The Atlantic Monthly | Page 9

and the silent solemnities of life? The newspapers are marvels of mental industry. They show how much work can be done in a day, but they never last more than a day. Sad will it be when the genius of ephemerality has invaded all departments of human actions and human motives! Farewell then to deep thoughts, to sublime self-sacrifice, to heroic labors for lasting results! Time is turned into a day, the mind knows only momentary impressions, the weary way of art is made as short as a turnpike, and the products of genius last only about as long as any mood of the weather. Bleak and changeable March will rule the year in the intellectual heavens.
What symbol could represent this matchless embodiment of all the activities, this tremendous success, this frenzied public interest? A monster so large, and yet so quick,--so much bulk combined with so much readiness,--reaching so far, and yet striking so often! Who can conceive that productive state of mind in which some current fact is all the time whirling the universe about it? Who can understand the mania of the leader-writer, who never thinks of a subject without discovering the possibility of a column concerning it,--who never looks upon his plate of soup without mentally reviewing in elaborate periods the whole vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms?
But what is the advantage of newspapers? Forsooth, popular intelligence. The newspaper is, in the first place, the legitimate and improved successor of the fiery cross, beacon-light, signal-smoking summit, hieroglyphic mark, and bulletin-board. It is, in addition to this, a popular daily edition and application of the works of Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Lord Bacon, Vattel, and Thomas Jefferson. On one page it records items, on the other it shows the relations between those items and the highest thought. Yet the whole circle is accomplished daily. The journal is thus the synopticized, personified, incarnate madness of the day,--for to-day is always mad, and becomes a thing of reason only when it becomes yesterday. A proper historical fact is one of the rarest shots in the journalist's bag, as time is sure to prove. If we had newspaper-accounts of the age of Augustus, the chances are that no other epoch in history would be so absolutely problematical, and Augustus himself would be lucky, if he were not resolved into a myth, and the journal into sibylline oracles. The dissertational department is equally faulty; for to first impressions everything on earth is chameleon-like. The Scandinavian Divinities, the Past, the Present, and the Future, could look upon each other, but neither of them upon herself. But in the journal the Present is trying to behold itself; the same priestess utters and explains the oracle. Thus the journal is the immortal reproduction of the jour des dupes. The editors are like the newsboys, shouting the news which they do not understand.
The public mind has given itself up to it. It claims the right to pronounce all the newspapers very bad, but has renounced the privilege of not reading them. Every one is made particeps criminis in the course of events. Nothing takes place in any quarter of the globe without our assistance. We have to connive at omne scibile. About everything natural and human, infernal and divine, there is a general consultation of mankind, and we are all made responsible for the result. Yet this constant interruption of our private intellectual habits and interests is both an impertinence and a nuisance. Why send us all the crudities? Why call upon us till you know what you want? Why speak till you have got your brain and your mouth clear? Why may we not take the universe for granted when we get up in the morning, instead of proceeding directly to measure it over again? Once a year is often enough for anybody but the government to hear anything about India, China, Patagonia, and the other flaps and coat-tails of the world. Let the North Pole never be mentioned again till we can melt the icebergs by a burning mirror before we start. Don't report another asteroid till the number reaches a thousand; that will be time enough for us to change our peg. Let us hear nothing of the small speeches, but Congress may publish once a week a bulletin of what it has done. The President and Cabinet may publish a bulletin, not to exceed five lines, twice a week, or on rare occasions and in a public emergency once a day. The right, however, shall be reserved to the people to prohibit the Cabinet from saying anything more aloud on a particular public question, till they have settled it. Let no mail-steamer pass between here and Europe oftener than once a month,--let all other steamers be forbidden to bring news, and the