The Atherstone, Nuneaton, and Warwickshire Times. — 1883-12-15 (Atherstone, Warwickshire, England)

BUM.]  A Birmingham evening paper, after the Radical persuasion of politics, and unblushingly attached to a school of sensationalism, happily seldom approached in English journalism, and being one of the papers to which I referred last week as devoting almost, three of its columns to a Royal visit to Birmingham, published last week among other atrocious items, exhaustive accounts of some demoralising Scotch divorse case tried at the Courts of Edinburgh. The primary use of newspapers is here evidently giving place to a style of low and uncooth pandering to the uneducated tastes of the poor despised British workman ; a stile, with which I in common doubtless with many others have not the merest sympathy or regard for. This " dreadful " school in journalism cannot. possibly have any other than the most disastrous effects on the morals of the people, producing the most morbid influences on a ! class only too prone to be carried away by such degrading operations. The effect on journalism too must be a sorry one: and this is the kind of paper which professes to be the organ of the working man. I hope and believe the working men are ashamed of them, if not they ought to be. • •  Quite as bad are those illustrated sheets filled with the most disgusting police cases. Thus men make capital out of the morbid curiosity of the lower classes, who look with delight upon a man depicted in the act of killing his wife, or a drawing of the house in which was committed some foul deed. In these vilely illustrated sheets we have a collection of the worst details of the Police Court cases, which respectable journals would not print. Can we wonder then that some weak-minded men, seeing illustrations and reading descriptions of murders, in all their disgusting details, sometimes imitate the crimes, and that such deeds follow so quickly upon each other. •_•  Not long ago I was in conversation with a French gentleman friend, and we were arguing upon the immorality of the French press in general, and their illustrated productions in particular. Of course he defended his countrymen, and did not admit that they were any blacker than we were. Finally he remarked, "Well, you are at liberty to hold what opinion you please about our literature, but you cannot deny that we have not such disgusting things in France as you permit to be published—illustrating murders, suicides, burglaries, and other crimes." I was obliged to make the humiliating confession that he was right.  Such papers as the one I have adverted to, besides emulating the illustrated sheets I have mentioned, in their accounts of horrors, calculated to arouse prurient curiosity, devote other portions of their issues to attacks more or less violent upon the Royal Family, the Government, or any personage, who by his honesty or his talents, has raised himself to a position in the estimation of the public which the writer of the abuse can never hope to occupy. It is a source of congratulation that our Royal Family is so well beloved by the people, and our public men so distinguished by their rectitude, as to be able to laugh to scorn, and treat with the contempt they deserve, the futile attempts of these socalled men of literature to pitch mud.  Old John Lyly—the Euphnist Lyly—in an exquisite song, tells us— Cupid and my Campaspe played (At cards for kisses—Cupid payed.) Instead of playing at cards for kisses, our modern would-be Cupids steal them, but nevertheless do they have to pay. I have