A number of these are illustrated journals, and are of great value in giving us pictorial representations of the great events and scenes as they pass, with portraits of men who have become suddenly famous by some special act or appointment.  Their value cannot be too highly appreciated; they supply to the mind, through the eye, what the best descriptions in letter-press could not give; and in them satire uses comic elements with wonderful effect.  Among the illustrated weeklies, the Illustrated London News has long held a high place; and within a short period The Graphic has exhibited splendid pictures of men and things of timely interest.  Nor must we forget to mention Punch, which has been the grand jester of the realm since its origin.  The best humorous and witty talent of England has found a vent in its pages, and sometimes its pathos has been productive of reform.  Thackeray, Cuthbert Bede, Mark Lemon, Hood, have amused us in its pages, and the clever pencil of Leech has made a series of etching which will never grow tiresome.  To it Thackeray contributed his Snob Papers, and Hood The Song of the Shirt.

THE DAILIES.—­But the great characteristic of the age is the daily newspaper, so common a blessing that we cease to marvel at it, and yet marvellous as it is common.  It is the product of quick intelligence, of great energy, of concurrent and systematized labor, and, in order to fulfil its mission, it seems to subsidize all arts and invade all subjects—­steam, mechanics, photography, phonography, and electricity.  The news which it prints and scatters comes to it on the telegraph; long orations are phonographically reported; the very latest mechanical skill is used in its printing; and the world is laid at our feet as we sit at the breakfast-table and read its columns.

I shall not go back to the origin of printing, to show the great progress that has been made in the art from that time to the present; nor shall I attempt to explain the present process, which one visit to a press-room would do far better than any description; but I simply refer to the fact that fifty years ago newspapers were still printed with the hand-press, giving 250 impressions per hour—­no cylinder, no flying Hoe, (that was patented only in 1847.) Now, the ten-cylinder Hoe, steam driven, works off 20,000 sheets in an hour, and more, as the stereotyper may multiply the forms.  What an emblem of art-progress is this!  Fifty years ago mail-coaches carried them away.  Now, steamers and locomotives fly with them all over the world, and only enlarge and expand the story, the great facts of which have been already sent in outline by telegraph.

Nor is it possible to overrate the value of a good daily paper:  as the body is strengthened by daily food, so are we built up mentally and spiritually for the busy age in which we live by the world of intelligence contained in the daily journal.  A great book and a good one is offered for the reading of many who have no time to read others, and a great culture in morals, religion, politics, is thus induced.  Of course it would be impossible to mention all the English dailies.  Among them The London Times is pre-eminent, and stands highest in the opinion of the ministerial party, which fears and uses it.