ART. I. THE RELIGIOUS PRESS.
The Newspaper Press Directory. Thirty-sixth Annual
Issue. London: C. Mitchell & Co. 1881.
WRITER in the "Saturday Review," a few weeks ago,
A delivered himself concerning newspapers in general, in
terms which drew down upon his devoted head the fiercest wrath of the whole journalistic world. "Excessive newspaper reading," he said, "is a sure destroyer of mental health. Its effect is to corrupt the judgment, to weaken the sense of mental discrimination, to discourage intellectual initiative, and generally to deaden the mental powers by substituting a habit of mechanical for a habit of intelligent reading. A very little yielding to this disposition," he goes on, "will produce, even in cultivated men, a habit which may almost be said to be worse from an intellectual point of view than the habit of not reading at all." Some such reflection as this must necessarily strike every thoughtful man, as he turns over the pages of the volume the title of which we have placed at the head of this article. Two hundred and thirty-six closely printed pages of imperial 8vo, wholly devoted to particulars concerning the newspapers of the United Kingdom, afford a sufficiently striking evidence of the enormous interests involved in the newspaper press, and testify to the readiness of the people of this country to absorb a practically unlimited quantity of literature of this description. That this is an altogether healthy state of things, and a sign of the growing intelligence of the nation, is certainly open to question. The weary speakers who return thanks for the toast of "The Press," at the fag end of municipal and other banquets, of course rejoice. over it, and triumphantly point to the enterprise, and industry, and cultivated public feeling of which it is the sign. Yet there VOL. VI.—NO. I. [Third Series.]