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said the Lord Keeper to the two Houses in 1593, 'since he hath usurped upon the kingdom of Portugal, hath thereby grown mighty, by gaining the East Indies: so as, how great soever he was before, he is now thereby manifestly more great: . He keepeth a navy armed to impeach all trade of merchandise from England to Gascoigne and Guienne, which he attempted to do this last vintage; so as he is now become as a frontier enemy to all the west of England, as well as all the south parts, as Sussex, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight. Yea, by means of his interest in St. Maloes, a port full of shipping for the war, he is a dangerous neighbour to the Queen's isles of Jersey and Guernsey, ancient possessions of this crown, and never conquered in the greatest wars with France.'

The ascendency which Spain then had in Europe was, in one sense, well deserved. It was an ascendency which had been gained by unquestioned superiority in all the arts of policy and of war. In the sixteenth century, Italy was not more decidedly the land of the fine arts, Germany was not more decidedly the land of bold theological speculation, than Spain was the land of statesmen and of soldiers. The character which Virgil has ascribed to his countrymen might have been claimed by the grave and haughty chiefs who surrounded the throne of Ferdinand the Catholic, and of his immediate successors. That majestic art, regere imperio populos,' was not better understood by the Romans in the proudest days of their republic, than by Gonsalvo and Ximenes, Cortes and Alva. The skill of the Spanish diplomatists was renowned throughout Europe. In England the name of Gondomar is still remembered. The sovereign nation was unrivalled both in regular and irregular warfare. The impetuous chivalry of France, the serried phalanx of Switzerland, were alike found want

ing when brought face to face with the Spanish infantry. In the wars of the New World, where something different was required, the Spanish troops were quite equal to the occasion. But if we look at the same country a hundred years after, and at the close of the seventeenth century, what a change there is! Foreign conquests had begun to eat into every part of that gigantic monarchy on which the sun never set. Holland was gone, and Portugal, and Artois, and Roussillon, and Franche Comté. In the East, the empire founded by the Dutch far surpassed in wealth and splendour that which their old tyrants still retained. In the West, England had seized, and still held, settlements in the midst of the Mexican

sea.

The mere loss of territory was, however, of little moment. The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning. Adrian acted judiciously when he abandoned the conquests of Trajan; and England was never so rich, so great, so formidable to foreign princes, so absolutely mistress of the sea, as since the loss of her American colonies. The Spanish empire was still, in outward appearance, great and magnificent. The European dominions subject to the last feeble Prince of the House of Austria were far more extensive than those of Lewis the Fourteenth. The American dependencies of the Castilian crown still extended far to the north of Cancer and far to the south of Capricorn. But within this immense body there was an incurable decay, an utter want of tone, an utter prostration of strength. ingenious and diligent population, eminently skilled in arts and manufactures, had been driven into exile by stupid and remorseless bigots. The glory of the Spanish pencil had departed with Velasquez and Murillo. The splendid age of

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Spanish literature had closed with Solis and Calderon. During the seventeenth century many states had formed great military establishments. But the Spanish army, so formidable under the command of Alva and Farnese, had dwindled away to a few thousand men, ill-paid and ill-disciplined. England, Holland, and France had great navies. But the Spanish navy was scarcely equal to the tenth part of that mighty force which, in the time of Philip the Second, had been the terror of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The arsenals were deserted. The magazines were unprovided. The frontier fortresses were ungarrisoned. The police were utterly inefficient for the protection of the people. Murders were committed in the face of day with perfect impunity. Bravoes and discarded serving-men, with swords at their sides, swaggered every day through the most public streets and squares of the capital, disturbing the public peace, and setting at defiance the ministers of justice. The finances were in frightful disorder. The people paid much. The government received little. The American viceroys and the farmers of the revenue became rich, while the merchants broke, while the peasantry starved, while the bodyservants of the sovereign remained unpaid, while the soldiers of the royal guard repaired daily to the doors of convents, and battled there with the

crowd of beggars for a porringer of broth and a morsel of bread. Every remedy which was tried aggravated the disease. The currency was altered; and this frantic measure produced its never-failing effects. It destroyed all credit, and increased the misery which it was intended to relieve. The American gold, to use the words of Ortiz, was to the necessities of the state but as a drop of water to the lips of a man raging with thirst. Heaps of unopened despatches accumulated in the offices, while the ministers were concerting with courtiers and Jesuits the means of tripping up each other. Every foreign power could plunder and insult with impunity the heir of Charles the Fifth. Into such a state had the mighty kingdom of Spain fallen, while one of its smallest dependencies, a country not so large as the province of Estremadura or Andalusia, situated under an inclement sky, and preserved only by artificial means from the inroads of the ocean, had become a power of the first class, and treated on terms of equality with the courts of London and Versailles."

Such was the state into which bad government and its applications, as bigotry in the sphere of religion, and as protection in the sphere of trade, reduced in so short a time this once powerful and mighty empire and its line of magnificent monarchs.

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A MODERN NEWSPAPER-THE PRINTING PRESS.

How IT HAS INCREASED OUR KNOWLEDGE AND POWER.

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UR purpose in the present article is to exhibit the progress of the wonderful art of printing, by giving a complete account of the production of a modern newspaper; in which the great principle of all civilisation, viz., division

of labour, is carried to its fullest extent. Our illustration shows the first printer, John Gutenberg of Mainz, who, as inventor of this art, has eternal claims on the gratitude of mankind. Alas, like so many benefactors of the race, he died unnoticed and unknown, in poverty and neglect. John Fust, or Faust, sometimes shares with him the honour of the invention; but, indeed, Faust was only a goldsmith in Mainz, who advanced Gutenberg money, and seized his printing materials when the debtor could not pay. But let us turn from these melancholy records of the past to the wonders of the present.

A daily newspaper is, indeed, a striking illustration of our own time. The greatest manual dexterity is required in almost every one of the merely physical processes by which it is produced; while, at the same time, the highest mental ability is called into action, not merely to invent better machines, or even to arrange the general plan on which the newspaper is constructed, but to carry out the daily details of its ordinary existence. The purpose of this article is to examine the chief processes which go to the making up of "our daily issue," and to note in connection with this the different tasks of the various workers engaged thereon.

In the first place, however, it is important to observe what a newspaper does. It regularly writes for us the history of the preceding day, and this, too, in the widest sense of that elastic word; for we have political, commercial, agricultural, social, and literary history, all presented to us in these huge pages, with their small close printing. Nor are we served with a mere mass of dry, undigested, unmethodical statistics or details. Those who are engaged in the management of a good newspaper have a far higher conception of the historian's duty. They arrange all that is presented in proper and methodical order; they pen brief but complete summaries to assist us in our perusal; they (and here the "they" include all that are keenest among the foremost minds of our own day), moreover, give us their own opinions in leaders, which may be inaccurate (humanum est errare!), but, at least among our first-class papers, are never without a certain ability and "go," which make them interesting, even where you disagree with them. But let us at once proceed to dissect this wonderful structure. Let us give the precedence to its living members; and here, of course, the editor has the first place. But already the principle we wish to illustrate meets us; for the duties of an editor are so subdivided, that we have the editor par excellence, the managing editor, the revising editor, and a host of "subs." Now the editor by no means performs those functions which the popular mind assigns to him. He busies himself not at all about the working arrangements of the office; probably, were you to ask what the contents of next day's issue were to be, he could not tell you. He is only present

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in his special room a few hours each day, and generally he does nothing more than write a few leaders. But then it is just these leaders which give tone and character to the paper; for their writer is a man of great literary power, and, moreover, in the higher parts of the paper, in those columns which are devoted to the expression of opinions on great questions, it is there you feel his influence. He is the anonymous Jove whose thunderbolt may shake a Cabinet. But though he writes leaders, it by no means follows that he writes all the leaders. Many of the other officials about the office are engaged on these occasionally, but above all this there are men who make this their special vocation. In the early afternoon they meet in council, discuss, choose, and allot the subjects; go where they like, write them, and have them all ready by a certain hour, and given in to the office. But within the circle itself the "division of labour" is carried out, for one leader writer devotes himself to politics, another to special foreign subjects, another to law cases, and so on; and each man of course gets an article to write on one of his special subjects. But a question here naturally arises, when so many different individuals are employed in uttering the opinions of the newspaper, in giving forth the responses of the oracle, as it were, do they never contradict another? Well, perhaps they sometimes do; but a good deal of care is taken to minimise, at any rate, discrepancies of thought and expression. Another individual-the revising editor-here begins his duties. He carefully examines whether each leader accords with the previous leaders on the same subject. He must see, likewise, that its tone be in accordance with the general utterances of the paper. Of course it is often necessary to alter, rub out, or fill in to a very great extent; and this is the work assigned to the revising editor. Returning to the main thread of our narrative, we notice next to the

chief, the managing editor. While all are necessary, and, each in his separate way, indispensable, yet it may with confidence be asserted that this is the official who could least be spared. As his name implies, he exercises a general management over the whole work of the office. He sees that the leading articles are all written in due time; in an emergency he must be able to write one on almost any subject; then he has to divide all the books sent in for review among competent reviewers; he must also arrange the plan of every day's paper, taking care that each item of news is represented with a proper, but not excessive, minuteness of detail. This, of course, includes the direction of the editing and reporting staff. He must always be at hand when wanted, and must remain in attendance at the office up to the hour of publication. In great cities the chief papers possess a "commercial editor." His duty is to write the monetary and commercial articles, and to see to the collection of such news as fairly may be said to come within these divisions. In this he is assisted by a special staff. Next in importance come the subeditors. Their duty is to receive the parcels of news which correspondents in all parts of the kingdom send them; to cut these down, so as to make them go into the space which can be spared for them, to correct their grammar, and, generally, to make them presentable to the public. Then there are telegraphic despatches, which are continually coming from everywhere; and more especially those sent in by reporters away on office business. All these must be sorted and made into suitable "copy," and this is their work. They must also take care that suitable local correspondents are engaged in all the principal towns and villages throughout the kingdom, and elsewhere; and they exercise a general supervision over all the correspondents and correspondence of the office. We next come to the reporters, perhaps the

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