of sensitiveness that may remain to
him after a youth about which the only thing certain is its complete
obscurity, in order that no hint may be sufficiently broad to fit
in with the tolerant breadth of his impudence, and no affront
sufficiently pointed to pierce the skin with which Nature and his
own industry have furnished him. Literary culture must be eschewed,
for with literary culture come taste and discrimination--qualities
which might fatally obstruct the path of this journalistic aspirant.
For it must be assumed that in some of its later developments
journalism has entirely cast off the reticence and the modesty which
successive generations of censors have constantly held to have been
characteristic of an age that is past. Indeed, while it is established
that in 1850 the critics of the day fixed their thoughts with pleasure
on the early years of the century, though they found nothing but abuse
for the journalism of their own time, it is curious to note that many
of those who hurl the shafts of ridicule and contempt at the present
period have only words of praise for 1850. Without, however, going so
far as these stern descendants of CATO, it may be affirmed that the
porpoise-hided Jack of all Journalisms, as we know him, never had
a greater power, nor exercised it over a larger scope with smaller
scruple than to-day.

It has been already said that the youth of the Jack of all Journalisms
is lost in obscurity. It is obvious that he cannot have acquired his
readiness of pen without much practice, but where the practice was
obtained is a puzzle to which each of his enemies has a different key.
Some say of him that he spent a year or two at a University, where
he was noted for the unfailing regularity with which he sought the
society of the wealthy, imbibed strong drinks, and omitted to pay
his debts. It is also alleged that he started a colourable University
imitation of the journal which happened at that particular time to be
the most highly coloured in London, and that, after struggling through
two numbers of convulsive scurrility, the infant effort withered under
the frown of the Authorities, who at the same time sent its founder
down. Others, however, declare him to have been the offspring of a
decayed purveyor of spurious racing intelligence, who naturally sent
his son to shift for himself after he had lost his last shirt in
betting against one of his own prophecies. Others again aver, and
probably with equal