ber was very small. In Dessau I only knew of one, which
was then called the _Wochenblatt_, afterwards the _Staatsanzeiger_. At
that time newspapers were really read for the news which they
contained, not for leading or misleading articles and all the rest.
What a happy time it was when a newspaper consisted of a sheet, or
half a sheet in quarto, with short paragraphs about actual events,
which had often taken place weeks and months before. A battle might
have been fought in Spain or Turkey, in India or China, and no one
knew of it till some official information was vouchsafed by the
respective Governments or by Jewish bankers. War-correspondents or
regular reporters did not exist, and the old telegraphic dispatches
were sent by wooden telegraphs fixed on high towers, which from a
distance looked like gallows on which a criminal was hanging and
gesticulating with arms and feet. Anybody who watched these signals
could decipher them far more easily than a hieroglyphic inscription.

The peace of Europe, nay, of the whole world, was then in the keeping
of sovereigns and their ministers, and Prince Metternich might
certainly take some credit for having kept what he called the Thirty
Years' Peace. Shall we ever, as long as there are newspapers, have
peace again--peace between the great nations of the world, and peace
at home between contending parties, and peace in our mornings at home
which are now so ruthlessly broken in upon, nay, swallowed up by
those paper-giants, most unwelcome yet irresistible callers, just when
we want to settle down to a quiet day's work? It is no use protesting
against the inevitable, nor can we quite agree with those who maintain
that no newspaper carries the slightest weight or exercises the
smallest influence on home or foreign politics. A very influential
statesman and wise thinker used to say that we should never have had
Christianity if newspapers had existed at the time of Augustus. When
unsuccessful _litterateurs_ or bankrupt bankers' clerks were the chief
contributors to the newspapers, their influence might have been small;
but when Bismarcks turned journalists, and Gortchakoffs prompted,
newspapers could hardly be called _quantites negligeables_.

The horizon of Dessau was very narrow, but within its bounds there was
a busy and happy life. Everybody did his work honestly and
conscientiously. There were, of course, two classes, the educated and
the uneducated. The educated consisted of the