. Some writers have asserted that
news sheets were in circulation in England at all events so early as the
middle of the fifteenth century, but as their assertions rest upon no
very trustworthy basis, they must be at once thrown aside. It is to
Italy that we must again turn for the reappearance of the newspaper. It
was in 1536, or thereabouts, that the Venetian magistracy caused
accounts of the progress of the war which they were waging against
Suleiman II, in Dalmatia, to be written and read aloud to the people in
different parts of the city. The news sheet appeared once a month, and
was called _Gazetta_, deriving its name, probably, from a coin so
called, of the value of something less than a cent, either because that
was the price of the sheet, or the sum paid for reading it, or for
having it read. There are thirty volumes of this MS. newspaper preserved
in the Maggliabecchi Library at Florence, and there are also some in the
British Museum, the earliest date of which is 1570. Printed news
letters, with date and number, but not so deserving of the title of
newspaper, began to appear about the same time in Germany. They were
called _Relations_, and were published at Augsburg and Vienna in 1524,
at Ratisbon in 1528, Dollingen in 1569, and Nuremberg in 1571. The first
regular German newspaper appeared at Frankfort, and was entitled
_Frankfurter Oberpostamtszeitung_, in 1615. The first French was brought
out by Renaudot, a physician, in 1632. The first Russian paper came out
under the auspices of Peter the Great, in 1703, and was styled the _St.
Petersburg Gazette_. Spain did not enter the lists until a year later,
and the _Gazeta de Madrid_ was born in 1704. It could not have been
worth much as a newspaper, inasmuch as the defeat off Cape St. Vincent
did not appear in its columns until four weeks after it had taken place.

There must have been some sort of news sheets in existence in England
about the same time as the Venetian _Gazetta_, for in the thirty-sixth
year of King Henry VIII, the following proclamation appeared:

'The King's most excellent Majestie, understanding that certain
light persones, not regarding what they reported, wrote, or sett
forth, had caused to be ymprinted and divulged certaine newes of
the prosperous successes of the King's Majestie's army in Scotland,
wherein, although the effect of the victory was indeed true, yet
the circumstances in divers points were, in som