If that most strange, and in some of its aspects rather sordid, miracle of modern civilisation, the Newspaper Press, interests the pilgrim to England, let him betake himself to London, where in Fleet Street practically all the history of the beginnings of journalism has centred. All the world has newspapers nowadays--one of my own earliest memories of adult life was an invitation to edit a paper at Bangkok in Siam. There are mighty organs of public opinion at Fiji, Honolulu; and, though I have not yet heard of a paper published in Thibet, there must surely be one in print by now. But England saw the birth of journalism in its modern sense, saw the first beginnings of that eager hound which dogs the footsteps of civilisation day by day and night by night, rending aside every veil, "making" news for itself when the supply of murders and wars and scandals runs short, devouring whole forests day by day in its appetite for paper. Those old Pressmen of Fleet Street had probably no prophetic vision of the present-day newspaper when they were seized with the idea that the gossipy news-letters with which town mice amused country mice should be combined with the thundering pamphlets which used the printing-press to campaign against tyrants of State, of Church, of privilege. If they had had, would they have fought their hard fight for the freedom of the Press? I often wonder, holding as I do that there is a good deal of truth in what Balzac wrote of the modern Press in _Un Grand Homme de Province à Paris_:-- Journalism comes first to be a party weapon, and then a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or scruple, like other commercial speculations.... A newspaper is not supposed to enlighten its readers, but to supply them with congenial opinions.... Napoleon's sublime aphorism, suggested by his study of the Convention, "No one individual is responsible for a crime committed collectively," sums up the whole significance of a phenomenon, moral or immoral, whichever you please. However shamefully a newspaper may behave, the disgrace attaches to no one person.... We shall see newspapers, started in the first instance by men of honour, falling sooner or later into the hands of men of abilities even lower than the average, but endowed with the resistance and flexibility of indiarubber, qualities denied to noble genius; nay, perhaps the future newspaper proprietor will be the tradesman with the capital sufficient to buy venal pens. [Illustration: GLASTONBURY ABBEY, SOMERSETSHIRE] But that is away from the question. In itself the fight for the freedom of the Press was a good fight, and London was its campaign ground, and within the precincts of Fleet Street are all its memorials.