Alexandria Gazette

A daily newspaper is too customary a thing to excite much comment. It would be wofully missed did the carrier frequently fail to leave it at the door; but, whilst it is present—like many other good things—it is not valued as it deserves to be; it is discussed with the breakfast it precedes or accompanies, and is then forgotten. Yet each paper furnishes much matter for thought; each is an abstract and brief chronicle of the time. In very many points a newspaper is one of those records that must, perforce, be truthful. As a faithful representation of the day, it is more worthy of trust than the gravest history written by the most learned and impartial of historians, for it is the store-house from which the best materials of history are drawn. It is a faithful mirror, really performing what Hamlet said was the purpose of playing, and showing "the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure."

The spirit of to-day breathes in the newspaper laid on our table; it is filled with the thoughts, opinions, expectations and hopes of the hour; it reports what men said and did before they last lay down to sleep, and perhaps what they design to do before the sun again sets. The world as it is—not the world as it may appear to the future historian, or the dreamer, who gazes on it through the medium of his colored fancy—the real world is there. It is there in its defects, as well as in its good qualities. It is there in its sorrow, its sufferings, its strifes and its guilt, as well as in its pleasures, its happiness and its virtues. So much is this the case, that men unconsciously rise from a newspaper with much the same feeling that they turn from the contemplation of the world, and the judgment they pass upon it, is indicative of their habitual temper and frame of mind, in view of human actions and events.

Thus it is that a newspaper presents a world with its shadows and its lights. The editor makes his comments, and these may be acceptable or not; but the facts that are in every column—the consideration of the age on the printed page—cannot be denied, and the man who never reads a newspaper must be ignorant of the world in which he lives, however well acquainted he may be with some particular things.—Phil. Am.