196 Tilt: PERIODICAL Pit ESS. 



to twenty gentlemen, constantly ready to give their talents and 

 labour whenever they may be called for. They find their way every 

 where. The low meetings of idle mechanics, which were frequent 

 some years ago, were not beneath their notice ; and the same indi- 

 viduals who ascended the carts and waggons put in requisition by 

 Thistlewood and his associates, attended at Westminster-hall and 

 Abbey, in their court dresses, at the Coronation of his present 

 Majesty. 



A modern English newspaper numbers among its contributors 

 persons of all classes in the State. From its great and acknowledged 

 influence, statesmen of the highest celebrity, and persons most dis- 

 tinguished for exalted rank, or most eminent for talent, do not disdain 

 to correspond with its editor; while many of the meanest of the lower 

 classes, whom chance may make the spectators of an accident, find 

 their interest in carrying it to the journalists. This practice, though 

 contributing, with the other liberal arrangements of the newspaper 

 press, to produce a concentrated mass of intelligence, to be found in 

 the periodical publications of no other country, is attended with one 

 injurious consequence. Individuals who cannot boast of " a local 

 habitation or a name," are constantly on the hunt for accidents, 

 which they sometimes invent when they cannot find them. Such 

 fraudulent practices the editors fail not to expose and punish ; but 

 they cannot always prevent them ; and the parties thus unworthily 

 employed, putting themselves forward as " Reporters," and "Gentle- 

 men of the Press," bring unmerited reproach on writers of a very 

 different character, who have furnished from their ranks the Bar, and 

 all the liberal professions, with some of their most efficient members, 

 and who have comprehended many of the best ornaments of their 

 country's literature. What more striking proof can be given of their 

 industry and talent, than is furnished by a modern Parliamentary 

 debate *? A single night produces sufficient matter to fill an octavo 

 volume, and the speech pronounced in .the senate at four or five 

 o'clock in the morning, is often seen on the breakfast table before 

 nine. 



A newspaper, says a sensible writer in Tait, is a flying omnibus, 

 licensed to carry the opinions of the world. Time and space are 

 compromised by its velocity and power ; for it has the regularity of 

 ocean's tides, besides that they are turned into steam, and work at 

 high pressure. It is an ephemeral giant, whose birth is renewed 

 every morning; and it issues forth to the field with all its "arms 

 and appointments," as though it had only slept like the rest of us, in- 

 stead of having laid human brains and hands, and wonder-working 

 machinery, under heavy contributions for its re-action. In its war- 

 replenished grasp it holds the passions, prejudices, interests, reasons, 

 virtues, and vices of the times, with the opinions that result from the 

 complex mixture ; and it strides forward on seven-leagued boots 

 to speak moderately strewing them on every side. It is a voice 

 that will be heard ; for, if it fail in its desperate effort to have its 

 own way, and produce its desired effect, it gives up attempting to 

 make the mountain come to it, and very wisely sides with the col- 

 lected mass, ft is the mirror of public opinion ; not the original or 



