208 THE FOREIGN PRESS. 



more copious than the Ottoman Moniteur, edited in French, is con- 

 ducted by Esaad Effendi, the historian of the empire, and author of 

 the Account of the Destruction of the Janissaries, which was published 

 at Constantinople four years ago. The first five numbers of the 

 Turkish Gazette have been received at Vienna. In the last number 

 the editor announces that he is about to publish a work on the late 

 voyage of the Sultan through the provinces of his empire. He in- 

 serts four lines of verse, with which the narrative is to close, written 

 by the Kiaia Bey, or Minister of the Interior, Perteu Effendi, as an 

 eulogium upon the historian. The same poetic minister has written 

 several distiches, also inserted in the Gazette, upon the skill of the 

 Sultan in hitting a mark with an arrow at 1,500 paces distance. 



The establishment of a Turkish journal is the most extraordinary 

 event of modern times. It is true that its management depeeds 

 wholly on the government, and that the editors are chosen and paid 

 by the Divan, so that there is nothing to indicate freedom of discus- 

 sion; but it is a most curious thing to see the Turks, who hitherto 

 have never had an idea on the subject of politics, now taking cog- 

 nizance of the principal political events, foreign and domestic. The 

 first number of the Gazette appeared in 1832. 



A new journal has been started at Canea, in Candia. It is pub- 

 lished in the Turkish and modern Greek languages ; the Turkish 

 title is Events in Crete and the Greek title Cretan Ephemeris 



OLD NEWSPAPERS. Many people take newspapers, but few 

 preserve them ; yet the most interesting reading imaginable is a file 

 of old newspapers. It brings up the very age, with all its bustle and 

 every-day affairs, and marks its genius and its spirit more than the 

 most laboured description of the historian. Who can take a paper 

 dated half a century ago, without the thought that almost every 

 name there printed is now cut upon a tombstone at the head of an 

 epitaph *? The doctor (quack or regular), that there advertised his 

 medicines and their cures, has followed the sable train of his patients, 

 the merchant, his ships could get no security on his life j arid the 

 actor, who could make others laugh or weep, can now only furnish a 

 skull for his successors in Hamlet. It is easy to preserve newspapers, 

 and they will repay the trouble ; for, like that of wine, their value 

 increases with their years, and old files have sometimes been sold at 

 prices too startling to mention. 



Every act of government (however'despotic) to restrain the liberty 

 of the press, is an encouragement to its licentiousness. 



ED. M. M. 



