The Nevada journal., 1861-04-05

DEGRADATION OF GENIUS IN NEWSPAPER
rRIrIyc.-The press, which was the pantheon
Of great minds, is now occupied as market
place for small thoughts. The newspaper man
become, hack thinker and loose writer; he
is stabbed in a printing Office, and brought Out
to do so much thinking and no more lie is
race-horss between the shafts of IN omnibus
His life is no longer the poets life; 1t has no
longer the varieties of vicssitude nor the pleas
ures of want: his mind never feels the poet
,yearuing to produce, for constant sweating
keeps down its rental vigor; it shows meagre
and bodily poor, for it is MIXED every night
and morning. He knows that his work is
meant to be read in a minute and forgotten IN
day, so he writes by the hour and is PAID by the
week; his brain is never ridden by a craving
stomach nor goaded by reckless passion
This hopeless regularity Of mind and body des-
troy. all the spasmodic action of genius; so
that, debilitated in style, confined in the exer-
ci,e of all the muscle and nerves of the thought
his stall -fattened soul resigns itself to loss of
freedom, scope and enterprise.
"Jerrold was emerging from obscurity as a
dramatst; he had leaped from the lowest thea
tire in London to the highest, when newspaper
literature began to assert its great influence
upon the progress of reform and began to rock
the cradle of liberty. The press was sensibly
becoming power where previously it had only
been an indueuce. Literary men beheld with
hope and pride this engine by means Of which
they were to WELD scepter more powerful than
that of the Caesars, but they did not see that 1t
would involve personal sacrifice of greatness,
of fame, of immortality; that the aristocracy OF
minds must be destroyed, and thorough de-
mocracy established that forbade one mind to
be greater than another. This has been the re-
suit.
The extension of education to the masses
had called into existence millions of readers of
mean perception and poor taste. Mingled with
the educated classes, this accession brought
down the standard of literary effort to the level
of the average mind of the new reading public.
Jerrold was philosopher, and husband with
a large family. This earnest creature loved OF
all things TO walk beside the working man, and
give him as much of his mind he could
The newspaper enabled him to indulge the phil
osopher. As husband with large family,
the newspaper enabled him to earn a weekly in
come, thus supplying all his wants. He might
have been a great mamie was satisfied with
being happy ono. Had Goldsmith and Swift
lived in these tirnes, the Vicar of Wakefield
would have dwindled into a London Times cor
rcrpondence, and 'Gulliver's Travels would
have been let off in squibs to fz and sparkle
through year of weeks in Punch.-Tribune
ARrENUs WARD AND THE SHAKER ELDER.-
Whom Artemus visited the Shakers, he met ons
Of the Elders and opened conversation with
him, which he thus reports:
"Elder, spect?" sed I.
"Yay," he sed.
"Helth's good, reckon?"
"Yay."
Whats the wages of Elder, when he un,
derstands his bizncss--or do you devote your
sarvice. gratooitous?"
"Yay."
"If the storm eontinners there1l be q mess
unerfoOt, hay7"
"Yay."
"If may be so bold, kind sir, what's the
price of that pscoolcr kind of weskit you wear,
incloodin' trimmins!"
.Yay"
Ipawsed mint, and then, thinkin' I'd be
faseshus with him and see how that would 60
,lapt him on the shoulder, burst into a harty
larf, and told him that as yayer he had no liv'
iu' skal.
He jumpt up as if bilin' water had beer
souirted into his ears, groaned, rolled his eyes
an ,o,d. tb. sealin' and sed: you're a man oi
ain" He then walkt out of the room.