Daily national Democrat., 1859-01-13
Daily 3latlonal Democrat.

WHAT A FREYcnMAN THINKS OF THE AMERI-
CAN PREss.-A Philadelphia correspondent of
the Paris journal L'Avenir, gives, in a letter
to that journal, his impressions of the Ameri.
can press, and especially of the personal ad-
vertisements of the New York Herald, under
the caption of The Yankees in Roloe do
| Chambre':
MIR. EDToR:-If there is anything pro.
gressive in America-and by America we
proudly mean here the United States-it ia
certainly the periodical press of every kind
You can hardly imagine on the other side of
the Atlantic, the formidable quantity of pa
per transported by the mails or sold in the
streets. There is not little city or town or
village that has not the pretensions to tell to
the universe, through its journal, the decis-
ions rendered 10y its Esquire and the arrests
made by its policeman, when he does make
any-a very rare thing. Everything is made
public. Every lawyer or doctor that wants
to get business, every sectarian that invents
new mode of adorning God and of robbing
his proselytes, every charlatan that feels the
need of producing his humbugs and exhibit
ing his cap-trap, has his paper. Barnum
has two of them. The difficulty is not in
getting thing inserted in a newspaper, but
getting readers for 1.-THE creating posi-
ton for it in this general melee 1t is then
that the Yankee imagination breaks out in
a sublime fashion so that it is the classic
land of putting. 1t assumes all forms-the
most vulgar as well as the most eccentric. 1t
must attract attention, and be read This
people of traffickers care little for politics.
1t requires advertisements and so these cover
NH, e HaaI
advertiser strives to give prominence to his
own announcement to the medley of publ
cation. | recolect at the time of the Cri-
mean war--whist all the aspirations of the
Yankees were for Russia, neither logical nor
honorable for them, as | think-advertise-
ments generally commenced thus: "Sebasto-
pol taken !" or "Sebastopol not takenP You
stripped over a score of lines to ret quickly
mt the stirring news, and found that even if
Sebastopol was not taken, Mr.. Goodyear
nevertheless continued to sell vulcanized in.
dia rubber suspenders, calculated to remove,
after some months wear, by the effect of the
electricity, the largest and the most annoy
ing protuberances.
To the American journalist everything is
go9d to fill up their columns-the most pro
yoking scandals, the most improbable stories,
! the most repugnant private revelations. A
distinguished writer has said that this people
has no moral sense That is particularly true
in the newspaper press Fenimore Cooper
and Charles Dickens have each attacked the
dscreditable blackmaiing system exercised
by those sheets that exist in the lower depths
of the newspaper world. The newspaper is
the life of the United States citizen. 1t
serves him for everything, is good for every
thing, stands to him in lieu of everything
In it he writes to his wife, to his friends, to
his children, to his creditors, to his mistress
In 1t he gives an account of his money affairs
as well as of his love affairs, under a veil
more or less transparent. BE sure that if
two Yankees plant their wigwams in a gorge
of the Rocky Mountains, the one will be the
journalist of the other, who in his turn will
become the others banker, because the bank
er swarms as much as the journalist and the
daguerreotypist as much as both together.
| have no better amusement on Sunday-the
day when you are most prey to ennui in all
Protestant countres-than reading these Gu
rious communications, for which the newspa-
per acts as complaisant colporteur. am
collecting large number that have copied,
or rather cut ont, according to the established
custom here-a thing which gives to the
newspapers, perforated by thousands of open
ings, the appearance Of the house of that good
Counsellor Crerpel spoken of in Hoffman's
book, "Ihe Cremona Violin" Here follows
a number of specimen advertisements with q
piquant running commentary.