to produce such a
newspaper,--Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond. In 1841, when the
Herald was six years old, the Tribune appeared, edited by Mr. Greeley,
with Mr. Raymond as his chief assistant. Mr. Greeley was then, and is
now, the best writer of editorials in the United States; that is, he
can produce a greater quantity of telling editorial per annum than any
other individual. There never lived a man capable of working more
hours in a year than he. Strictly temperate in his habits, and
absolutely devoted to his work, he threw himself into this enterprise
with an ardor never surpassed since Adam first tasted the sweets of
honorable toil. Mr. Raymond, then recently from college, very young,
wholly inexperienced, was endowed with an admirable aptitude for the
work of journalism, and a power of getting through its routine
labors,--a sustained, calm, swift industry,--unsurpassed at that time
in the American press. The business of the paper was also well managed
by Mr. McElrath. In the hands of these able men, the new paper made
such rapid advances, that, in the course of a few months, it was
fairly established, and in a year or two it had reached a circulation
equal to that of the Herald. One after another, excellent writers were
added to its corps;--the vigorous, prompt, untiring Dana; George
Ripley, possessing that blending of scholarship and tact, that wisdom
of the cloister and knowledge of the world, which alone could fit a
man of great learning and talent for the work of a daily newspaper;
Margaret Fuller, whose memory is still green in so many hearts; Bayard
Taylor, the versatile, and others, less universally known.

Why, then, did not this powerful combination supplant the Herald? If
mere ability in the writing of a newspaper; if to have given an
impulse to thought and enterprise; if to have won the admiration and
gratitude of a host of the best men and women in America; if to have
inspired many thousands of young men with better feelings and higher
purposes than they would else have attained; if to have shaken the
dominion of superstition, and made it easier for men to think freely,
and freely utter their thought; if to have produced a newspaper more
interesting than any other in the world to certain classes in the
community;--if all these things had sufficed to give a daily paper the
first position in the journalism of a country, then the Tribune would
long ago have attained that position; for all these things