The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
But printed lies, as well as written, are largely sympathetic. We are
bitter against the press; and surely it needs a greater Luther for its
reformer. But its follies are ours; its corruptions belong to its
patrons. The editor of a paper edits the mind of those that take it. He
cannot help being in a sort of close communion. Perhaps he mainly
borrows the very indignation, not so very pure and independent, with
which he reproves some ingenuous satirist of what may appear indecent in
our fashions of amusement, or unbecoming in the relations of the sexes
or the habits of the young. "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the
hands are the hands of Esau." He is two and more, as we all are, while
he is one, and must not be blamed on his own score alone. The London
"Times," already mentioned, is called the _Thunderer_; but, like the man
behind the scenes at the theatre with his machinery, it thunders as it
is told. How sympathetic are the countless brood of falsehoods
respecting our country in foreign publications is evident from the
cases, too few, of periodicals which, with the same means of
information, rise to a noble accuracy and justice. While the more
virulent, like the "Saturday Review," servile to its peculiar customers,
make a show of holding out against the ever more manifest truth, others,
among which is even the "Times" itself, learn the prudence of an altered
style. When the wind is about to change, an uncertain fluttering and
swinging to and fro may be observed in the vanes. So do many organs
prove what pure indicators they are, as they shake in the breeze of
public opinion. "Stop my paper" is a cry whose real meaning is for the
constituency which the paper represents.
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