INTRODUCTION.

No book is without a preface. It opens the subject with the reader as the state of the weather begins a conversation among strangers. When a new journal is contemplated it has its prospectus. When a new theatre is opened the manager speaks a piece called a prologue. New goods are anticipated by an advertisement. Sermons are preached from texts. Oaks start from acorns. This volume, therefore, requires an introduction. What shall it be? What the compiler may say would not, incipiently, amount to much. What the ablest intellects of the world have thought will have more weight. What these writers have expressed must consequently be our grand proem. Our readers will be sufficiently satisfied, we think, with the preface which our distinguished colaborers have prepared, at divers times, since Job, and which we insert, as the pearl and diamond settings in our Dutch gold, and the rich frames of our imperfect sketches. These are the

MEMORABILIA.

Who is most thought of in London, Sir Marmaduke-the Lord Chancellor, or the editor of the Jupiter?

The Lord Chancellor, a great deal, said Sir Marmaduke, quite dismayed by the audacity of the question.

I do not say so. He may be a great lawyer, and very useful; but his lordship, and his wig, and his woolsack are tinsel in comparison with the real power possessed by the editor of a leading newspaper. If the Lord Chancellor were to go to bed for a month, would he be much missed?

I don't know, sir; I'm not in the secrets of the Cabinet. I should think he would.

About as much as my grandmother; but if the editor of the Jupiter were to be taken ill, it would work quite a commotion.

Anthony Trollope, "He knew he was right."

Eh bien quelle place occupe dans ces libertés nécessaires la liberté de la presse?

Elle n'est pas la plus attrayante, mais elle est la plus nécessaire. C'est la liberté de penser.

Quand une nation veut faire ses affaires, il faut qu'elle y pense, qu'elle y puisse penser librement, former des volontés et les faire prévaloir. Donc, la liberté de la presse est théoriquement et pratiquement la plus nécessaire de toutes.

Eh bien, Messieurs, le véritable juge du juge, c'est l'opinion publique ; comment alors interdire la publicité ?

Adolphe Thiers, Censor of the Press in France in 1872.

I would rather live in a country with newspapers and without a government, than in a country with a government but without newspapers.

Thomas Jefferson.

Give me the liberty to know, to alter, and to argue freely, according to conscience, above all liberties. John Milton, the Cromwellian Editor.

A journalist! That means a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations! Four hostile newspapers are more to be dreaded than a hundred thousand bayonets !

Napoleon the First.

Il est de la nature du journalisme de susciter plus de griefs et de créer plus de ressentimens que l'éloquence délibérative; mais quand on a cité le glorieux pseudonyme de Junius, les noms de Swift et de Bolingbroke en Angleterre, et chez nous les noms de Chateaubriand et de Benjamin Constant, sans ajouter d'autres noms présens à toutes les mémoires, il est bien difficile de contester que ce soit un genre de littérature qui a, comme tous les genres, ses règles, ses modèles et ses chefs d'œuvre même, bien qu'en général la durée leur fasse défaut. C'est qu'un journal, comme le mot l'indique, est surtout la chose du jour, et vise à produire un effet immédiat plutôt qu'à laisser un long souvenir. Néanmoins, Messieurs, je demande avec quelque confiance à quiconque s'est jamais mêlé d'écrire si ce sont de médiocres qualités littéraires que la clarté, la concision et la force, et ce sont là les vraies conditions de l'art du journalisme. Si vous ajoutez à ces qualités littéraires la belle condition que Caton imposait à l'orateur en l'appelant vir bonus dicendi peritus, et si vous supposez que le journaliste est intègre, de bonne foi, indépendant à l'égard du pouvoir, ferme contre les passions injustes, et dédaigneux d'une popularité trop facile, n'aurez vous point porté assez haut cet art indispensable aux sociétés modernes pour lui donner pleinement droit de cité dans les régions élevées de la littérature? Mais, dira-t-on, ces conditions sont rarement atteintes.

Prevost-Paradol, the Journalist and Publicist.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, altho' there's nothing in't.

Byron after the Newspaper Critics.

What is it but a map of busy life,
Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns.

Cowper on Newspapers.

Introduction.

I'll put a girdle around about the earth in forty minutes.

xvii

Puck, the first Telegraph Operator,

Great is journalism! Is not every able editor a ruler of the world, being a persuader of it?

I wish no other herald,

Thomas Carlyle.

No other speaker of my living actions,
To keep mine honor from corruption,
But such an honest chronicler.

Henry VIII., reported by Shakspeare.

La presse n'a d'autre puissance que celle qui resulte de l'expression de l'opinion publique.

In this one sheet how much for thought profound,
How much for feeling deep doth meet the eye!
Here man's decease, here empire's fate is found,
And yet with careless glance we pass them by !
Perchance upon one page enough we find

On which through a long life we well might muse:
But oft with husks we fill the hungry mind,
When men the gifts of speech and thought abuse.
Not in the many words, or books we read,

Is knowledge gained of Nature, or of man ;
Oft in a single word lies wrapped the seed

Of changes vast, would we its meaning scan;
But lacking still the wisdom to be wise,
The Truth we seek is hidden from our eyes.

Jules Favre.

The Christian Register.

In Neuilly the doorways were crowded with people, chiefly women and children, timidly venturing into daylight after nearly three weeks' close imprisonment in their houses and even cellars. *** One man begged for a newspaper, de

claring he had heard nothing from the outside world for many days.

Paris Letter, April 25, 1871, in London Times.

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower.

Isaac Watts's Eulogy on Newspaper Reporters.

At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.

Lo! broadening outward as we read,

To warmer zones the horizon spread;

In panoramic length unrolled,

We saw the marvels that it told.

... Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath

The wedding-knell and dirge of death;
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;

B

Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!

John Greenleaf Whittier, the "Snow-bound" Carrier.

In the United States every worthy citizen reads a newspaper, and owns the paper which he reads. A newspaper is a window through which men look out on all that is going on in the world. Without a newspaper a man is shut up in a small room, and knows little or nothing of what is happening outside of himself. In our day newspapers keep pace with history and record it. good newspaper will keep a sensible man in sympathy with the world's current history. It is an ever-unfolding encyclopædia; an unbound book forever issuing and never finished.

Mightiest of the mighty means

Henry Ward Beecher.

On which the arm of Progress leans-
Man's noblest mission to advance,
His woes assuage, his weal enhance,
His rights enforce, his wrongs redress-
Mightiest of the mighty is the Press !

Bowring on the Fourth Estate.

A

A newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment. A newspaper is an adviser who does not require to be sought, but comes to you briefly every day of common weal, without distracting your private affairs. Newspapers, therefore, become more necessary in proportion as men become more equal individuals, and more to be feared. To suppose that they only serve to protect freedom would be to diminish their importance: they maintain civilization.

Alexis de Tocqueville.

It is a momentous, yes, a fearful truth, that the millions have no literature, no school, and almost no pulpit but the press. Not one man in ten reads books. * But every one of us, except the very few helpless poor, poisons himself every day with a newspaper. It is parent, school, college, pulpit, theatre, example, counselor, all in one. Every drop of our blood is colored by it. Let me make the newspapers, and I care not who makes the religion or the laws.

Wendell Phillips on Journalism.

Leaf by leaf the roses fall,
Dime by dime the purse runs dry;
One by one beyond recall,

Mushroom papers droop and die.

Obituary Notice of Newspapers.

I believe that we could produce a visible change in the public mind if, against the encroachments of our German confederates, we touch the chord of an independent Prussian policy in the Press.

Count Bismarck, May 12, 1859.

Were the starry heavens deficient of one constellation, the vacuum could not be better supplied than by the introduction of a printing-press.

Astronomical View of Journalism.

Hear, land o' cakes and brither Scots,

Frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groats',
If there's a hole in a' your coats,

I rede ye tent it;

A chiel's amang ye takin' notes,
An' faith he'll prent it!

Robert Burns.

Give me but the liberty of the press, and I will give to the minister a venal House of Peers-I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons-I will give him the full sway of the patronage of office-I will give him the whole host of ministerial influence-I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him to purchase up submission and overawe resistance-and yet, armed with the liberty of the press, I will go forth to meet him undismayed-I will attack the mighty fabric he has reared with that mightier engine-I will shake down from its height corruption, and bury it amidst the ruins of the abuses it was meant to shelter.

Sheridan.

There she is; she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world-her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous. Yonder journal has an agent at this moment giving bribes at Madrid, and another inspecting the price of potatoes at Covent Garden.

W.M.Thackeray.

More solid things do not show the complexion of the Times so well as ballads and libels.

Its liberties and the liberties of the people must stand or fall together.

After all, the Press is king.

It is the Press that creates public opinion.

Selden.

David Hume.

It is the grand fact of the hour that popular sentiment has been educated by the Press up to the point of spurning party trammels and voting on principle. Who, then, shall keep our custodians? If journalism is so powerful, who shall save us from such journalism as made the Commune possible in Paris?

The Bishop of Western New York.

These two centuries have been dealt with too much as fashionable travelers accomplish a Swiss tour. They go straight to Mont Blanc, then to the Oberland, then to the Righi, and care nothing for the country except as it may be seen from those glorious heights. The details of history, in truth, can only be gathered from a study of the immense and varied surface which the literature of newspapers presents.

Sainte Beuve, the Essayist and Critic.

Ever enlightening, always confirming grand truths, ever baptizing infant peoples, and always new. Archbishop Hughes, of New York.