If you ask a citizen of Munich which is the best Munich daily journal, he will always tell you that there is only one good Munich daily, and that it is published in Augsburg, forty or fifty miles away.  It is like saying that the best daily paper in New York is published out in New Jersey somewhere.  Yes, the Augsburg ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG is “the best Munich paper,” and it is the one I had in my mind when I was describing a “first-class German daily” above.  The entire paper, opened out, is not quite as large as a single page of the New York Herald.  It is printed on both sides, of course; but in such large type that its entire contents could be put, in Herald type, upon a single page of the Herald—­and there would still be room enough on the page for the ZEITUNG’s “supplement” and some portion of the ZEITUNG’s next day’s contents.

Such is the first-class daily.  The dailies actually printed in Munich are all called second-class by the public.  If you ask which is the best of these second-class papers they say there is no difference; one is as good as another.  I have preserved a copy of one of them; it is called the MUENCHENER TAGES-ANZEIGER, and bears date January 25, 1879.  Comparisons are odious, but they need not be malicious; and without any malice I wish to compare this journals of other countries.  I know of no other way to enable the reader to “size” the thing.

A column of an average daily paper in America contains from 1,800 to 2,500 words; the reading-matter in a single issue consists of from 25,000 to 50,000 words.  The reading-matter in my copy of the Munich journal consists of a total of 1,654 words —­for I counted them.  That would be nearly a column of one of our dailies.  A single issue of the bulkiest daily newspaper in the world—­the London times—­often contains 100,000 words of reading-matter.  Considering that the daily ANZEIGER issues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading matter in a single number of the London times would keep it in “copy” two months and a half.

The ANZEIGER is an eight-page paper; its page is one inch wider and one inch longer than a foolscap page; that is to say, the dimensions of its page are somewhere between those of a schoolboy’s slate and a lady’s pocket handkerchief.  One-fourth of the first page is taken up with the heading of the journal; this gives it a rather top-heavy appearance; the rest of the first page is reading-matter; all of the second page is reading-matter; the other six pages are devoted to advertisements.

The reading-matter is compressed into two hundred and five small-pica lines, and is lighted up with eight pica headlines.  The bill of fare is as follows:  First, under a pica headline, to enforce attention and respect, is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that, although they are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs of heaven; and that “When they depart from earth they soar to heaven.”