ide the barometer, to hear or ignore. With the
separation of that function what is left of the newspaper will revert to
one daily edition--daily, I think, because of the power of habit to make
the newspaper the specific business of some definite moments in the day;
the breakfast hour, I suppose, or the "up-to-town" journey with most
Englishmen now. Quite possibly some one will discover some day that
there is now machinery for folding and fastening a paper into a form
that will not inevitably get into the butter, or lead to bitterness in a
railway carriage. This pitch of development reached, I incline to
anticipate daily papers much more like the _Spectator_ in form than
these present mainsails of our public life. They will probably not
contain fiction at all, and poetry only rarely, because no one but a
partial imbecile wants these things in punctual daily doses, and we are
anticipating an escape from a period of partial imbecility. My own
culture and turn of mind, which is probably akin to that of a
respectable mechanic of the year 2000, inclines me towards a daily paper
that will have in addition to its concentrated and absolutely
trustworthy daily news, full and luminous accounts of new inventions,
new theories, and new departures of all sorts (usually illustrated),
witty and penetrating comments upon public affairs, criticisms of all
sorts of things, representations of newly produced works of art, and an
ample amount of ably written controversy upon everything under the sun.
The correspondence columns, instead of being an exercising place for
bores and conspicuous people who are not mercenary, will be the most
ample, the most carefully collected, and the most highly paid of all
departments in this paper. Personal paragraphs will be relegated to some
obscure and costly corner next to the births, deaths, and marriages.
This paper will have, of course, many pages of business advertisements,
and these will usually be well worth looking through, for the more
intelligent editors of the days to come will edit this department just
like any other, and classify their advertisements in a descending scale
of freshness and interest that will also be an ascending scale of price.
The advertiser who wants to be an indecent bore, and vociferate for the
ten millionth time some flatulent falsehood about a pill, for instance,
will pay at nuisance rates. Probably many papers will refuse to print
nasty and distressful advertisements about