THE CIVIL WAR.—­The progress of English journalism received a great additional impetus when the civil war broke out between Charles I. and his Parliament, in 1642.  To meet the demands of both parties for intelligence, numbers of small sheets were issued:  Truths from York told of the rising in the king’s favor there.  There were:  Tidings from Ireland, News from Hull, telling of the siege of that place in 1643; The Dutch Spy; The Parliament Kite; The Secret Owl; The Scot’s Dove, with the olive-branch.  Then flourished the Weekly Discoverer, and The Weekly Discoverer Stripped Naked.  But these were only bare and partial statements, which excited rancor without conveying intelligence.  “Had there been better vehicles for the expression of public opinion,” says the author of the Student’s history of England, “the Stuarts might have been saved from some of those schemes which proved so fatal to themselves.”

In the session of Parliament held in 1695, there occurred a revolution of great moment.  There had been an act, enforced for a limited time, to restrain unlicensed printing, and under it censors had been appointed; but, in this year, the Parliament refused to re-enact or continue it, and thus the press found itself comparatively free.

We have already referred to the powerful influence of the essayists in The Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, and Rambler, which may be called the real origin of the present English press.

LATER DIVISIONS.—­Coming down to the close of the eighteenth century, we find the following division of English periodical literature:  Quarterlies, usually called Reviews; Monthlies, generally entitled Magazines; Weeklies, containing digests of news; and Dailies, in which are found the intelligence and facts of the present moment; and in this order, too, were the intellectual strength and learning of the time at first employed.  The Quarterlies contained the articles of the great men—­the acknowledged critics in politics, literature, and art; the Magazines, a current literature of poetry and fiction; the Weeklies and Dailies, reporters’ facts and statistics; the latter requiring activity rather than cleverness, and beginning to be a vehicle for extensive advertisements.

This general division has been since maintained; but if the order has not been reversed, there can be no doubt that the great dailies have steadily risen; on most questions of popular interest in all departments, long and carefully written articles in the dailies, from distinguished pens, anticipate the quarterlies, or force them to seek new grounds and forms of presentation after forestalling their critical opinions.  Not many years ago, the quarterlies subsidized the best talent; now the men of that class write for The Times, Standard, Telegraph, &c.