conduce to the well-being and comfort of the multitude are eagerly canvassed. The faults and vices which disfigure and disgrace even the most advanced forms of civilization are unshrinkingly laid bare, and the proper remedies prescribed. The political conduct of nations and of public men is carefully scrutinized, and every false step that they may make is immediately noted, commented upon, and held up to public reprobation. Religious questions, although, ever since the world began, they have been approached in a very different spirit to those of any other description, and have been debated with greater heat and passion than the bitterest political disputes, and with a lamentable disregard of logic and common sense, are now-a-days treated with a candor and fairness that has never yet characterized them. The press is, in fact, the great physician of the mind, whose duty it is to impart a healthy tone to the inner nature of man, to check the ravages of disease in it, and, wherever it may imagine any traces of poison to lurk, to administer a prompt and immediate antidote. It may not always and at once prosper in its endeavors. Wrong-doing may still, in some cases, prove too strong, vices may have become inveterate, diseases chronic, and the poison may have been too completely absorbed. But not, therefore, is the press discouraged: like Robert Bruce's spider, it returns again and again to its task, and--success does and must crown it in the end. But while faithfully performing these lofty duties, in the discharge of which it employs the trained minds and practised pens of the greatest literary talent of the time, the press has other functions, which, if not of such paramount importance, yet possess no small utility and value. By no means the least of these is that of merely furnishing the news of the day; and that this was the primary intention of the newspaper its very name proves. Comment, argument, and reasoning were after additions. There are thousands of persons at the present day even, who patronize a newspaper solely for its news, and who do not trouble their heads about any other portion of its contents. The births, marriages, and deaths are eagerly perused by many who expect to meet in that domestic chronicle with the names of their friends and acquaintances. The court news and the movements of royalty and the upper ten thousand have great charms for a large section of the community. Accidents and offences and sensation headings, such as 'horrible murder,' 'melancholy suicide,' 'terrific explosion,' 'fatal shipwreck,' 'awful railway collision,' and the like, have powerful attractions for that class which is--alas for human nature!--only too numerous, and which likes to sup full of horrors--in print. In the same category with these may be placed police news, and the proceedings in the divorce court, the full reports of which are a blemish from which not even the greatest of English journals are free. There have been found able and