The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1858-11-25
The N Newspaper.

: The Hon. Caleb CuShlng, OF MaSsachu-
setts, delivered an Grafton before the United
States Agricultural Society, at Richmond,
Va, Thursday, October 28th. We select
from it the following short extract in refer
erence to the newspaper, as an illustration
of the intellectual activity of the age in
which we live:
" Most wonderful, say, is the intellec-
tual and social activity and efficiency of
our times. We perceive it in the teeming
earth, in the crowded city, on the burdened
sea we perceive it in the increased pro-
ductions of society and its fixed monument;
we perceive it in our colleges and schools,
in the debates of the legislative assembly,
the court, the hustings, the pulpit and the
lecture room we perceive in that unim-
agiuable fecandity of human thought of
which printing is the prompter, the minister
and the propagator.
sfTake, as exhibitor, and at the same
time as illustration OF this fact-take that
familiar thing, newspaper, rare luxury
of the rich once, now the necessary of uni
yarsal daily life--of the mental life of men
as much as food and drink are of the
physical life. How various are the con-
tents of that diurnal sheet-how extensive
is the knowledge it imparts--how vast is
the field of its action and its usefulness
Whatever wants there maybe in the human
breast, it shows how they may be satisfied.
If it be, as Cewper says, Z" the herald of a
noisy world with
News from all nations numbering at its back
SO it is the silent monitor of the erring, the
solace of the sorrowful, the companion of
the solitary, and the messenger to all of
thought and reflection. When Shakespeare,
with not unlaudable estimation of his own
art said Of playing" whose end, both at
the first and now, was, as is, to hold, as
twere, the mirror up to nature, to show vir-
tue her own feature, scorn his own image,
and the very age and body of the time its
form and pressure how faliciously, though
unknowingly, did he not represent the uses
| of the newspaper press at the present time !
Faults it has in ample number and degree,
undoubtedly for whatever men do, in their
highest as well as their lowest works, testi-
fes to the imperfections of our natures; and
the press with its very short comings, is in
deed the very mirror of the passing day, and,
of course, with its wisdom and its folly, its
virtues and its vices, and all there is of blend
ed good and evil, of Ormuzd and of Ahfi-
man, in the ways of the world. And how
the steam engine and the rail car and the
| ocean ship, and the telegraph, conspired to
accumulate and to diffuse the mass of intel
hgence in the newspaper sheet Let us add
| as another sign of the advanced state of our
| society, that the knowledge and scholarship
| manifested in the callings of the higher class
| of the newspaper press, whether i'll Europe
or America, are equal now to the famous
| literary authorship of other times. What a
reputation was attained by Junius on ac-
count of few newspaper articles in the
| London Public AdUertiSeri And yet many
a leading column of the better journals Of
England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy
and the United States, comes before us, day
by day, and passes off without our special
note, and with no individual fame TO its arl-
thor, though it be higher in composition
and purer in spirit than isanything from the
| hand of Junius.