All our churches, and schools, and colleges, and asylums, and
art-galleries feel the quaking of the printing-press. I shall try to
bring to your parlor-tables the periodicals that are worthy of the
Christian fireside, and try to pitch into the gutter of scorn and
contempt those newspapers that are not fit for the hand of your child
or the vision of your wife.
The institution of newspapers arose in Italy. In Venice the first
newspaper was published, and monthly, during the time that Venice was
warring against Solyman the Second in Dalmatia. It was printed for
the purpose of giving military and commercial information to the
Venetians. The first newspaper published in England was in 1588,
and called the _English Mercury_. Others were styled the _Weekly
Discoverer_, the _Secret Owl_, _Heraclitus Ridens_, etc.
Who can estimate the political, scientific, commercial, and religious
revolutions roused up in England for many years past by _Bell's Weekly
Dispatch_, the _Standard_, the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Post_, and
the _London Times_?
The first attempt at this institution in France was in 1631, by a
physician, who published the _News_, for the amusement and health of
his patients.
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