EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
471 
elevated position spoken of, must be added a third, namely, 
the influence of the press. Of late years works have been 
written by members of the profession which prove the pos- 
session of mind and talents of no mean order. These will 
doubtless be added to as time moves on, for the field is a 
large one, and by no means fully cultivated ; labourers being 
still wanted in many of its divisions. The question of 
remuneration is perhaps one on which we should hesitate 
to enter. Here, we fear, is a check, for it cannot as 
yet be said that the profession, as a body, is a reading one. 
Many, therefore, will have to be contented with the honour 
of the thing, and the consciousness of having contributed 
somewhat to the general advancement. 
We have before said, and we hesitate not to repeat the 
assertion, that the literature of a profession must be accepted 
as a test of its standing and worth. Without it, where would 
be any proof of progress? Without it, how could discoveries 
that are from time to time made, be communicated ? With- 
out it, we should quickly go back to the days of empiricism, 
cruelty, and ignorance. Of the advantages derived from the 
press, we cannot adduce a more glowing or a more truthful 
description than the following peroration to a lecture lately 
delivered before the Royal Institution by Mr. Bradbury: 
“When the nations sat in ‘ gross darkness/ there still was a gleam, but 
only a gleam, of the primal civilization. The thirst of conquest, which first 
cut up, and then coalesced the peoples, made the labour and the intellect of 
the gifted among them subservient to the glory and luxury of their con- 
querors; then arose the mighty monuments of the past, which serve as 
historic landmarks to the present. Then arts began, flourished, and faded — 
faded, but to rise again ; and, according to the genius and requirements of 
the country and the people, took various shapes of elegance and taste, but 
the pervading principle was the same. Then literature, which was but at 
first the trappings of barbaric pride : and then the aspirations of thought — 
subtle in the Oriental, profound in the Greek, practical in the Roman — 
poured with its advancing tide of civilization upon the regions of the West 
in new forms and with a new faith — and then rolled back upon the East, 
with new sublimity and sense : but still, amid convulsions of the nations — 
this seething of the sands of truth — a beacon has arisen, which, though it 
cannot prevent storms, can avert catastrophes ; though it cannot eradicate 
error, can overcome crime : and that beacon is Printing and the Press. 
Gathering up all its strores from the remotest past, it accumulates them 
with reflected light upon the darkness of the unknown future. Philosophy, 
history, theology, science, arts, languages, are embalmed, and that which 
was once the painful record of isolated facts, has now become the free 
