etymologically considered:  it is a French corruption of diurnal, which, from the Latin dies, should mean a daily paper; but it is now generally used to include all periodicals.  The origin of newspapers is quite curious, and antedates the invention of printing.  The acta diurna, or journals of public events, were the daily manuscript reports of the Roman Government during the later commonwealth.  In these, among other matters of public interest, every birth, marriage, and divorce was entered.  As an illustration of the character of these brief entries, we have the satire of Petronius, which he puts in the mouth of the freed man Trimalchio:  “The seventh of the Kalends of Sextilis, on the estate at Cumae, were born thirty boys, twenty girls; were carried from the floor to the barn, 500,000 bushels of wheat; were broke 500 oxen.  The same day the slave Mithridates was crucified for blasphemy against the Emperor’s genius; the same day was placed in the chest the sum of ten millions sesterces, which could not be put out to use.”  Similar in character were the Acta Urbana, or city register, the Acta Publica, and the Acta Senatus, whose names indicate their contents.  They were brief, almost tabular, and not infrequently sensational.

THE GAZETTE.—­After the downfall of Rome, and during the Dark Ages, there are few traces of journalism.  When Venice was still in her palmy days, in 1563, during a war with the Turks, printed bulletins were issued from time to time, the price for reading which was a coin of about three farthings’ value called a gazetta; and so the paper soon came to be called a gazette.  Old files, to the amount of thirty volumes, of great historical value, may be found in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence.

Next in order, we find in France Affiches, or placards, which were soon succeeded by regular sheets of advertisement, exhibited at certain offices.

As early as the time of the intended invasion of England by the Spanish Armada, about the year 1588, we find an account of its defeat and dispersion in the Mercurie, issued by Queen Elizabeth’s own printer.  In another number is the news of a plot for killing the queen, and a statement that instruments of torture were on board the vessels, to set up the Inquisition in London.  Whether true or not, the newspaper said it; and the English people believed it implicitly.

About 1600, with the awakening spirit of the people, there began to appear periodical papers containing specifically news from Germany, from Italy, &c.  And during the Thirty Years’ War there was issued a weekly paper called The Certain News of the Present Week.  Although the word news is significant enough, many persons considered it as made up of the initial letters representing the cardinal points of the compass, N.E.W.S., from which the curious people looked for satisfying intelligence.