THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA.

ARTICLE I.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PRESS.

BY REV. JOHN BASCOM, PROFESSOR IN WILLIAMS COLLEGE.

THE present form of our civilization has been, probably, effected by the printing-press more than by any other agent. Yet, as the press is a mere piece of mechanism, -a method simply of dissemination, it is evidently the form of society, and not its very spirit and character, that is due to this instrument. What the press shall print and scatter must be determined by something beside the press itself. The buzz and hum of society are found here. This is the fan that blows the flame; but the very flame, and the metal molten by it, are quite other things.

The press has been at work in the English world of thought almost four centuries, and the newspaper for a little more than half that time. The newspaper, as a printed medium of news, is of English origin. The first authentic regular weekly publication was that of Nathaniel Butter, in 1662, entitled "The Certain News of this Present Week." In the word "gazette" we have traces, however, of an earlier written paper common to some of the Italian cities. Gazetta was the coin paid for the privilege of listening to the reading of these bulletins. The New York Gazette, the first paper published in that city, the Gazette of revolutionary memory in Boston, and the many other journals that have borne

this name, thus stand closely connected by etymological, if not by historic, descent with the early papers of Venice and Florence.

Butter's paper was succeeded, especially during the civil wars that made way for the Commonwealth, by numerous regular and irregular papers, chiefly employed as means of political influence and of spreading the stirring events of the hour. From that time onward the development of the newspaper has been continuous, though by no means with uniform rapidity. At the opening of the Revolution there were in the Colonies thirty-six weeklies and one semi-weekly. In 1800, there were in the United States two hundred papers, several of them dailies. The oldest of these dailies was the Pennsylvania Packet, or the General Advertiser, first issued in 1784. Nearly all the great dailies of the present have had their origin within the century. The Commercial Advertiser, the oldest of the New York dailies, began with the latest years of the previous century. The number of dailies in the United States in 1850 was two hundred and fifty-four, and in 1860 was three hundred and seventy-four; of bi- and tri-weeklies, one hundred and sixtyfive; and of weeklies, three thousand one hundred and seventy-three. The number of monthlies was two hundred and eighty; and of quarterlies, thirty. The ten years just closing have witnessed a great addition to this number, and especially to those papers and periodicals whose object it is to furnish entertaining matter not of the nature of news.

To children there is falling a very large share, - indeed, every class is possessed of a surfeit of this daily light food, this manna of our times. Every variety of grave, pretentious, and facile literature, of popular science and of popular philosophy, of story and of humor, from the best to the worst, finds a place, and a large place, in it. Quantity seems to be the one astonishing thing—the perpetual, genetic miracle of the hour. There is a great change in character as we pass from one wing of the press to the other, from the quarterly to the daily, — and a still more significant change

in numbers and circulation. The one class swarms like butterflies; the other has the gestation and slow increase of mammals. The dailies with scarcely an exception, and the weeklies with but few exceptions, have primarily a newspaper character - give themselves to the questions and events of the hour, and, as chief among these debatable subjects, to social themes and politics. Even our religious weeklies fully present these newspaper features, and sometimes bring them decidedly into the foreground. Religion binds up its weekly budget of secular news, and adds thereto its own items. Crimes, casualties, and conversions all find their file, and are sent forth to their work. The monthlies are chiefly of a literary character. They are so by an expressed purpose on the part of the majority, and still more by the circulation. and weight of influence which belong to the best of those of this class. The quarterlies are primarily of a religious, philosophical, and critical character. Fourteen of the thirty in the United States at our last census were directly connected with some form of religious faith. The quarterlies, a product of the present century, advance but slowly, and in number and circulation are wholly overshadowed by the more active, phosphorescent branches of the press. The combined periodical productions of this country can furnish twenty-five copies per annum to each person in it.

It is plain, from this rapid glance at the history of the press, that the popular element is gaining ground to an astonishing degree. The movement is an accelerated one, like the fall of a weight, and that, too, with a ratio almost fearful. Invention has at once helped this tendency, and been the product of it. The cylinder steam-press is the magnificent instrument of this growth, and in its quick revolution we see a power that can discharge instantly on the material world the gross produce of the minds of men, and load with it the waiting messengers of electricity and steam, till it quivers down, like snow-flakes, on every corner of the land. When we speak of the press, we now mean distinctively the newspaper press, so much has this branch.

gained ground on every other, so busy and demonstrative is it. Indeed, the slow, heavy work of philosophy, the fine work of elegant literature, withdraw from this fatal facility of the steam-cylinder, and, for the best execution, retreat even to the hand-press. The cylinder, in its rotary, rapid, heedless, unhesitating execution, is a fitting instrument and symbol of the daily press.

Some of the results of this newspaper character and growth of the press we wish to present. It has broken in on the privacy of life. Our privacy is like that of the city, in which we do not observe those about us, because we do not care to see them, not because we are not able to see them. This daily, active, omnivorous press cannot find sufficient important matter for its fearful consumption. It must sweep the streets and search secret places for it. It must lay every man, every neighborhood, every class of interests, under contribution. Each item, good and bad, is an autumn leaf that the busy winds will not let rest, that finds no refuge but that of time. The noisy news-element enters more and more into business. It is no longer, like the rattle of an express-wagon, incidental to work, but a chief part of it. To make sonorous proclamation and flaming advertisement of what one is doing becomes a first condition of success. Every man is a crier, and a crier of his own virtues and goods. There is no privacy except in those few things which the Argus-eyed press, living for news and on news, absolutely cannot see, and in those perfectly commonplace acts, the seeing of which elicits no interest. The language of Coleridge was weak when he used it, compared with the force it now possesses:

"In the present age-emphatically the age of personality there are more than ordinary motives of withholding all encouragement from this mania of busying ourselves with the names of others, which is still more alarming as a symptom than it is troublesome as a disease. The reader must be still less acquainted with contemporary literature than myself, a case not likely to occur, if he needs me to

inform him that there are men who, trading in the silliest anecdotes, in unprovoked abuse and senseless eulogy, think themselves, nevertheless, employed both worthily and honorably, if only this be done in good set terms, and from the press, and of public characters-a class which has increased so rapidly, of late, that it becomes difficult to discover what characters are to be considered private."

We cannot be at a loss to know where this itch and contagion of gossip are begotten, and whence they spread into our literature. Nor is it merely the weakness and idleness. of thought we deplore, but its malicious character, as well; seizing, as it constantly does, on much matter rank with putrefaction, and whose chief mischief lies in diffusion. A sensation is a necessity with the press, and if that which is good and beautiful is not at hand, that which is loathsome must take its place. This slush and wash of news, this churning up of all that comes to hand, is a symptomatic feature of our times. A full tide is always coming in fresh from the sea, but ever licking up, casting about, and mingling the refuse and sewerage of the city. Saturated with the filth which we thought to have cast off, it runs searchingly into every basin, and, with the sudden agility of collision, leaps to our wharves, bespatters our garments and our merchandise. It is amusing and sad to see how a great daily, with flaming bulletins, will flourish for a week on a case of scandal. First, it dashes hotly into it, with exaggeration and misstatement. This provokes comment and correction, and these give opportunity for defense and enlargement; for discussing the case historically and critically, and opening side-issues with opponents. A later number closes the judicial process with a few caustic reflections.

The newsmonger is the pimp of the news-devourer; and we have no more leisure than we have privacy. The morning paper becomes as needful and as transient as the cup of coffee it accompanies. A hasty, careless reading of the daily papers helping to urge on the race of life, and themselves. making up a large part of it affords the intellectual food