To the violence and personal spitefulness of their newspaper articles
we have fortunately nothing comparable, even in the speeches of
Honorable Members on Helper and John Brown. The "_Tu quoque_" and the
"_Vos damnamini_" were their favorite logical processes, and "Fool" and
"Liar" the simple and conclusive arguments with which they established
a principle. Not that these ancients suffered at all from a lack of
stirring news. Bonaparte's wonderful campaigns, (Austerlitz had just
been heard of in New York,) the outrages on our sailors by English
cruisers, our merchantmen plundered by French and Spanish privateers,
the irritating behavior of the Dons in Louisiana, kept them abundantly
supplied with this staff of mental life. But they did not care much for
news in the abstract as news, unless they could work it up into
political ammunition and discharge it at each other's heads. We must
not forget, too, that newspaper-editing, the "California of the
spiritually vagabond," as Carlyle calls it, was a recent discovery, and
that the rich mine was but surface-worked. "Our own Reporter" was, like
Milton's original lion, only half unearthed; and deep hidden from
mortal eyes as yet lay the sensation-items-man, who has made the
last-dying-speech-and-confession style of literature the principal
element of our daily press.
Pages:
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226