The Daily Cincinnati Republican, And Commercial Register

THE LABOURS OF EDITORS

May claim some indulgence from the circumstances in which they are performed. Whatever may be the cares and calls of business or company, the disease or languor of anxieties which compress the mind and body of the writer, his task must be finished on the appointed day and by a certain hour. There can be no delay, no waiting for a more propitious season for labour. Toils of this kind are far more exhausting than those of a sedentary nature.

Mr. Madden says, "the compulsory toil of a periodical composition has a greater influence on the health, than voluntary labours for a far greater amount. This opinion is corroborated by an observation of Dr. Johnson, no mean authority on any subject connected with literature or history. "He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day, will often bring to his task an attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease; he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; and if the ardour of invention his thoughts become diffused into a wild exuberance, which the pressing hours of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce."

"There is no labour more destructive to health, than that of periodical literature, and in no species of mental application, or even of mental employment, is the wear and tear of body so early and so severely felt. The readers of those light articles which appear to cost so little labour in the various publications of the day, are little aware how many constitutions are broken down in the service of their literary taste."