mation to the
Venetians. The first newspaper published in England was in 1588,
and called the _English Mercury_. Others were styled the _Weekly
Discoverer_, the _Secret Owl_, _Heraclitus Ridens_, etc.

Who can estimate the political, scientific, commercial, and religious
revolutions roused up in England for many years past by _Bell's Weekly
Dispatch_, the _Standard_, the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Post_, and
the _London Times_?

The first attempt at this institution in France was in 1631, by a
physician, who published the _News_, for the amusement and health of
his patients. The French nation understood fully how to appreciate
this power. Napoleon, with his own hand, wrote articles for the press,
and so early as in 1829 there were in Paris 169 journals. But in the
United States the newspaper has come to unlimited sway. Though in
1775 there were but thirty-seven in the whole country, the number of
published journals is now counted by thousands; and to-day--we may as
well acknowledge it as not--the religious and secular newspapers are
the great _educators of the country_.

In our pulpits we preach to a few hundreds or thousands of people; the
newspaper addresses an audience of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, or
two hundred thousand. We preach three or four times a week; they every
morning or evening of the year. If they are right, they are gloriously
right; if they are wrong, they are awfully wrong.

I find no difficulty in accounting for the world's advance. Four
centuries ago, in Germany, in courts of justice, men fought with their
fists to see who should have the decision of the court; and if the
judge's decision was unsatisfactory, then the judge fought with the
counsel. Many of the lords could not read the deeds of their own
estates. What has made the change?

"Books," you say.

No, sir! The vast majority of citizens do not read books. Take this
audience, or any other promiscuous assemblage, and how many histories
have they read? How many treatises on constitutional law, or political
economy, or works of science? How many elaborate poems or books of
travel? How much of Boyle, or De Tocqueville, Xenophon, or Herodotus,
or Percival? Not many!

In the United States, the people would not average one such book a
year for each individual!

Whence, then, this intelligence--this capacity to talk about all
themes, secular and religious--this acquaintance with science and
art--this power to appreciate the beautiful