In order to become a successful Journalist of a certain sort, it is only necessary that a man should in early life provide himself with a front as brazen as the trumpet which he blows to announce to the world his merits and his triumphs. It is, of course, essential that he should rid himself of any trace of sensitiveness that may remain to him after a youth about which the only thing certain is its complete obscurity, in order that no hint may be sufficiently broad to fit in with the tolerant breadth of his impudence, and no affront sufficiently pointed to pierce the skin with which Nature and his own industry have furnished him. Literary culture must be eschewed, for with literary culture come taste and discrimination--qualities which might fatally obstruct the path of this journalistic aspirant. For it must be assumed that in some of its later developments journalism has entirely cast off the reticence and the modesty which successive generations of censors have constantly held to have been characteristic of an age that is past. Indeed, while it is established that in 1850 the critics of the day fixed their thoughts with pleasure on the early years of the century, though they found nothing but abuse for the journalism of their own time, it is curious to note that many of those who hurl the shafts of ridicule and contempt at the present period have only words of praise for 1850. Without, however, going so far as these stern descendants of CATO, it may be affirmed that the porpoise-hided Jack of all Journalisms, as we know him, never had a greater power, nor exercised it over a larger scope with smaller scruple than to-day.