en debated with greater heat and passion
than the bitterest political disputes, and with a lamentable disregard
of logic and common sense, are now-a-days treated with a candor and
fairness that has never yet characterized them. The press is, in fact,
the great physician of the mind, whose duty it is to impart a healthy
tone to the inner nature of man, to check the ravages of disease in it,
and, wherever it may imagine any traces of poison to lurk, to administer
a prompt and immediate antidote. It may not always and at once prosper
in its endeavors. Wrong-doing may still, in some cases, prove too
strong, vices may have become inveterate, diseases chronic, and the
poison may have been too completely absorbed. But not, therefore, is the
press discouraged: like Robert Bruce's spider, it returns again and
again to its task, and--success does and must crown it in the end.

But while faithfully performing these lofty duties, in the discharge of
which it employs the trained minds and practised pens of the greatest
literary talent of the time, the press has other functions, which, if
not of such paramount importance, yet possess no small utility and
value. By no means the least of these is that of merely furnishing the
news of the day; and that this was the primary intention of the
newspaper its very name proves. Comment, argument, and reasoning were
after additions. There are thousands of persons at the present day even,
who patronize a newspaper solely for its news, and who do not trouble
their heads about any other portion of its contents. The births,
marriages, and deaths are eagerly perused by many who expect to meet in
that domestic chronicle with the names of their friends and
acquaintances. The court news and the movements of royalty and the upper
ten thousand have great charms for a large section of the community.
Accidents and offences and sensation headings, such as 'horrible
murder,' 'melancholy suicide,' 'terrific explosion,' 'fatal shipwreck,'
'awful railway collision,' and the like, have powerful attractions for
that class which is--alas for human nature!--only too numerous, and
which likes to sup full of horrors--in print. In the same category with
these may be placed police news, and the proceedings in the divorce
court, the full reports of which are a blemish from which not even the
greatest of English journals are free. There have been found able and
honest men to defend these reports on the ground of the 'inte