A curious comparison of the quantity of news devoured by an Englishman and a Frenchman, was made in 1819, in the Edinburgh Review—"thirty-four thousand papers," says the writer, are "dispatched daily from Paris to the departments, among a population of about twenty-six millions, making one journal among 776 persons. By this, the number of newspaper readers in England would be to those in France as twenty to one. But the number and circulation of country papers in England are so much greater than in France, that they raise the proportion of English readers to about twenty-five to one, and our papers contain about three times as much letter-press as a French paper. The result of all this is that an Englishman reads about seventy-five times as much of the newspapers of his country in a given time, as a Frenchman does of his. But in the towns of England, most of the papers are distributed by means of porters, not by post; on the other hand, on account of the number of coffee-houses, public gardens, and other modes of communication, less usual in England, it is possible that each French paper may be read, or listened to, by a greater number of persons, and thus the English mode of distribution may be compensated. To be quite within bounds, however, the final result is, that every Englishman reads daily fifty times as much as the Frenchman does, of the newspapers of his country."
From this it might be inferred that the craving for news is peculiarly English. But the above comparison is chiefly affected by the restrictions put upon the French press, which, in 1819, were very great. In this country, the only restrictions were of a fiscal character; for opinion and news there was, as now, perfect liberty. It is proved, at the present day, that Frenchmen love news as much as the English; for now that all restriction is nominally taken off, there are as many newspapers circulated in France in proportion to its population, as there are in England.
The appetite for news is, in truth, universal; but is naturally disappointed, rather than bounded, by the ability to read. Hence it is that the circulation of newspapers is proportioned in various countries to the spread of letters; and if their sale is proportionately less in this empire, than it is among better taught populations, it is because there exist among us fewer persons who are able to read them;—either at all, or so imperfectly, that attempts to spell them give the tyro more pain than pleasure. In America, where a system of national education has made a nation of readers (whose taste is perhaps susceptible of vast improvement, but who are readers still) the sale of newspapers greatly exceeds that of Great Britain. All over the continent there are also more newspaper readers, in proportion to the number of people, though perhaps, fewer buyers, from the facilities afforded by coffee-houses and reading-rooms, which all frequent. In support of this fact, we need go no farther than the three kingdoms. Scotland—where national education has largely given the ability to read—a population of three millions demands yearly from the Stamp Office seven and a half millions of stamps; while in Ireland, where national education has had no time for development, eight millions of people take half a million of stamps less than Scotland.
Although it can not be said that the appetite for mere news is one of an elevated character; yet as we have before hinted, the dissemination of news takes place side by side with some of the most sound, practical, and ennobling sentiments and precepts that issue from any other channels of the press. As an engine of public liberty, the newspaper press is more effectual than the Magna Charta, because its powers are wielded with more ease, and exercised with more promptitude and adaptiveness to each particular case.
Mr. F. K. Hunt in his "Fourth Estate" remarks, "The moral of the history of the press seems to be, that when any large proportion of a people have been taught to read, and when upon this possession of the tools of knowledge, there has grown up a habit of perusing public prints, the state is virtually powerless if it attempts to check the press. James the Second in old times, and Charles the Tenth, and Louis Philippe, more recently, tried to trample down the Newspapers, and everybody knows how the attempt resulted. The prevalence or scarcity of newspapers in a country affords a sort of index to its social state. Where journals are numerous, the people have power, intelligence, and wealth; where journals are few, the many are in reality mere slaves. In the United States every village has its newspaper, and every city a dozen of these organs of popular sentiment. In England we know how numerous and how influential for good the papers are; while in France they have perhaps still greater power. Turn to Russia, where newspapers are comparatively unknown, and we see the people sold with the earth they are compelled to till. Austria, Italy, Spain, occupy positions between the extremes—the rule holding good in all, that in proportion to the freedom of the press is the freedom and prosperity of the people."
[From Sharpe's Magazine]
A FEW WORDS ON CORALS.
It is the object of the following papers to illustrate the natural history of the ocean, and to introduce to the reader a few of the forms of life which the naturalist meets with in the deep sea. The sea that bathes the globe contains as countless multitudes of living beings as does the land we tread, and each possesses an organization as interesting and as peculiar to itself, as any of the higher forms of the animal creation. But the interest does not cease here, for these marine invertebrata play an important part in the vast economy of nature, some living but to afford food for the larger kinds, others devouring all matter devoid of vitality, and so removing all putrescent materials, with which the sea would otherwise be surcharged; while others, again, living in large communities, surely and slowly, by their gradual growth, so alter the physical construction of the globe as to render seas and harbors unnavigable, and in many eases even to give rise in course of ages to those islands, apparently of spontaneous growth, which are so common in the Southern Seas.
Corals and Madrepores first claim our attention, because they occupy the lowest place, with the exception of sponges, in the animal scale! Indeed, so low is their organization, that former naturalists denied their animal character, and from superficial examination of their external appearance, placed them among the wonders of the vegetable world. And from the arborescent and plant-like form assumed by many kinds, in the Flustra and others, in which the resemblance to sea-weeds is so strong as generally to cause them to be confounded together under the same group, and being fixed to submarine rocks, or marine shells, observers might easily have been led to the mistake, had not modern research rectified the error. Corals and Madrepores, as they are known to us, consist but of the stony skeletons of the animals themselves, for in the living state, while dwelling in the ocean, each portion of the stony framework was covered with an animal coating of gelatinous matter, which, closely investing it, was the living portion of the animal. But the structure of the animal is not simply this, for attached to different portions of it in the living state are to be found a countless number of little cells, which, armed with tentacles of great prehensile and tactile powers, are the apertures through which the particles of food are conveyed for the sustenance of the animal These bodies as they may be called, are the analogues of that simple polyp, the common hydra, which, abounding in almost every pond, has been long known to naturalists. It consists of a single dilated gelatinous vesicle, which is terminated at one extremity by a sucker, and at the other by a number of contractile filaments, which serve as the tentaculæ, by which it seizes its prey. This is all that represents the animal, the dilated portion of the tube being the part in which the process of digestion is carried on, and where the food is assimilated to the wants of the little creature. These hydrae live singly, each animal being independent of another, and each possesses the power of self-reparation; so that, should it happen that a tentacle is lost, another sprouts to supply its place, or should the naturalist by way of experiment divide it in half, each portion immediately reproduces the wanting section. Such, then, is briefly the structure of the simple fresh-water hydra, a polyp of common occurrence, and from this description the reader will gain some idea of the polyps of the Coral family before us; but he must remember that in the case now under discussion, the polyps are aggregated together, a number on one common stem, each possessing independent life, but all ministering to the support of the compound animal.