locomotives fly with
them all over the world, and only enlarge and expand the story, the great
facts of which have been already sent in outline by telegraph.

Nor is it possible to overrate the value of a good daily paper: as the
body is strengthened by daily food, so are we built up mentally and
spiritually for the busy age in which we live by the world of intelligence
contained in the daily journal. A great book and a good one is offered for
the reading of many who have no time to read others, and a great culture
in morals, religion, politics, is thus induced. Of course it would be
impossible to mention all the English dailies. Among them _The London
Times_ is pre-eminent, and stands highest in the opinion of the
ministerial party, which fears and uses it.

There was a time when the press was greatly trammelled in England, and
license of expression was easily charged with constructive treason; but at
present it is remarkably free, and the great, the government, and existing
abuses, receive no soft treatment at its hands.

_The London Times_ was started by John Walter, a printer, in 1788, there
having been for three years before a paper called the _London Daily
Universal Register_. In 1803 his son, John, went into partnership, when
the circulation was but 1,000. Within ten years it was 5,000. In 1814,
cleverly concealing the purpose from his workmen, he printed the first
sheet ever printed by steam, on Koenig's press. The paper passed, at his
death, into the hands of his son, the third John, who is a scholar,
educated at Eton and Oxford, like his father a member of Parliament, and
who has lately been raised to the peerage. The _Times_ is so influential
that it may well be called a third estate in the realm: its writers are
men of merit and distinction; its correspondence secures the best foreign
intelligence; and its travelling agents, like Russell and others, are the
true historians of a war. English journalism, it is manifest, is eminently
historical. The files of English newspapers are the best history of the
period, and will, by their facts and comments, hereafter confront specious
and false historians. Another thing to be observed is the impersonality of
the British press, not only in the fact that names are withheld, but that
the articles betray no authorship; that, in short, the paper does not
appear as the glorification of one man or set of men, but like an
unprejudiced relator, censor, and judge.

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