of all they are not sufficiently interested; and, secondly, because they do not believe the news they read. A working man told me the other day that he had been saving sixpence a week on two halfpenny papers which he had been accustomed to take in for the past year. "I found 'em out in ten lies, all on top of one another, in two weeks," he candidly explained; "and so I thought I might as well keep my money for something more useful. So I started putting the halfpence by for my little kiddie, and I'm going to stick to it. There's five shillings in the Savings Bank already!"
Glancing back to the early journalism of the past century, when Dickens and Thackeray wrote for the newspapers ("there were giants in those days"), one cannot help being struck by the great deterioration in the whole "tone" of the press at the present time, as contrasted with that which prevailed in the dawn of the Victorian era. There is dignity, refinement, and power in the leading articles of the Times and other journals then in vogue, such as must needs have compelled people not only to read, but to think. The vulgar "personal" note, the flippant sneer at this, that, or t'other personage,—the monkey-like mockery of women,—the senseless gibes flung at poets and poetry,—the clownish kick at sentiment,—were all apparently unknown.
True it is that the Times still holds its own as a journal in which one may look in vain for "sensationalism" but its position is rather like that of a grim old lion surrounded by cubs of all sizes and ages, that yap and snap at its whiskers and take liberties with its tail. It can be said, however, that all the better, higher-class periodicals
