as nothing he did not wish to know; and no one
excelled him in the ability to communicate what he found out to the
average mind. He came as near as anybody ever did to marrying common
sense to literature: he had it in him to make it sufficient for
journalistic purposes. He was what somebody said Carlyle was, and what
the American editor ought to be,--a vernacular man.

The assertion has been made recently, publicly, and with evidence
adduced, that the American newspaper is the best in the world. It is like
the assertion that the American government is the best in the world; no
doubt it is, for the American people.

Judged by broad standards, it may safely be admitted that the American
newspaper is susceptible of some improvement, and that it has something
to learn from the journals of other nations. We shall be better employed
in correcting its weaknesses than in complacently contemplating its
excellences.

Let us examine it in its three departments already named,--its news,
editorials, and miscellaneous reading-matter.

In particularity and comprehensiveness of news-collecting, it may be
admitted that the American newspapers for a time led the world. I mean in
the picking-up of local intelligence, and the use of the telegraph to
make it general. And with this arose the odd notion that news is made
important by the mere fact of its rapid transmission over the wire. The
English journals followed, speedily overtook, and some of the wealthier
ones perhaps surpassed, the American in the use of the telegraph, and in
the presentation of some sorts of local news; not of casualties, and
small city and neighborhood events, and social gossip (until very
recently), but certainly in the business of the law courts, and the
crimes and mishaps that come within police and legal supervision. The
leading papers of the German press, though strong in correspondence and
in discussion of affairs, are far less comprehensive in their news than
the American or the English. The French journals, we are accustomed to
say, are not newspapers at all. And this is true as we use the word.
Until recently, nothing has been of importance to the Frenchman except
himself; and what happened outside of France, not directly affecting his
glory, his profit, or his pleasure, did not interest him: hence, one
could nowhere so securely intrench himself against the news of the world
as behind the barricade of the Paris journals. But let us not make a
mistake in