the last age it would have been impossible; to any previous age, inconceivable. That the history of the world should be photographed and stereotyped day by day as the events occur, that millions of sheets should be stricken off and borne on the wings of steam to all corners of the earth, and a copy laid on every breakfast table so that every man becomes a daily sharer of every other man's thought, as though a member of the same household, is a miracle surpassing the flying carpet and the magic tube of the Arabian tale. The newspaper, considered as an adaptation of the latest discoveries and inventions, is the most audacious, the most incredible triumph of human ingenuity; and yet it has become such a matter of course that we quite forget its extraordinary character. The things which should impress us most, impress us least through their very commonness. Night after night the constellations pass in grand review and we heed them not, but suppose, with Emerson, that the stars should appear but one night in a thousand years, "how," he says, " should men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!" Suppose that by some miracle all newspapers were suddenly stricken out of existence; the express train, the telegraph, the telephone and all the multiplied agencies for collecting news should cease to perform that duty; that the newsboys and news stands should disappear from the streets and the newspapers from the mails and postoffices; and that so far as concerns the gathering and scattering of intelligence the world were set back where it was, when in 1622 Nathaniel Butler issued the first number of his News Letter. The great preacher's audience of a hundred thousand dwindles to a thousand; the statesman's speech intended for the ears of the nation goes not beyond the narrow circle his voice can reach.' Were it possible to conceive of our civilization under these mediaval conditions and that in the darkness of that intellectual night the press should suddenly light its myriad torches in

city and hamlet the world over, revealing the inhabitants. to each other, as it were face to face at noon day, how, indeed, would men adore and treasure the remembrances of the city of God which had been shown, not in the heavens, but in their households!

What has the newspaper done? It is difficult to frame an answer comprehensive enough to cover the truth without seeming to exaggerate. The newspaper, by converting the world into a whispering gallery, is bringing nations, communities and individuals out of their isolation and binding them into a brotherhood with common interests and common sympathies. The newspaper has put humanity in the way of ferreting out its geniuses and making its best talent available. It was "a happy accident," we are told, saved Milton to literature. How many mute, inglorious Miltons" have been lost through lack of happy accidents it is idle to conjecture. In the millions of the unknown dead it is not unreasonable to believe that there have been many Miltons and Shakespeares who "died with all their music in them," no happy accident awakening their genius or making them conscious of its existence. One service of the newspaper is to multiply the "happy accidents." The press supplements the school, reinforces the pulpit and proves itself the ablest ally of law and order. Said the celebrated Lord Somers, "I know of no good law proposed and passed in my time to which the public papers did not direct my attention,” and modern legislators could justly repeat his confession. An independent press is the support of free institutions and is incompatible with the secretive methods of monarchies. Said Lord Mansfield to the Duke of Northumberland, "Mark my words, you and I shall not live to see it, but sooner or later these newspapers will most assuredly write the Dukes of Northumberland out of their titles and possessions and the country out of its King." The decline of the privileged classes and the rapid growth of democratic principles in Great Britain, under the teachings of her able

and independent journals, are verifying Lord Mansfield's prediction.

What of the newspaper profession? Like each of the old professions it is a collective body of men following a common calling, laboring for a purpose other than mechanical, but beyond this the contrasts are more noticeable than the similarities. Each of the others has a special course of training leading up to it, special qualifications for admission to it, a special code of ethics for conduct in it, and special awards and penalties for success or failure. Jour nalism has none of these. Any man who has news worth publishing and can report it intelligently, is to that extent a newspaper man. He is free to publish it or sell it, so far as the profession is concerned, without fear of being disciplined as a heretic, disbarred as a shyster, or outlawed as a quack practicing without a license. Once started on any of the old professional paths, the student knows where it leads, when he departs from it, and what will be expected of him while following it. In journalism so varied is the work, the paths are confusing, and speaking generally, the newspaper worker does not know one hour what he may be doing the next. Whatever the emergency, he is to meet it as though that were the one thing expected. Emerson speaks of the boundless hospitality of the man who lives under a tree and whose house is all door. That is very much the condition of journalism as a profession. It suffers from excess of accessibility. There is a stable element of men consecrated to newspaper work for life, and a great floating population of men experimenting at newspaper work and hardly knowing whether they belong in the profession or not.

There are also material differences in the character of the work and the talents best suited for doing it. The attorney or preacher rewrites, revises, drops his subject and takes it up again, turns it over and sleeps on it, but the editor must dispose of his on sight. He cannot edit tomorrow's paper on yesterday's ideas, cannot wait for tardy

second thoughts. This rare mental quality of perpetual readiness, of facility for dispatch, is improved by practice, but is never supplied by education when withheld by nature. In this particular, the editor, like the poet, is born, not made, and the young man, who is conscious that he lacks this natural aptitude, should seek some other pursuit. He might succeed on a weekly or monthly, but a daily is altogether too precipitate for him. The preacher finds many of his brightest thoughts and fancies unsuited to the pulpit, and the lawyer finds many of his irrelevant to the case; but with the editor there need be no wastage. So wide is the range of subjects with which he has to deal that whatever his thought, there is sure to be a niche somewhere into which it fits. Again, a member of any other profession acts in his own name and on his own responsibility. The editor is impersonal, his individuality is merged in that of the journal upon which he is employed. If he write well, the credit may be given to his superior, and if ill, the blame may fall on some subordinate. In a weak character, this impersonality is apt to lessen the sense of responsibility and lower the quality of his work, but in the strong it has the opposite effect. He feels the obligation all the weightier that the fate of others is bound up with his own, and it becomes the interest of each to hold his associates to their best. Other professions furnish examples of unselfish devotion, but I know of none nobler than that of the subordinate on a great daily who devotes his talents, energies, and life to the work, satisfied that the cause he advocates is advancing though his name be never mentioned in connection with it. That requires heroism of as true a type as any celebrated in the annals of chivalry, and American journalism boasts of hundreds of such unknown heroes to-day.

The nature of the work in the old professions tends to concentration into certain lines and grooves of thought; in journalism, to dispersion. In the former it is largely a question of authority and precedent; in the latter, a ques

tion of fitness under the circumstances. It is objected that this tendency to intellectual diffusiveness gives newspaper work expansiveness without depth, but the test of professional work goes not to its profundity but to its adequacy, and in any case that work is deep enough which gets down to the truth. If we wish an adequate view, say of a question in England's Indian policy, we go to an editorial in the London Times or Telegraph rather than to a speech in Parliament. Why? Because in the one case we distrust the bias of a specialist, and in the other we hope for the comprehensiveness, the sidelights, of a mind capable of treating many questions equally well. It is objected that the work of the journalist is evanescent, like an impromptu on some great organ which is forever lost the moment the player's fingers drop the keys. That far the greater part of the thought poured out through the press and in the pulpit and at the bar perishes at once and forever is true, but that it is more true of the press than of the others, I doubt. The thought that stirs the blood, lives. Player after player grows weary and drops the keys, but the great organ, the press, continues without break in the music, an active, ever-increasing force, enduring as the race to which it ministers.

That journalism is a most laborious and exacting profession; that young men entering upon it are exposed to special temptations; that competition is great and failures disproportionally numerous; that really desirable positions for a man of purely literary tastes are few and difficult to obtain, while many branches of the work are distasteful to him, are facts too obvious for remark, and I pass to the more pertinent inquiry, what is the attitude of institutions of learning toward journalism? Generally it has been an attitude of indifference, or at most, a sort of armed neutrality. It has been said that the Baconian philosophy which revolutionized modern thought, knocked at the door of learning for two hundred years before gaining admission or recognition. Journalism which has