semi-weekly and weekly the exception. The newspaper is an essential feature in almost every American village. Towns, such as in England would have no newspaper of their own, have in America their daily journals. It is seldom that a population as low two thousand is to be found without them, battling for the great factions which agitate every corner of the country. They take a pride in having their local organs, and enterprise soon avails itself of this feeling. The reader may better judge of their multiplicity from As an advertising medium, the public journals of a single instance. I select a town which stands on the America are used to an extent unparalleled in this borders of Lake Ontario, and which contains about country. With a white population amounting to little 20,000 inhabitants. In that town there are at this mo- more than half that of Great Britain, and with a comment three daily papers; two of them appearing in the merce scarcely equalling in extent one-third of that of morning, the other being an evening paper. They are this country, the number of advertisements published all independent of each other, and none of them neutral. in America within the last seven years, as compared The evening paper takes a strong party stand with one with the number published during the same period in of its morning contemporaries; and although these re- this country, was in greater proportion than six to present the opinions of the minority both in the town one. This difference is created by the absence of all and county, there is yet sufficient room for them both: advertisement duties, by the general cheapness in the they are, indeed, all flourishing. Besides these, a rate of advertising, and by the extensive circulation weekly paper is issued from their respective establish- of the different papers-a circulation, as already shown, ments, which is widely circulated in the county amongst large, from the enormous political appetite of the public, those who cannot afford the luxury of one daily; but but greatly increased by the universality of the practice Henry Clay, of Mr Polk, or of Martin Van Buren, as the case may be. As soon as a nomination, by the different parties, of candidates takes place, all the papers are committed; and some are bold enough, even before a nomination, to hoist at once its own favourite flag, although, as soon as the nomination takes place such is their devotion to party-these are invariably hauled down to make way for the ticket' of the fortunate nominees. The asperity with which they conduct the political battle under their respective ensigns is a great blemish on their character. They take and they give no quarter. On the approach of an election, a stranger would anticipate, from perusing their columns, that every polling-place in the country must inevitably become the scene of a diabolical carnage; and yet, in the main, the business of polling in America is a very peaceable affair. In 1840, upwards of two millions of votes were recorded for the contending claimants to the presidency, and yet not a drop of blood was spilt throughout the length and breadth of the land. The wrath of the people effervesces in their party organs; and that bitterness and vituperation which are the creations of their printing-presses, seldom lead to any desperate personal collision. The worst feature of the journals is, unquestionably, their gross and disgusting personality. To serve a party purpose, they invade, without scruple, the sanctity of private life. Daily, in some quarter or other, is one of their prominent senators reminded of some trifling peccadillo, of which he is alleged to have been guilty at school, when about eleven years old; and Ex-Governor Marcy of New York will be reminded by the Whig press to his dying day that he charged the treasury two shillings and ninepence for mending his breeches, which were accidentally damaged during an official tour through the state. The party names and epithets which they bestow upon each other are amusing, though sometimes degrading enough; Loco Focos,'' Blue Lights,' and Hoco Pocos,' being sufficient as samples of their political Billingsgate. They have no idea of receiving an electioneering triumph with quiet satisfaction. The exultation of the successful party is unbounded; and they like to try the temper of their crest-fallen opponents, by making it as ostentatious as possible. They of advertising. In general, even the remotest inland papers lay out three-fourths of their space for advertisements. The rate of insertion is exceedingly moderate, and their profits arise from the species of wholesale advertising business which they carry on. Many papers adopt the system of letting as much of their space as will let for a specified time, the lessee selecting his own part of the paper as he would his pew in a church, or his family burying-ground in a cemetery, and paying for it by its square measurement. To secure permanent customers of this sort, the rate is lowered to a kind of wholesale price; and sometimes a year's advertising, not exceeding from thirty to forty lines each day, can be thus procured as low as seventeen dollars. During the period to which a bargain of this kind extends, the control of the advertiser over the spot selected by him is in a manner absolute, and his announcements are to be found in all shapes and positions-upside down, in the form of a pyramid or cross, diagonal, vertical, or Chinese fashion. Almost every one advertises, for every one is busy. In the northern states there are no idlers; every man has his vocation; and from the lawyer to the chimneysweep, their services are offered to the public through the medium of the newspaper. Indeed it is common for the former functionaries, especially in the interior, to have standing cards in their local papers, informing the public both of their place and hours of business. Its advertising columns are frequently the most amusing, though sometimes a very disgusting part of a paper: every trick is resorted to to arrest attention; each page is illuminated with hats, houses, boots, umbrellas, barrels, cattle of all descriptions, every item of male attire, locomotives, steamboats, canal boats, fast-sailing schooners,' and a multitude of other objects which enter into the multifarious business of mankind; and the smile which this occasions is often prolonged by the mode of announcement in the letter-press. Announcements such as follow are selected from a thousand others equally absurd and bombastic:-North, south, east, and west, your interests are in danger;' and when one eagerly reads on to learn the source of alarm, he finds it to consist perhaps of the additional cent per yard which all but the advertiser charge on some flaunting calico pattern. Shopping a luxury,' money no object,' 'com-celebrate their victory by illuminating their houses, petition floored,' 'stern defiance,' 'to arms, to arms, to arms! the body politic in danger from—Jack Frost,' &c.; and these are sometimes surmounted by grotesque designs, in some of which the advertiser is seen engaged in a race of speed with his neighbours and competitors, and outstripping them all. A shrewd observer of human nature was the Alabama sheriff, who headed an advertisement of a land sale with- Don't read this.' If there be one thing more than another which marks an American newspaper, it is the violence of its political disquisitions. On the subject of politics, a transatlantic journal is unacquainted with moderation; and of the thousands published daily and weekly, there are few that begin by being, and fewer still that continue to be, neutral. Into the political vortex they are all drawn, there to be tossed to and fro, in a delirious round; on one side or another, in the strife of party, they are all ranged. On the eve of an election, their political complexion is discerned at a glance by the ticket' which heads their editorial columns, the 'ticket' consisting of the names, in large type, of the candidates whose election they advocate. This is done in their election both for state and for federal offices. The 'ticket' is called their 'flag;' and thus a paper is said to hoist the flag of while their organs illuminate their pages. Sometimes a cock is perched at the head of the editorial columns, and being in the attitude of crowing, there can be no mistake of the object for which he is thus placed. In 1838 and 1840, when the Whigs triumphed in New York, a leading journal in Albany, the capital of the state, devoted one whole side to an enormous eagle, which was represented with outstretched wings flying over the country with the 'glorious intelligence.' The same rivalry in seeking to obtain early or exclusive news which distinguishes the London press, is also a marked feature in the conduct of American journals. To be the first to furnish the public with a president's message-with some great speech in Congress, which has been eagerly looked forward to-with any minor or secret intelligence concerning the cabinet and its doings with the fate of any important measure in the legislature-or with European intelligence, is, particularly with the New York and Philadelphia papers, sufficient to induce them to incur a lavish expenditure. In some instances a whole edition of a New York paper has been printed in Washington, on the opening of the legislative session, so that the train from the capital, which brought to the other papers only the report from which they might publish for themselves, has brought their more alert contemporary in full sheet, which realised an enormous sale in the streets before its rivals could make their appearance. Many of the New York papers have their regular couriers in Boston, who start with the European files the moment the packet arrives, arranging the news for their different offices on the road; and some of them, as soon as a vessel from Europe is telegraphed in the Narrows,' hire a steamboat with which to meet her, so that the news which she bears is hawked about the streets long before she reaches the Battery. little, is in almost every other sense a working-man. In general, the control of every department in the establishment is vested in him alone: he keeps the books, receives and pays out money, takes the advertisements, and, on an emergency, can sometimes turn compositor. When he enters with zeal into his task, his labours are of the most multifarious description. He must attend all political meetings of his own party, and must be found in the van of practical out-door politicians. He is always expected to be an orator, and is generally an oracle. At party meetings he must pander well to the peculiar tastes of his hearers; and, consequently, he In a literary point of view, nine-tenths of the Ame- who on such occasions surpasses all others in the rican journals are at Zero in the scale of respectability. measure of his language and the fury of his gestures, Their editors are more frequently rather men of bustling is in most cases-the editor. His field extends also to enterprise than of talent and education. In the main, the the committee-room and the secret 'Caucus.' He is business of editing in America is destructive of every- always installed in the most laborious post, and genething like delicacy or refinement. What is required is rally fulfils his duty to the satisfaction of his constitantamount to a pair of good fists in physical scuffling-tuents. In England, the paper is everything, the editor to give good blows, and have a hard head to receive them nothing. In America, the editor is invariably idenin return. In many cases the editors are, simultaneously tified with his paper. It is he who is the recipient of with the conduct of the paper, engaged in other pursuits contemporary abuse; it is on his shoulders that fall all -mechanical, mercantile, or professional-a part of their the odium and acrimony of the opposite faction. This time only being devoted to their editorial duties. When is universally so. In New York, in Albany, in Boston, it is recollected that this is the case even in the manage- and in other leading towns, the editors are all known, ment of a daily paper, its slovenly appearance and in- and assailed respectively by one another. In the inferior general character are in part accounted for. terior, this system is of course carried to a greater There is seldom the requisite degree of unity in their and more revolting extent than in the capitals. From management to make even a tolerable paper. When each paper might be culled the complete biography of there are several proprietors, it is not unfrequent to find the editor of its opponent. The moment a new editor them-although they have a nominal editor-all acting makes his appearance in any place, the opposition as editors, and sending paragraphs to the compositor paper opens upon him; and everything to which maliwithout the slightest consultation with the responsible cious ingenuity can impart an equivocal character is party. This gives rise of course to many serious incon- evoked from the past, and presented as a series of deligruities, and involves them in many awkward incon- cious morsels to the palate of faction. In self-defence sistencies. The editor is seldom called upon to write; the outraged stranger must retort, and a host of recrihis position is more that of a receiver of paragraphs minations ensue, to the great gratification of all who than a writer. He draws far more frequently upon the are out of the ring, and, if possible, more scurrilous in editor's box than upon his own brain; he seldom ventures their character than were the bulls and invectives which on what may be called a leading article, trusting for for seventy years, during the great western schism, general political intelligence to his more ably conducted were fulminated between Avignon and Rome. To the metropolitan contemporaries. Instead of this, the ori-leading party-journals much is frequently owing in the ginal matter of these papers often consists of a host of issue of an election. But even then it is the editor who letters from young and ambitious politicians, each of is lauded and rewarded. The party is not satisfied with whom, aspiring to the presidency, is anxious to make the expression of a vague gratitude to an establishment; himself known to fame as speedily as possible. These it seizes upon the editor as a more tangible object, and effusions are all characterised by what seem essential on him lavishes its praises, and sometimes proves its ingredients in American polemics-gross abuse, and appreciation of his services by presenting him, as was acrimonious invective. They are eagerly read, especially done to the editor of the Albany Evening Journal in when the object or party attacked is of a local charac- 1840, with-a cloak. Known as they are, it is seldom, ter or standing. The columns of the journals are like- as is the case in France, that they are raised to any wise freely open to the essayist, from whose prolific pen political eminence. They are hard-working party hacks; they often insert long dull and vapid nothings. A poet's their influence in the political world chiefly arising from corner is an almost invariable appendage; and, judging their party services. Their power is the reverse of that from its constant occupation, the muse is most exten- which emanates from intellectual and moral dignity. sively, if not very successfully, cultivated in America. The vast majority of poetic contributors are sentimental young ladies. Is there a child born into the world? its parents are sure to have some poetic friend, in the shape of a young lady, who indites an ode to its advent; is it baptised?-another ode, commemoraitive of the event, is inflicted upon the public. Is there a marriage?-some one is sure to torture into being a hymeneal hymn for the occasion. Is there a death ?-it is no easy matter for an editor to select from the bundle of elegies he receives. Is there a shipwreck or any great national event?-and the poor beworried nine are called upon to inspire a thousand pens, and to direct a thousand very errant fancies. When a young lady marries, however poetically inclined she may have been before, she rapidly subsides into the prosaic mass, finding, when she has babies of her own, that she has more urgent duties to attend to than to write poems about them. The newspaper literature of America is of enormous bulk, but of no elevation. It is one great dead sea of stagnant water, with no flashing wave to break its dull surface-no phosphorescence to illuminate its depths. The editor of an American newspaper, writing but Frequently as the law is infringed, it is seldom that an American newspaper is brought in contact with a civil court. The law of libel is clearly defined in the statute-books; but American juries have tastes not very consistent with a too rigid administration of it. It is seldom, therefore, that the libelled individual looks beyond his walking-stick, his riding-whip, his pistol, or his bowie knife, for redress. The case of the novelist Cooper is an exception to this assertion. He brought several actions for libel against different papers, in some of which he adroitly pleaded his own cause, and in many of which he was successful. The libels of which he complained, arising as they did from literary criticisms, were not such as generally instruct and amuse the public. Had they been of a strong personal cast, it is questionable if he would have got a verdict sufficient even to carry costs. This, it must be allowed, indicates a low tone of public morals. The foregoing sketch is applicable to the great majority of American newspapers. Very few can be named as exceptions to the general description. Some of these, it must be admitted, do honour to themselves, and credit to their country. Their political writing is cha |