full of personal allusions, and describing individuals respecting whom the public are always curious,—­free also from offensive personalities,—­the letters attracted much notice and were generally copied in the press.  It is said that some of the ladies whose charms were described in those letters were indebted to them for husbands.  Personalities of this kind were a novelty then, and mere novelty goes a great way in journalism.  At this period he produced almost every kind of composition known to periodical literature,—­paragraphs and leading articles, poetry and love-stories, reports of trials, debates, balls, and police cases; his earnings ranging from five dollars a week to ten or twelve.  If there had been then in New York one newspaper publisher who understood his business, the immense possible value of this man as a journalist would have been perceived, and he would have been secured, rewarded, and kept under some restraint.  But there was no such man.  There were three or four forcible writers for the press, but not one journalist.

During the great days of “The Courier and Inquirer,” from 1829 to 1832, when it was incomparably the best newspaper on the continent, James Gordon Bennett was its most efficient hand.  It lost him in 1832, when the paper abandoned General Jackson and took up Nicholas Biddle; and in losing him lost its chance of retaining the supremacy among American newspapers to this day.  We can truly say, that at that time journalism, as a thing by itself and for itself, had no existence in the United States.  Newspapers were mere appendages of party; and the darling object of each journal was to be recognized as the organ of the party it supported.  As to the public, the great public, hungry for interesting news, no one thought of it.  Forty years ago, in the city of New York, a copy of a newspaper could not be bought for money.  If any one wished to see a newspaper, he had either to go to the office and subscribe, or repair to a bar-room and buy a glass of something to drink, or bribe a carrier to rob one of his customers.  The circulation of the Courier and Inquirer was considered something marvellous when it printed thirty-five hundred copies a day, and its business was thought immense when its daily advertising averaged fifty-five dollars.  It is not very unusual for a newspaper now to receive for advertising, in one day, six hundred times that sum.  Bennett, in the course of time, had a chance been given to him, would have made the Courier and Inquirer powerful enough to cast off all party ties; and this he would have done merely by improving it as a vehicle of news.  But he was kept down upon one of those ridiculous, tantalizing, corrupting salaries, which are a little more than a single man needs, but not enough for him to marry upon.  This salary was increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the small profits of the printing-office; so that, after fourteen years of hard labor and Scotch economy, he found himself, on leaving the great paper,