single enlightened citizen, without affability for the unfortunate, without regard for the national power?"

This language is unequivocal, and it was written, no doubt, before the fever occasioned by the famous scene in the Convention, when "A bas le tyran!" echoed from its walls, had subsided. But years of banishment softened his resentment for some of his republican colleagues, and about twenty years after he had written the passage above, we find him talking in this moderated style:

"The face of Robespierre, which was pitted with the smallpox, was formidably pale. The same mind which had traced in his parchment cheeks a sardonic and sometimes ferocious smile, gave his lips a convulsive agitation, and animated his eyes with a veiled fire, and a gloomy penetrating glance. His eloquence was always premeditated; his propositions appeared studied; and sometimes enigmatical, obscure and wearisome, from the tone of menace and political distrust. His mind was of a cold and strong cast, his voice was deep and sometimes terrifying; he was very careful in his dress, notwithstanding the manners of the times; but his gestures were often brusques, aud a little uncouth. His distrust of all the celebrated patriots, as well as of those who were only hypocrites in patriotism, was obvious in his conversation as in his speeches. Pride in the popularity which he enjoyed, was his distinguishing characteristic. Robespierre, with genuine, enlightened, and humane patriots, would have rendered great service to the cause of liberty: but he was only surrounded by those who were of the most exaggerated revolutionary ideas, and whose education among the lower classes of society was neither productive of wise views nor of good counsel. His fear and flattery had created for him a sort of guard comprised of ultra and exclusive revolutionary sbirri.”

In 1832 his feeling towards Robespierre became still more favourable. David paid him a visit, and told him he was going to execute the portraits of the most celebrated men of the revolution. Barère, hearing him mention the name of Danton, rose upright in his bed, where he had lain indisposed, and cried out, "Do not forget Robespierre! He was a man of purity and integrity: a true republican. It was his vanity, his irascible susceptibility, and his unjust distrust of his colleagues that destroyed him. That was a geat misfortune!"

These being the conflicting opinions of one man, who had the same premises to judge upon at the time he uttered every one of them, are of themselves sufficient to prove that it is yet an almost hopeless task to arrive at a true estimate of the heroes of the French Revolution. The private feelings of Barère speak at every page of his work, rather than his reason: and who that was an agent in that most exciting period could long speak from any other source? Works of this kind furnish hints, valuable it is true, but nothing more than hints, for the work of the future historian.

ART. XII.-The New York Herald:" Journal of Commerce: American Courier and Enquirer: Evening Post: and Atlas. 1842.

"

The Boston Daily Advertiser: and Atlas. 1842.

The Washington Intelligencer: and Globe.

The Louisville Gazette. 1842.

pivi- b sembereke

1842.

THERE is something very striking in the fact, which we believe to be indisputable, that the country which can boast of a greater expenditure of Paper and of Printing than any other in the world, is the country which can NOT boast of even an approach to a National Literature. All that is matter of trade in the literary art lives on the fat of the land in America. Every thing intellectual starves as it can.

Some circumstances lately directing us to the Newspaper Press of the United States, we found it an instructive illustration of this particular truth, and in many ways richly worth attention. It is curious how little is known of these newspapers, out of the republic itself; and of what singularly small account they are held in this country, in any discussions of the men or the measures in America. Every packet brings us a column or so of eccentricities and outrages, for the most part imported from the southern and western States: these are read with some wonder and much laughter, and there an end. They are never thought of again but as any thing else equally wild, ridiculous, and savage, is thought of: with the society, the manners, the civilization of America, no one dreams of connecting them. The city of Boston, "stronghold of American arts and letters" as a distinguished witness has called it lately, the city of New York, centre of American power and enterprise as all acknowledge it, how should they be mixed up with such unspeakable barbarisms?

It is never an agreeable task to dissipate errors of this kind, but always right and needful to say what is true. It is bad enough that men should talk like brutes or buffoons in Missouri, but this is language that in our opinion fails of its full disgust till it is heard in Massachusetts. It is horrible when a savage ruffian on the floor of the state legislature of Arkansas, furiously stabs an antagonist savage as himself; but it is far more horrible that civilized ruffians should be able deliberately to earn their bread, by murdering the fame of honourable men in Washington or New York. In a word, the more respectable the city in America, the more infamous, the more degrading and disgusting, we have found its Newspaper Press.

And have you nothing of this nearer home? it will be asked. Sorrowfully we answer that we have: but with a difference, and a large one. The papers of that class are very few with us, wholly restricted to London, and of no other or higher account than as part of the social dregs and moral filth which will deposit somewhere in so large a city. Since the stamp-office regulations checked the system of false returns, the circulation of these papers is proved to be miserably low: and that the writers fill their pages with slander of the estimable, whose virtues invite attack, is not more certain than that they fill their pockets with plunder of the weak, whose cowardice or conscience dreads it. We do not extenuate what is so deplorable; but it is known for what it is. It is a disease, and a rank one; but where it strikes it stops. The poison is nowhere in the system. When we speak with a just satisfaction of the Newspaper Literature of England, we know that no man dares to confound it with the literature of the London gambling-house or the London brothel. The degree of ability that enters into it may, with various thinkers, be matter of various dispute: but its writers are men of character and education; it has no ruffian vocabulary; the social charities and decencies are held sacred in it; with private life it wages no war; and whatever may be its prejudice be its prejudice or passion, it not unworthily represents a great and generous people.

On the other hand, what is it that first occurs to us when we turn to the Newspaper Press of America? If we wish to judge of popular taste by the paper in largest circulation, as in London we should ask for the Times, in New York we must ask for the Herald. This is a paper published daily, in size more than a single sheet of the Times, and about a penny in price. Within the last month it has boasted of a sale of nearly thirty thousand copies, and strange as it is to detect it in any thing approaching to a truth, there cannot in this be much exaggeration. It may be presumed, then, on a fair average to each copy, to have for its readers some hundred thousand citizens of the United States. "It circulates among all parties, all classes, all sects, all sexes." Its conductor is thus self-described and named in a very recent publication: "Owner, editor, proprietor, prophet, head man, head saint, head savan, or head devil, just as you please, J. G. Bennett."

Of the reported private conduct or character of this accommodating person, it is not our intention to speak. It does not interest us, nor would our readers care to know, how many times he has been called dog, spat upon, or beaten. Our business is with the broadsheet of lies and filth he daily issues to the public of the States: with the journal in largest circulation through the Union:

The Newspaper Literature of America.

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with the popular print in whose columns some fifty or a hundred thousand free Americans enjoy the daily freedom of taking part in the loathsome slander of the most respected of their fellowcitizens: with the organ of public opinion which stabs at all that is eminent in station, in sex defenceless, or claiming reverence in age: with the foul mass of positive obscenity, to which families that would not for morality's sake set foot within a theatre will gladly subscribe, being touched by the superior excellence of its commercial news: with the ready and impartial assailant of every American statesman who has pretension to honour, or merchant who can lay claim to honesty: with, in a word, the convicted libeller of all that is manly and decent in that country, from the Judge on the bench, to the Citizen in his private home-which is yet, at this moment, supposed to enjoy the special patronage and singular favour of the President of the United States.

To describe in any minute detail a publication of this nature, the reader will readily suppose to be something more than difficult; and to succeed in so describing it would be certainly less than pleasant. The quality of its writing seems to us at all times, and in all its departments, of the very lowest grade; and how Capt. Marryat, condemning the vile character of this print as became him, could possibly think it written in a very clever and very effective style, is to us incomprehensible.* There is a certain effect produced, beyond question, when a man calls you thief, scoundrel, or liar; and no cleanly person will be at all inclined to doubt the effect with which it may be quite possible to pelt him with filth as he passes along the streets: but there is in all this as manifest a defect on the side of cleverness as on that of cleanness. The weapons of the New York Herald are of this order in every case. There is only one word that can describe the tone of every original sentence that appears in its columns, and this word we must be excused for using. It is blackguardism. The law of the whole establishment is that; its profits have that sole source. To say any thing as it is said by decent men, to commit a single sentence of honesty in a tone of respectability, would be fatal to the Snake of Newspapers. When it seems on rare occasions to be lapsing that way, it has a habit of recovering

* The Political and Literary departments are seldom divided in these publications. You find their Literary, or Musical, or Theatrical reviews among their Political leaders: and these for the most part are brief, and in their way pointed. What follows is not an unfair specimen:

"NEW MUSIC.-' Woman,' a beautiful song, as sung by Mr. Braham with distinguished success, and respectfully dedicated to Mrs. James Gordon Bennett; the music composed by Alexander Lee. This is one of the sweetest songs recently published, and is printed on beautifully-perfumed paper. It can be got at 201, Broadway. Atwill is the greatest publisher in this city in his line. Music on perfumed paper is all the go now."

itself, before the sentence finishes, with astonishing ease. We know that the devil can quote scripture, and is understood to have commonly self-respect enough to do it gravely: but this "head devil" of the New York Herald, as he aptly calls himself, does not dare to put his infamy so far in peril as to venture on even that. He was defending the other day a miscreant wretch, who, in his capacity of minister to the principal church in Rochester, had contrived the ruin of an artless child, and consummated the guilt by an unsuccessful effort to charge it on his own nephew; he of this Herald, we say, fellow-ruffian, in discharge of his ordinary duty was defending this atrocious miscreant; when, bethinking him that there was something to the point in a Book commonly reverenced by all men, he proceeded thus: "We can safely say to the pious clergy, he that is without sin among ye, pick up the first brick and let fly at him.'

"No bad specimen this little extract, in itself, of a style and tone of Literature enjoyed with its highest relish in the bar-rooms of America; read, though let us hope with more moderate liking, in her drawing-rooms; studied and smiled at in her cabinet at Washington; spread daily before her attentive senators and representatives in Congress; and, on grounds too credible for rejection, the subject of the special patronage of her republican Chief-Magistrate. But this is a part of the subject we are not yet come to: desiring first to enable the reader, in American phrase, to" realize" a little more completely if possible, the everyday contents of the notable journal in question.

Its size we have stated, but it should be seen to convey any reasonable notion of the infinite unlikeness between it and our English journal, in every thing but size. Its miserable whity-brown paper; its dingy, uncomfortable print; its perfectly ridiculous non-arrangement;* its jumble in one hopeless mass, of leaders and police-reports, advertisements and abuse and moral reflections,† puffings and bank

* In one of the more respectable papers we find, alternating with its leaders, such paragraphs as these:

"Fish, at No. 2, State-street, has the richest lot of oranges and figs ever offered in our market. The oranges are juicy, of a delicious flavour, and well suited for parties or public entertainments.-Do not forget to give him a friendly call."

"No matter where you get your meals, provided immediately after you go to some reputable public-house and pick your teeth."

"Love is a heavenly feast, of which none but the sincere and honest partake. It is as impossible for a dishonest man truly to love, as for a hypocrite to go to heaven."

"The weather is remarkably warm lately, but who cares, as long as a plenty of the most delicious soda can be had at Nichoson and Paine's, or Starkweather's, at three cents a glass."

† Here are a few, taken from the leader department, with the same juxtaposition as in the journal from which we take them: the moral reflections copied