is sceptical on many points and above all things sceptical of words. Lord Granville said the other day that it is "undesirable," for a man who is perfectly sane to be confined in a lunatic asylum. We smile as we read that phrase; but in the use of it Lord Granville fairly represents the tendency of our time, which, so to speak, persistently lowers the temperature of language, and prefers underrating to overrating. The first time Mrs. Siddons acted in Edinburgh she was much distressed at the silence and apparent apathy of the audience. At the end of one of her great speeches, however, she got a hand or two of applause, and a Scotchman was heard to exclaim in the pit-“That's not bad." In the Scotchman's vocabulary, "That's not bad," or "not so bad," are very high terms of praise. This is a niggard style; but we are beginning now to understand that hitherto our language has been too lavish-too highly strung. Just as we have given up the gold lace, the rich velvet suits, and the much jewellery of our ancestors; or just as now, when friends the dearest friends, meet, they do not overpower each other with civilities, and perhaps even they do not shake hands, so we have learned to be chary of speech, and to weigh our words. And thus the decadence of the slashing style is but part of a general movement towards rationality of thinking, sobriety of behaviour, and reticence of expression.

The other movement in our literature with which the fall of the slashing style coincides, I have already slightly touched in the beginning of this article. I refer to the spread of periodical publications. At first sight we should have imagined that by this very agency the slashing style would have been perpetuated. Often writing in great haste, the contributors to a newspaper or other periodical are sorely tempted to retort to that slashing style which

produces the greatest amount of effect with the least trouble to themselves. Also it may be supposed that the readers of a newspaper, running their eyes hastily over its columns, are not prepared for undertoned criticism, and require to be arrested by all sorts of exaggerations. Instead of this, what do we find? We find exaggerations of style more and more avoided and ridiculed-the slashing style quite intolerable. And the explanation of this anomaly is not far to seek. The spread of periodical literature implies an increase of its power'; and this increase of its power shows itself in two ways.

In the first place, literature is more a profession than it used to be. The increase of periodicals implies increase of emolument, and an increase of writers sharing in that emolument. The man of letters is no longer a Bedouin or a Bohemian; he belongs to a profession that begins to feel the restraint of etiquette and honourable understanding; he can afford to respect himself and others. This professional understanding wonderfully tends to steady a man's style. What a man can do when he stands by himself, he feels that he cannot do when he becomes the member of a recognised community. Thus the spread of periodical literature, increasing the number of those who live by their pens, has given a professional status to writers for the press, and so doing has subjected them to the regulating influences of a profession.

The spread of periodical literature, however, means even more than this. There is not only increased power, but also increased sense of power in all the better periodicals. When a man is not sure that he will be heard, he has to raise his voice to a roar; and if he cannot roar he will screech. If a critic feels his weakness, and is not sure of his effects, he begins to slash. When, on the other hand, a man finds himself

writing in an organ of some authority, in which every word is of weight -when he finds himself speaking as through a trumpet, in which every whisper is multiplied, and the least murmur sounds like thunder, there is at once established over his style a calming influence. He need not yell in order to be heard: he need not slash in order to be severe enough. It must be admitted, however, that this argument depends on a fact which may not receive universal assent. De Tocqueville, for example predicted-speaking of Americathat the multiplication of journals would lead to the destruction of their influence. There would arise a clatter of tongues in which sound would be indistinguishable, and journalism reduced to a nullity. Also, it is too hastily assumed by some writers in this country, that the spread of periodical literature tends to level the influence of particular journals, so that no one can enjoy an overwhelminfluence. If this be indeed a fact, then my argument falls to the ground. If it is the tendency of the new order of things to reduce the organs of opinion to a dead level of authority, then no organ can have that assurance of power which will enable it to feel that it will be heard without bawling, and that it can punish without slashing. But is it a fact? and is there any likelihood of De Tocqueville's prediction becoming true? Let us refer to a parallel case. Has the diffusion of wealth tended to reduce its inequalities? Or, again, has the diffusion of education tended to lower the ascendancy of the superior minds? On the contrary, wealth, mere sordid pelf, was never more potent in the world than it is now; and the educated intellect, the slave of education, yields its neck with incomparable meekness to educated authority. On the same principle, if the power of the periodical press is increased in the mass, the relative power of particular journals is also increased in an increased

ratio.

The multitude of journals make the whole people peculiarly sensitive to opinion; and a chosen few of these journals reap the benefit of that sensitiveness. Their opinions are studied with peculiar interest and tell with peculiar force. Amid the clamours of multitudinous journalism, we hear one or two organs of opinion constantly quoted-sometimes in blame, sometimes in praise, but always to be canvassed with interest. These are the journals that make themselves heard over all others, that maintain their ascendancy, notwithstanding De Tocque ville's prediction, and that, conscious of their power, can afford to lower their tones.

Whether these views as to the influences which have led to the decay of slashing among us be correct or not, there is no doubt as to the fact of its decay. And there anent two remarks suggest themselves in conclusion.

The first relates to the Yankee press. The slashing style flourishes across the Atlantic, just as there also flourishes the oratory of high flights. And it must be confessed that the more powerful journals of New York descend to a system of attack to which, fortunately, we can find no parallel in this country among journals of mark. The New York Herald is the most renowned for this kind of hard hitting, which it especially indulges in when the object of attack is a rival newspaper. The following is an assualt on the editor of the New York Tribune: "The excitable philosopher of the Tribune appears to have become positively crazy. His deplorable failure as a military leader in the march of our army to Bull Run, and the fall of that abolition idol, Fremont, have doubtless been too much for the weak and foolish head of Greeley. We may feel some pity for his situation, but really his hackneyed stuff and trash about the Herald as a Secession organ, and about our Se

But

cession flags, and all such rubbish, are too silly for further notice. he has discovered another mare's nest. The Herald has no influence. Poor Greeley! No influence. Here we see the ragged coat of the dirty politician. We have never sought and never wanted any such influence. Our aim has been to establish and maintain the best newspaper in this or any other country; and if we may judge from the catalogue of our readers and advertisers, we have succeeded in this great enterprise. No influence! Massa Greeley, do not persist in making an ass of yourself. Go home and soak your feet in a tub of warm water, with a little soap, and try to get a good night's rest." There is something so unsophisticated about this style, that to those who are weary of parliamentary language and the refined circumlocutions of private life, it will have the inexpressible charm of perfect nature. Take another specimen which appeared on the first day of a new year. "At the commencement of the new year we would scarcely be doing our duty if we did not give poor Greeley some judicious advice for the regulation of his future conduct. He must now turn over a new leaf or be consigned to perpetual infamy. The first step for him in this direction will be to get a new suit of clothes, and to brush himself up generally. His personal appear ance for several years past has been so seedy and shabby, that nothing of the kind has ever before been seen. With the advent of the new year let Greeley put off his old white hat and coat, and his demoralising habits with them. The least that the Tribune association can do is to supply him with money enough to buy some new clothing. They have no right to treat the poor fellow so scurvily. Since the commencement of the war, the philosophers of that junta have cleared more than a million dollars out of the public purse with their gun contracts and other nefa

rious schemes. Let them hand over a trifle to Greeley to get some new toggery. If this be asking too much from his confederates for the wretched man, let them inform us immediately, and we will subscribe a small sum to aid in cleaning him up for the new year. We know he will as usual be deeply grateful to us, and the only condition we shall impose upon him is, that he shall come out strong for General Grant as our next President." That the Herald may not have all its own way in these pages, I will end these quotations with a counter attack upon it from the New York Times :-"The general impression of the public is, that the editor of the Herald is constitutionally incapable of telling the truth. It may be so; but we should feel much better satisfied of the fact if he had ever made the attempt. We may defy any man to point to a single incident in his whole life, or a single sentence in the files of the Herald, from the day it was started until now, which indicates the faintest possible preference for truth over falsehood. From the beginning to the end of his career he has been steadily and unwaveringly consistent in never telling the truth when a lie would answer his purpose half as well. This may be constitutional,' or it may be the result of calculation-but it is systematic. Whenever he has an object to accomplish, he never shows the slightest scruple as to the means of reaching it; and as in nine cases out of ten his objects are purely malignant and devilish, naturally enough falsehood and calumny are the weapons which he wields."

These are choice flowers of rhetoric, and the last extract is a slashing description of the slashing style. The remark, however, suggests itself that we who know how recently the slashing style flourished in all its glory among ourselves, should not altogether despair of the American press. Many people fall into a way of accounting for the gross abuses of the

Yankee journals by attributing them to the degrading influences of democratic society and a low price. They leap to the conclusion, therefore, that these abuses must be perennial. The conclusion is illogical. The only fact we have to go upon is, that the Yankee journals are a quarter of a century behind our own. We see precisely the same phenomenon in the political economy of our transatlantic kinsmen. All through the civil war we were complaining of their protectionist prejudices. We are full five-and-twenty years ahead of them in our knowledge of trade and finance; but we do not expect that their economical fallacies will last for ever, or that they are to be ascribed to democratic failings. Neither need we suppose that the murderous style of journalism which they are so fond of is peculiar to their form of civilisation and is ineradicable. The same causes that have tended in England to root it out, will, no doubt, in due time also root it out of the United States.

The other remark which suggests itself bears on ourselves-on the remains ofthe slashing style that are still to be found among us. Slashing, I have said, has nearly died out. It still lurks, however, in holes and corners. One is not surprised to see it now and then cropping out in a provincial newspaper. It is but natural that the Eatanswill Gazette should be a little behind the spirit of the age. The odd thing is, to find the slashing style chiefly practised by two of the liberal professions -the medical and the clerical. It is very strange that men of sense, men of science, cannot write against medical heresies without using terms and hurling epithets which most men of the world have consented to drop altogether. Especially is it strange, if we consider that in matters of science hard words can be of no avail, and we require the pure logic of facts, not the doubtful logic of sneers. Unfortunately, medical con

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troversy is a terrific scene of massacre and bloodshed. The slashing style becomes mere bloodletting. The medical heretic is denounced as a quack, an impostor, a fool, a madman, a rascal, a knave, a hypocrite, a cormorant, a toad, a fee-finder-a perfect demon. The mildest term which Dr. Sampson-a well-known doctor who figures in the pages of one of Mr. Charles Reade's later novels-applies to the brother physician whom he distrusts, is "Idiot.” That in the noble profession of medicine there are to be found men who scorn such a style of controversy we are of course well assured; but these men, for the most part, avoid controversy altogether, and leave whatever war requires to be waged against doubtful doctrine in the hands of soldiers who fight best with hateful weapons and little know how the world at large regards the barbarities of warfare. Perhaps, however, the clergy and clerical journals are still more addicted than the medical profession to the slashing style; but there is more excuse for them, since they have to deal chiefly with themes that profoundly engage the feelings, and are not to be approached by mere reason. It is the business of the clergy to deal with the heart of man, and to measure the influence of motives as an element of human conduct. In public criticism they find it difficult to throw off that habit, and are constantly attributing those abominable motives and drawing those unwarranted inferences which are among the chief characteristics of the slashing style. "I heard Dr. B. say in a sermon," writes Jortin, "that if any one denies the uninterrupted succession of bishops, he should not scruple to call him a downright Atheist. This, when I was young, was sound, fashionable doctrine." But we recognise the inference as a slashing one, and we know how easy it is for Churchmen still to slash in that style, to call a man a godless