The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-20
rApI,Y NEWsPAPERs.

The germ of newspapers is found Tn ancient Rome That government, some two centuries previous to the Christian
 era is known to have promulgated US
 edicts by means of written papers at-
 fixed to pillars. Nor was there much
 difference between the style of these acta diudnia, as they were termed, ana that which now prevails, further than
 that the former was more brlef ana
 simple, and deficient in introductory
 phrases and the editorial we. They
 generally gave the news or occurrence
 in simple indicative sentences, without
 introduction or comment of any klnd'
 Most of these acta which have been
 preserved. are found to mention but
 one or two events. They are headed
 with the date in Roman fashion. and
 the name of the then Consul, and par
 agraphs such as the following formed
 the staple: Tt thundered, and an oak
 was struck with lightning on that
 part of oMunt Palatine called Summa Velia,e arly the afternoon" "Murena,
 the Consul sacrificed early In the
 morning at the Temple of Castor and
 Pollux, and afterwards assembled the
 Senate in Pompey's Senate-house.'
 "C. Caesar set out for his government
 in Farther Spain, having long been de-
 tained by, his creditors" G) It will be
 observed. too, that as these announce
 ments were made at a central part of
 the city, only those persons who mad
 leisure to go thither were able to avail
 themselves of the intelligence in its au- thentic form; so that the untility of
 such papers must have been very nar-
 row and confined.
 It is hardly possible for us now, with all the lights of science around, and the shoals of newspapers with which we are supplied, to form proper mo- tion of the darkness which, for want of these. involved the masses of the pao- ple for many centuries after the fall of the Roman empire. We are told that the Crusaders were so ignorant of geo.
 praphy. that at every town they ap-
 nroached in central Europe they in
 ouired if it were Jerusalem. When they at length reached their destination, their exploits would have remained ur-
 known for years to their relatives and friends at home had not at times some few struggling pilgrims found their
 wav hack to the West. Even bad news in those days could not, contrary to the proverb, travel fast. Every little community must then have lived much within itself. Their own town, or at most county, would be the limit of their little world.
 It was not until the sixteenth cen- tury that anything at all approaching even to the scanty Roman acta diurnia can be found to have revived in the modern world The war which the Ve-
 netian republic waged against the
 Turks gave rise in 1868 to the custom of communicating the military and commercial information in Venice by written sheets, notizie scritce, to be read in a particular place to those de- l serious of hearing the news, who paid for this privilege with coin no longer | in use, called gazzetta, a name which came in time to be applied to the news sheet itself both in Italy and France, and subsequently, in England, when this mode of mparting news came into use. The Venetian government eventu- ally gave these announcements in a
 regular manner once month, but they
 were too jealous to allow them to be printed. Only a few written copies were | transmitted to such as subscribed and paid for them. Thirty volumes of these