The Sun.
London, England, 1846-03-02 00:00:00

DOUGLAS JERROLD'S.

Although Juniper Hedgehog is silent during March,
and although the editor's excellent story of " St. Giles
and St. James" is again postponed, this number is equal
in other respects to any of its predecessors. First and
foremost, " The History for Young England" is once
more introduced, and brings us to the reign of John
" Lackland," with its usual epigrammatic style of narra-
tive. "A Plea for our Climate" is good—thoroughly
good ; it is sagacious, well-toned, and novel in every
pafticular. We would transcribe it entire, did space
permit—here, however, is its conclusion :
"By our ability to remain out of doors, without risk or in-
convenience, more hours per day and more days per year in
England than in almost any other country—bv our exemp-
tion from whirlwinds, tornadoes, earthquakes, siroccoes,
simoens—by our escape from seasons of ceaseless rain, cease-
less heat, ceaseless cold—by our longer and more healthy
lives—by the heroes and heroines whom our skies have bent
over=by the harmless glories of our majestic woods, the rich
greenery of our fields— by the fruits we eat, the flowers we
smell, the birds we hear, the beasts we have and the beasts we
have not, and the inoffensive reptiles we possess, and the offen-
sive reptileswe do not—by all these considerations on all these
grounds, I call upon the reader, even though al easterly
draught be chilling him, or a London fog be blinding him,
or a sudden rattling shower be destroying his hopes of a
pleasant walk before dinner, to bear thore little inflictions in
good humour, to look upon them in the light of slight
drawbacks to the general excellence, the general healthful-
ness of the climate of Great Britain."
" The Masquerade of Society," " A Plea for the
World belew Stairs," " Old Misery the Miser," the
" Uses of Fools," and other contributions, are brim-
ming over with a shrewd knowledge of mankind, and an
ardent longing for the regeneration of all classes— a
spirit which is so• admirably and unaffectedly incorpo-
rated with this periodical. A paper entitled " The Press
and the People," is too meagre for a theme so immense
and important. We cannot convey our sentiments upon
this subject better than by quoting some opinions of our
own, recently published elsewhere, upon
" THE NEWSPAPER PRESS OF ENGLAND.
" The magazines, the reviews, the serial romances,
and the prodigions hulk of newspapers, form at once the
chronicle and the phenomenon of our own immediate
times. Through their medium, the doctrines of our
thinkers are promulgated throughout the world, and
obtain the widest circulation. Through them, very
frequently, a mind is awakened to its destined impulse,
as-with a flash of electricity, at the beck of the wand of
that invisible, but potent and terrible magician—the
press—that mighty engine, whose silent but indomitable
voice penetrates the uttermost limits of the globe, vivi-
fying with its inexorable eldquence the germs of inte-
grity and independence; at one moment branding some
petty charlatan with its playful but irksome scorn ;
at another, warning a despot in some distant laud
of the epoch of his doom. Much, indeed, would our
predecessors marvel at the vigour, the copiousness, the
diffusion, and the inexhaustible energies of this new
creation. Summoned into being by man's instinctive
thirst for regeneration, the press is simultaneously sus-
tained by, and sustaining, the liberty of intellect and
action—it is at once the tyrant and the embodnitent of
republicanism, the tyrantover individual domination, the
fosterer of universal freedom. With its emissaries ever
on the alert, and scattered throughout the various terri-
tories of the earth, stimulated to novel exertions by an
ever present spirit of competition, roused into new de-
velopment by the ceaseless alterations of society, the
press, as a monitor of the populace, is ever increasing
ih its influence, and strengthening in its strength. But
that such should be the case cannot create astonishment,
when it is remembered that its vitals are the amass-
ment of many thousand minds—that it stands forth
the representative of human intelligence—that it
is the creature of the logiAan, the analyst,
the politician, and the philosopher. Occasionally,
without question, this being rebels against its own
creator, as in the instance of America, where, nourished
in its malice by the moral turpitude of the social system,
and given up to the most-'licentious. abandonment, it
pollutes the commonwealth by its baleful presence, and
rules it only as a very demon would. There, a great
nation is at length becoming conscious that, like another
Frankenstein, it has warmed into existence a creature of
hideous aspect and of horrible capacity—a monster which
now constitutes its greatest misery—one that, unless
annihilated, may ultimately prove its downfall. The
characteristic, however, which is most conspicuously
visible in the newspapers is that of their rapidity of giving
information ; nothing is more significant of the present
age than this quality in our daily literature.
A volume, yet damp from the pressure of the
type, is elaborately dissected on the very even-
ing after publication; before a bandage is yet
adjusted over a broken limb at the hospital, the accident
is detailed in every journal ; while the actress is still
engaged in removing the rouge from her countenance,
A criticism on her performance is being set up' by the
compositor ; the orator at a public assembly, on resuming
his seat, has the first portion of his, address thrust into
his hands already printed, with the intimation left
speaking,' at its conclusion. These circumstances would
have savoured of black-magic to our progenitors ; but
society has become habituated to their recurrence, and
no longer regards them as miraculous. For our own
part, however, we never perceive the broad-sheets of our
newspapers, yet reeking from their passage through the
labyrinth of the printing-machine, without an internal
exclamation of, 'Honour' to the Press !" Honour to the
manes of Guttenberg l'"
The foregoing is some slight exposition of the marvel
so mincingly treated upon in the present number of
Jerrold's Magazine. A " Winter Scene," by J. Scholes,
is an exquisite piece of blank verse, which lack of space
alone prevents us from reprinting. Most of the other
articles are of value, and the whole collection is worthy
of its editor's supervision.