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Chalmers based his wonder. It is the result of this devouring enterprise, fed by ample means which searches through every corner and cranny of the land for men and women of the finest ability, and then fastens them with chains of gold, as the old masters of the world did to their own place in the triumphal procession, but with this distinction between the old captains and the new, that in our day they are apt to be proud and glad, as most ministers are, for that matter, in proportion to the weight of the chains. And not content with the best thought, the newspaper at the same time secures the choicest enterprise. Do the hidden forces break out in an earthquake, a man springs up with his notebook and pencil while the land is rocking under his feet, and begins to write and to flash his words over the first wire he can lay his hands on. Is the fire burning up a city, there he is among the flames scratching at his paper, the coolest man you shall find. "How did you come to write that account of that fearful morning in our city?" I said to a woman who had given a wonderful picture of it all in one of your great papers. was rushing out with all the rest of you," she said, "when I met a reporter for that paper who knew me; he said: 'You are the very person I was looking for; come right along. You must write me the story of this morning for our paper, and it must go over the wires to-day. We will pay you more than you ask.' 'Write you the story?' I cried through my tears; 'Why, my heart is breaking, and I have lost my folks; and just look at me with the grime.' 'All right,' he answered; 'put the heartbreak into the story. Leave your face to take care of itself, and let the folks seek you; now come along.' And come I did, across the river to a house where he found a table, put paper and pencil down, and so I did it, blotting the thing all over with my tears." Is there war far afield, the newspaper will give you news of the battles far ahead of anything the governments can get who are most deeply involved, and vastly more true as a rule. The reporter is there in the midst of the shot and shell, rides out of the battle in a way that would break most men's necks, tires down horse after horse if he must, and flashes his words with the very fire and smoke of the battle in them over sea and land to the editor's room. Nothing escapes this everpresent and all-present eye, or shall I say this power one can liken best to the trunk of the great creature of the forests, which can pick up a pin or wrench down a pine. It mirrors the great

markets on one page, and on the other tells you of an oyster supper in the basement of a church, and reports impartially a murder or a sermon.

Does the old Lion roar over there in Europe, or the Bear growl, or the Eagle scream? You hear them all through this wonderful telephone of the newspaper. It brings to you the froth and foam on the chalice of our life, and reports the vast and awful movements which belong to all the centuries and are felt all round the world..

"It is the abstract and brief chronicle of the time, showing virtue her own features, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.»

So it is no great wonder, as you will see, that the newspaper should be about the most potent power we know of among visible things, or that fair-minded men should be glad for this power, and proud of it wherever it is held sacred to truth and virtue in a wide and true sense. I would venture to say also, that we, of all men, should be glad and proud of this power for good, because among newspapers of the first rank there are very few indeed that are not conducted in a broad and liberal spirit whenever they touch the great questions which belong especially to the pulpit. Indeed, I saw a paragraph not very long ago which professed to give the bias or the belonging of the most eminent editors in this country, and it was something of a wonder to find what numbers of them were what we should call liberal, until I remembered how hard it must be to find a man of any other mind who can conduct a great paper, or, conducting one, should not catch this spirit through his work of the broad Church.

Nor is this true only of these States. You would think that in a city like London, where the roots of things must run down deep as the old red sandstone, there would be no room for such a spirit; there is not much room for the letter of heresy, as some call it, but there is a great deal of room for the spirit. Don't label your basket of seed, and Master John will not trouble you much any more about its nature. Shall I tell you a story? I was wandering about London one day, and came on a place from which vast numbers of publications flow perpetually; and looking at the place, with no idea of being known, a gentleman invited me in, told me as we sat in his office he was one of the firm, had heard me preach in an old meetinghouse near by, was himself a liberal, as they all were; but then, you see, we have to keep all this to ourselves, he said, and take care no bigotry, at

the least, gets into our books, but that they shall all have something in them of a broad and liberal spirit. It is the truth about the great papers we print on this side of the water, when they touch religion at all it is in a wide and inclusive way. They give no quarter to religious bigotry on any side, or bitter and narrow dogmas. It seems as if the very substance out of which most of the men are made who create or stamp their image on a great journal holds within it this leaven of free thought that they can no more hide than they can hide their shadow as they stand in the sun.

It has come to pass once more that for all these reasons, and others I shall not name, the newspaper has come to be beyond all doubt more popular and more widely read in this country than the Bible, while no man has to make such a confession about it as quaint Master Fuller made about the lesson for the day: "Forgive me in this, that when I set myself this morning to read Thy Blessed Word, I first turned the leaf to see if it was a long chapter." You never turn the page in this spirit, of your paper, to see if it is a long chapter, or find your long-lost glasses in the folded sheets, while most men, I doubt not, are stirred by what they read there, as they are seldom stirred by the great Old Book; and the reason for this is that the newspaper comes right home and bears the thought and life of the world about us, caught on the wing, and transferred to the pages, throbbing with love and hate, with terror and joy, with life and death, and it is not distance now but nearness which brings enchantment.

I look for the good to master the evil again in those things that offend the moral, and social, and religious instincts of our people. In all these things and for them all we are more or less responsible. It is our business to see that nothing shall enter our home that defileth or maketh a lie in the shape of a newspaper, to make our convictions known about these things wherever we go, and to court no smile and fear no frown for this from any side. Those who come to look at us from abroad say this is our weak place, this haunting sense of the inquisition of a newspaper that is down on us. I think sometimes there is something in this surmise. It is the most terrible power we know of when it is used to crush a man, but I say that the man who knows his own place, and is sure of his own uprightness, can dare even the newspaper and defy it for the truth and the right, come what may.

From the Library Magazine.

COLMAN AND THORNTON

(GEORGE COLMAN)

(1733-1794)

(BONNEL THORNTON)

(1724-1768)

HE Connoisseur founded in 1754 by Colman and Thornton survived for two years and at times promised high excellence in the field of essay writing, which had been previously occupied by the Spectator and the Rambler. It died after the one hundred and fortieth number, however, and Dr. Johnson's verdict was that it "lacked weight." It was asserted by its editors that the essays were all their joint productions; and though this is not wholly probable, it has been accepted in mere default of refutation. Thornton had made some reputation as a parodist at the time the paper was founded, but the master mind of the combination was undoubtedly the elder Colman (born April 28th, 1733; died August 14th, 1794.) He was a writer of many popular comedies, some of which have become classical. Of his method of co-operating with Thornton, he says in the last number of the Connoisseur (September 30th, 1756):

"We have not only joined in the work taken together, but almost every single paper is the joint product of both; and, as we have labored equally in erecting the fabric, we cannot pretend that any one particular part is the sole workmanship of either. A hint has perhaps been started by one of us, improved by the other, and still further heightened by a happy coalition of sentiment in both; as fire is struck out by a mutual collision of flint and steel. Sometimes, like Strada's lovers conversing with the sympathetic needles, we have written papers together at fifty miles distance from each other: the first rough draught or loose minutes of an essay have often traveled in a stagecoach from town to country, and from country to town; and we have frequently waited for the postman (whom we expected to bring us the precious remainder of a Connoisseur) with the same anxiety as we should wait for the half of a bank note, without which the other half would be of no value."

111-70

WR

THE OCEAN OF INK

Suave mari magno, turbantibus æquora ventis,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.

- Lucretius.

"When raging winds the ruffled deep deform,
We look at distance, and enjoy the storm;
Toss'd on the waves with pleasure others see,
Nor heed their dangers, while ourselves are free.»

WE WRITERS of essays, or (as they are termed) periodical papers, justly claim to ourselves a place among the modern improvers of literature. Neither Bentley nor Burman, nor any other equally sagacious commentator, has been able to discover the least traces of any similar productions among the Ancients; except we can suppose that the history of Thucydides was retailed weekly in sixpenny numbers; that Seneca dealt out his morality every Saturday; or that Tully wrote speeches and philosophical disquisitions, whilst Virgil and Horace clubbed together to furnish the poetry for a Roman magazine.

There is a word, indeed, by which we are fond of distinguishing our works, and for which we must confess ourselves indebted to the Latin. Myself, and every petty journalist, affect to dignify our hasty performances by styling them Lucubrations; by which we mean, if we mean anything, that as the day is too short for our labors, we are obliged to call in the assistance of the night, not to mention the modest insinuation that our compositions are so correct, that (like the orations of Demosthenes) they may be said to smell of the lamp. We would be understood to follow the directions of the Roman satirist, "to grow pale by the midnight candle "; though, perhaps, as our own satirist expresses it, we may be thought

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Sleepless ourselves, to give our readers sleep."

But, as a relief from the fatigue of so many restless hours, we have frequently gone to sleep for the benefit of the public: and surely we, whose labors are confined to a sheet and a half, may be indulged in taking a nap now and then, as well as those engaged in longer works; who (according to Horace) are to be excused, if a little drowsiness sometimes creeps in upon them.

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