Grand River times. [volume] (Grand Haven, Mich.) 1851-18??, 1855-10-31
LNFL UENCE OF THE PRESS.


Mr.. Everett, in his admirable grafton at
Dorchester on the 4th ofJuly, pays the follow
ing tribute to the great Importance, power
and influence of an independent press:
1t is impossible fully to comprehend the i'm
portance of the work which was accomplished
in the colonization of America, without re-
garding it as part of the great plan of Provi-
dence, in disposing the time and circumstan-
ces of the discovery Of our continent; hidden
as it was till the end of the fifteenth century
from the rest of the world. This thought was
brought SO forcibly to my mind a few years
since by circumstance personal to myself,
that | think you will pardon me for alluding
to it, though in itself Of a trihing domestic
character. In the year 1841, occupied with
my family the Villa Careggi near Florence,
mansion once, as its name imports, Caro-
regia,) a princely residence, belonging to the
Grand Duke of Tuscany, but of late years
private property and occasionally leased to
travellers. Half fortress, half palace, it was
by Cosmo dc Medici in 1444, nine years
before the capture of Constantinople by the
Ottomans in 1853. BY that appalling event,
a barbarous race (which had issued from the
depths Of Asia some centuries before, and had
engrafted the Mehometan imposture on the
primitive stock of Tartarian paganism,) had
stormed the last stronghold Of the ancient
civilization, the metropolis Of the Greek En-
pire, and established the religion of the Ko-
ran at the heart of of the old world.
Had no great event occurred to renov-
ate the civilization of the West, it is not easy
TO imagine what might have been at this day
the condition of Christendom. Even as it
was, the Sultan was for two centuries forward
the strongest military power in the world
the scourge and the terror Of the Mediterrane-
an, and the master of some of the finest PROV
inces Of Eastern Europe.
But the first germ of revival sprung from
the ruins of the old civilization. A
host Of learned an ingenious men, Christi
an scholars-fled from the edge of the Turk
ish scimeter and took refuge in Italy. They
were received with hospitality there and espec-
tally by the merchant princes of Florence.
The Platonic Academy was established in
the arcades Of the Villa Carregi---a great
intellectual restoration took place in Italy and
spread rapidly to the west of Europe-where
precisely at the same time the art of printing,
(after slowly struggling through successive
stages Of improvement in the cities of the
Netherlands and the Rhine burst upon the
world in state Of perfection not surpassed
at the present day. The stores of learning
and thought accumulated by the mind OF
antiquity were thrown open to the world.
The modern Bar and Senate were not yet
created, philosophy, stammered in the jargon
Of the schools; but Cicero and Demosthenes,
and Plato slept forth from the dusty alcoves
of Monkish Libraries. The pulpit of st.
Chryssostom was hushed, but Moses and the
prophets, the Evangelists and the Apostles
rose, If may venture to say so, as from the
dead.
The first book ever published with date
appeared in 1855, just four centuries ago this
year, and in l462, nine years only after the
Koran began to be read at Constantinople,
the Bible went forth on the wings of the
press to the four quarters of the world. Ma
homet the second had struck down the last
Christian emperor, but Faust, Scheffer, and
Gutenberg, the Strasburg printers, aimed
a deadlier blow at Mahomet the first, his
code of barbarism, and all the hosts of politi-
cal and spiritual darkness throughout the
world. The walls of Byzantium spouting
torrents ofunquenchable flame had crumbled
but the mind of the world rallied TO the new