eat historical
value, may be found in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence.

Next in order, we find in France _Affiches_, or _placards_, which were
soon succeeded by regular sheets of advertisement, exhibited at certain
offices.

As early as the time of the intended invasion of England by the Spanish
Armada, about the year 1588, we find an account of its defeat and
dispersion in the _Mercurie_, issued by Queen Elizabeth's own printer. In
another number is the news of a plot for killing the queen, and a
statement that instruments of torture were on board the vessels, to set up
the Inquisition in London. Whether true or not, the newspaper said it; and
the English people believed it implicitly.

About 1600, with the awakening spirit of the people, there began to appear
periodical papers containing specifically news from Germany, from Italy,
&c. And during the Thirty Years' War there was issued a weekly paper
called _The Certain News of the Present Week_. Although the word _news_ is
significant enough, many persons considered it as made up of the initial
letters representing the cardinal points of the compass, _N.E.W.S._, from
which the curious people looked for satisfying intelligence.

THE CIVIL WAR.--The progress of English journalism received a great
additional impetus when the civil war broke out between Charles I. and his
Parliament, in 1642. To meet the demands of both parties for intelligence,
numbers of small sheets were issued: _Truths from York_ told of the rising
in the king's favor there. There were: _Tidings from Ireland_, _News from
Hull_, telling of the siege of that place in 1643; _The Dutch Spy_; _The
Parliament Kite_; _The Secret Owl_; _The Scot's Dove_, with the
olive-branch. Then flourished the _Weekly Discoverer_, and _The Weekly
Discoverer Stripped Naked_. But these were only bare and partial
statements, which excited rancor without conveying intelligence. "Had
there been better vehicles for the expression of public opinion," says the
author of the Student's history of England, "the Stuarts might have been
saved from some of those schemes which proved so fatal to themselves."

In the session of Parliament held in 1695, there occurred a revolution of
great moment. There had been an act, enforced for a limited time, to
restrain unlicensed printing, and under it censors had been appointed;
but, in this year, the Parliament refused to re-enact or continue it, and
thus the press found itself compar