American Watchman And Delaware Advertiser

NEWSPAPERS.—It has been remarked in regard to newspapers, that so great is their influence, and so visible their effects in a family that a visitor need only converse with the children, upon any general subject, to ascertain whether the daily or weekly sheet finds regular admittance there or not, so striking will be the difference on the score of intelligence, between those who have and those who have not access to this simple and economical vehicle of useful knowledge.

We recollect a circumstance which is in a good degree illustrative of this. We were once in a public company in a neighboring town when a conversation respecting the outfits and salaries of ministers to foreign courts came on the carpet, and a gentleman calculated that a certain diplomatic personage would receive something like thirty six thousand dollars for making a tour of a couple of years to the continent: "la" said an awkward looking young man, who sat in one corner of the room until now silent, "that's a power of cash for a minister—our parson can preach with any of them, and he'd go to the world's end for a quarter of the money"

A Newspaper is a kind of Perspective, within the range of which every interesting object in the animal and vegetable kingdom is brought—it brings within the vision, collected in our group, the whole variety of animated nature. Human life in all its vicissitudes of woe and weal, passes before us—and to brighten the dark picture of reality Romance blends with it her softer hues, and poetry sprinkles on its borders her delicate sunbeams.

We said newspapers were economical vehicles of useful knowledge—we repeat it; they are in every sense of the word We have before us at this moment the New York Statesman; it contains about twenty columns of original and selected matter, besides advertisements, and costs less than four cents a number. Now the matter contained in this number of the Statesman would if printed in octavo form, and on a common sized type, make fifty pages, and be cheap at 24 cents So great is the difference in price between newspapers and books.

These things are not generally known and appreciated, newspapers are common, therefore undervalued—they are too cheap, therefore the price is complained of by their patrons, and very frequently it happens that they are poorly conducted because but poorly patronized.