The Alexandria Herald

MISCELLANEOUS.

From the New-York Statesman

Cheapness and Utility of Newspapers.

Messrs. Editors--Struck with the difference in the manner of printing a book, a London edition of a novel or romance (and not Bracebridge Hall neither) which by mere chance now lies before me, my curiosity led me to examine and ascertain the literal quantity of matter or words it contained, and compare it with the amount in one of your semi-weekly newspapers. The English book happens to be a foolscap octavo, of the size of a modern or royal eighteens, one third smaller than the common size of 12 mo. school books.

Three pages of your paper, and sometimes nearly the whole four are filled with reading matter, and contain what you would call 64,800 ems, just the same quantity as 270 pages of my novel. "The Priory of St. Bernard," and would make two decent thin volumes of its size.

You give 104 papers or 4 dollars. The same quantity of matter, in books like mine would make 208 volumes at about 6s each, or 1Ls the set, whole cost $156.

Such is the difference between newspaper reading and this kind of novel reading, as 4 to 156, no less than 39 times as cheap.

Besides, as Lord Peter might say, newspapers are the very tree of knowledge--they yield a daily crop of fruit perennial, of every pleasant hue and useful kind--in newspapers are contained the essence of law, physic and divinity; astronomy, politics and history; agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, &c.---and he who reads a newspaper, reads and possesses at the same time, the substance and selection of news, wit, learning, novelty, poetry, morality, and all the arts and sciences, and a taste and portion of every branch of human knowledge.

A newspaper is the world in epitome, a perpetual cyclopedia, in endless numbers, ever various and ever new; and as Peter Pindar saith,

"So cheap they come, at five or eighteen pence,
That every man would buy, with cash and sense."

Nor is it any wonder, then, that the Americans, a calculating and money-saving, as well as reading and inquisitive people, should so generally patronise newspapers, that there are three times as many different gazettes published in the United States (although not in such large numbers as some of the London papers) as are printed in England, with a population greatly exceeding ours,

The universal patronage of public journals in this country--and it is really a matter of wonder that it is not a more liberal and extensive--is honorable to our literary taste and discernment, and a conclusive proof of the refinement and morals of the people;--for no nation can be ignorant, enslaved, profligate and miserable, where the press is free, and ably conducted newspapers are numerous, cheap, and well supported.