ble adversary, Morus; and deigned to adulate the
unworthy Christina of Sweden, because she had expressed herself
favourably on his "Defence." Of late years, we have had too many
instances of this worst of passions, the antipathies of politics!

ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.

We are indebted to the Italians for the idea of newspapers. The title of
their _gazettas_ was, perhaps, derived from _gazzera_, a magpie or
chatterer; or, more probably, from a farthing coin, peculiar to the city
of Venice, called _gazetta_, which was the common price of the
newspapers. Another etymologist is for deriving it from the Latin
_gaza_, which would colloquially lengthen into _gazetta_, and signify a
little treasury of news. The Spanish derive it from the Latin _gaza_,
and likewise their _gazatero_, and our _gazetteer_, for a writer of the
_gazette_ and, what is peculiar to themselves, _gazetista_, for a lover
of the gazette.

Newspapers, then, took their birth in that principal land of modern
politicians, Italy, and under the government of that aristocratical
republic, Venice. The first paper was a Venetian one, and only monthly;
but it was merely the newspaper of the government. Other governments
afterwards adopted the Venetian plan of a newspaper, with the Venetian
name:--from a solitary government gazette, an inundation of newspapers
has burst upon us.

Mr. George Chalmers, in his Life of Ruddiman, gives a curious particular
of these Venetian gazettes:--"A jealous government did not allow a
_printed_ newspaper; and the Venetian _gazetta_ continued long after the
invention of printing, to the close of the sixteenth century, and even
to our own days, to be distributed in _manuscript_." In the
Magliabechian library at Florence are thirty volumes of Venetian
gazettas, all in manuscript.

Those who first wrote newspapers were called by the Italians _menanti_;
because, says Vossius, they intended commonly by these loose papers to
spread about defamatory reflections, and were therefore prohibited in
Italy by Gregory XIII. by a particular bull, under the name of
_menantes_, from the Latin _minantes_, threatening. Menage, however,
derives it from the Italian _menare_, which signifies to lead at large,
or spread afar.

We are indebted to the wisdom of Elizabeth and the prudence of Burleigh
for the first newspaper. The epoch of the Spanish Armada is also the
epoch of a genuine newspaper. In the British Museum are several
newspapers which