JOURNALISTIC LITERATURE. 235 



editor that he had no particle of enthusiasm for the press, 

 no confidence in the newspaper as an educating agency. 

 He has put it on record that the mechanics he had 

 known whose culture consisted in life-long familiarity 

 with newspapers were uniformly shallow and frivolous. 

 Of himself he has spoken as doomed to cast off shav- 

 ing after shaving from his mind, to be caught by the 

 winds, and after whirling lightly for a little time, to 

 be blown into the gulf of oblivion. Perhaps he did 

 not enough take into account the essentially ephemeral 

 nature of human productions, or reflect that the longest- 

 lived book and the newspaper article of the hour are 

 alike covered up one day. 



' The memory of the withered leaf 

 In endless time is scarce more brief 

 Than of the garnered autumn sheaf.' 



Nay, inasmuch as a powerful newspaper writer lodges 

 his thoughts in the minds of men engaged in affairs, 

 and has them thus woven into the web of events and 

 the fabric of institutions, it might be argued that he 

 least of all toils without result of his labours. Hugh 

 Miller, at any rate, looked with fixed distrust upon jour- 

 nalistic writing, both as culture for a man's own mind 

 and as a means of influencing his fellows. He regard- 

 ed science as a counteractive to the deteriorating effects 

 of this kind of work upon his intellectual powers. 



