ssitated activity on the other side.
The keenest intellects, the best-trained wits of the nation, sometimes
under some disguise, sometimes openly, took to journalism, and it became
simply absurd to regard the journalist as a disreputable garreteer when
Windham and Canning were journalists. The larger sale of books and the
formation of a regular system of "pushing" them also developed
reviews--too frequently, no doubt, in the direction of mere puffing, but
even thus with the beneficent result that other reviews came into
existence which were not mere puff-engines.

Even these causes and others will not entirely explain the extraordinary
development of periodicals of all kinds from quarterly to daily, of
which the _Edinburgh_, _Blackwood_, the _Examiner_, and the _Times_ were
respectively the most remarkable examples and pioneers in the earlier
years of the century, though as a literary organ the _Morning Post_ had
at first rather the advantage of the _Times_. But, as has been said here
constantly, you can never explain everything in literary history; and
it would be extremely dull if you could. The newspaper press had, for
good or for ill, to come; external events to some obvious extent helped
its coming; individual talents and aptitudes helped it likewise; but the
main determining force was the force of hidden destiny.

There is, however, no mistake possible about the results. It is but a
slight exaggeration to say that the periodical rapidly swallowed up all
other forms of literature, to this extent and in this sense, that there
is hardly a single one of these forms capital performance in which has
not at one time or another formed part of the stuff of periodicals, and
has not by them been first introduced to the world. Not a little of our
poetry; probably the major part of our best fiction; all but a very
small part of our essay-writing, critical, meditative, and
miscellaneous; and a portion, much larger than would at one time have
seemed conceivable, of serious writing in history, philosophy, theology,
science, and scholarship, have passed through the mint or mill of the
newspaper press before presenting themselves in book form. A certain
appreciable, though small part of the best, with much of the worst, has
never got beyond that form.

To attempt to collect the result of this change is to attempt something
not at all easy, something perhaps which may be regarded as not
particularly valuable. The distinction betwe