compass in which it can be made
perspicuous and telling, to beat it out thin, and make it cover as much
ground as possible. This, also, is vanity. In the economy of room, which
our journals will more and more be compelled to cultivate, I venture to
say that this tradition will be set aside. I think that we may fairly
claim a superiority in our journals over the English dailies in our habit
of making brief, pointed editorial paragraphs. They are the life of the
editorial page. A cultivation of these until they are as finished and
pregnant as the paragraphs of "The London Spectator" and "The New-York
Nation," the printing of long editorials only when the elucidation of a
subject demands length, and the use of the space thus saved for more
interesting reading, is probably the line of our editorial evolution.

To continue the comparison of our journals as a class, with the English
as a class, ours are more lively, also more flippant, and less restrained
by a sense of responsibility or by the laws of libel. We furnish, now and
again, as good editorial writing for its purpose; but it commonly lacks
the dignity, the thoroughness, the wide sweep and knowledge, that
characterizes the best English discussion of political and social topics.

The third department of the newspaper is that of miscellaneous
reading-matter. Whether this is the survival of the period when the paper
contained little else except "selections," and other printed matter was
scarce, or whether it is only the beginning of a development that shall
supply the public nearly all its literature, I do not know. Far as our
newspapers have already gone in this direction, I am inclined to think
that in their evolution they must drop this adjunct, and print simply the
news of the day. Some of the leading journals of the world already do
this.

In America I am sure the papers are printing too much miscellaneous
reading. The perusal of this smattering of everything, these scraps of
information and snatches of literature, this infinite variety and medley,
in which no subject is adequately treated, is distracting and
debilitating to the mind. It prevents the reading of anything in full,
and its satisfactory assimilation. It is said that the majority of
Americans read nothing except the paper. If they read that thoroughly,
they have time for nothing else. What is its reader to do when his
journal thrusts upon him every day the amount contained in a fair-sized
duodecimo vol