st cities. New York is first in the field; it has
the start of a quarter of a century or more; and it therefore devolves
upon the journalists of that city to teach the journalists of the
United States their vocation. It is this fact which invests the press
of New York with such importance, and makes it so well worth
considering.

It is impossible any longer to deny that the chief newspaper of that
busy city is the New York Herald. No matter how much we may regret
this fact, or be ashamed of it, no journalist can deny it. We do not
attach much importance to the fact that Abraham Lincoln, the late
lamented President of the United States, thought it worth while,
during the dark days of the summer of 1864, to buy its support at the
price of the offer of the French mission. He was mistaken in supposing
that this paper had any considerable power to change votes; which was
shown by the result of the Presidential election in the city of New
York, where General McClellan had the great majority of thirty-seven
thousand. Influence over opinion no paper can have which has itself no
opinion, and cares for none. It is not as a vehicle of opinion that
the Herald has importance, but solely as a vehicle of news. It is for
its excellence, real or supposed, in this particular, that eighty
thousand people buy it every morning. Mr. Lincoln committed, as we
cannot help thinking, a most egregious error and fault in his purchase
of the editor of this paper, though he is in some degree excused by
the fact that several leading Republicans, who were in a position to
know better, advised or sanctioned the bargain, and leading
journalists agreed not to censure it. Mr. Lincoln could not be
expected to draw the distinction, between the journalist and the
writer of editorials. He perceived the strength of this
carrier-pigeon's pinions, but did not note the trivial character of
the message tied to its leg. Thirty or forty war correspondents in the
field, a circulation larger than any of its rivals, an advertising
patronage equalled only by that of the London Times, the popularity of
the paper in the army, the frequent utility of its maps and other
elucidations,--these things imposed upon his mind; and his wife could
tell him from personal observation, that the proprietor of this paper
lived in a style of the most profuse magnificence,--maintaining costly
establishments in town and country, horses, and yachts, to say nothing
of that most expensive appe