would talk. The newspapers
gave him aid and comfort in both breaches of discipline; and in some
instances, their influence against the conscription and impressments
was seriously felt in the interior. Still these hostilities had their
origin in honest conviction; and abuses were held up to the light, that
the Government might be made to see and correct them.

The newspapers but reflected the ideas of some of the clearest thinkers
in the land; and they recorded the real and true history of public
opinion during the war. In their columns is to be found the only really
correct and indicative "map of busy life, its fluctuations and its vast
concerns" in the South, during her days of darkness and of trial.

These papers held their own bravely for a time, and fought hard against
scarcity of labor, material and patronage--against the depreciation of
currency and their innumerable other difficulties. Little by little
their numbers decreased; then only the principal dailies of the cities
were left, and these began to print upon straw paper, wall papering--on
any material that could be procured. Cramped in means, curtailed in
size, and dingy in appearance, their publishers still struggled bravely
on for the freedom of the press and the freedom of the South.

Periodical literature--as the vast flood of illustrated and
unillustrated monthlies and weeklies that swept over the North was
misnamed--was unknown in the South. She had but few weeklies; and these
were sturdy and heavy country papers--relating more to farming than to
national matters. Else they were the weekly editions of the city
papers, intended for country consumption. Few monthly magazines--save
educational, religious, or statistical ventures, intended for certain
limited classes, were ever born in the South; and most of those few
lived weakly and not long.

De Bow's _Review_, the _Southern Quarterly_, and the _Literary
Messenger_, were the most noteworthy exceptions. The business interests
of the larger towns supported the first--which, indeed, drew part of
its patronage from the North. Neither its great ability nor the taste
of its clientele availed to sustain the second; and the _Messenger_--long
the chosen medium of southern writers of all ages, sexes and
conditions--dragged on a wearisome existence, with one foot in the
grave for many years, only to perish miserably of starvation during the
war.

But any regular and systematized periodical literature the South