They were rough-and-tumble days, sure enough, even for New York. There was no Central Park. Madison Square was “out of town.” Franconi’s Circus, surnamed a “hippodrome,” sprawled its ugly wooden towers, minarets, and sideshows over the ground now occupied by the Fifth Avenue Hotel. _Miss Flora McFlimsy_ of the opposite square had not come into being; nay, Madison Square itself existed in a city ordinance merely, and, like the original of Mr. Praed’s Darnell Park, was a wretched waste of common, where the boys skated and played shinny. The elder Harpers stood in the shoes now worn by their sons, who were off at boarding-school. George Ripley was as larky as John Hay is. Delmonico’s, down-town, was the only Delmonico’s. The warfare between the newspapers constituted the most exciting topic of the time. Bennett was “Jack Ketch,” Raymond was the “little villain,” and Greeley was by turns an “incendiary,” a “white-livered poltroon,” and a “free-lover.” Parke Godwin and Charles A. Dana were managing editors respectively; both scholars and both, as writers, superior to all the rest, except Greeley, who, as a newspaper writer, never had a superior. The situation is changed completely. Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond are dead. Dana and Godwin, both about of an age, stand at the head of New York journalism; while Reid, Marble, and Jennings, all young men, wear the purple of a new era. Will it be an era of reforms? There are signs that it will be. Marble is a recruit. Reid is essentially a man of the world. Jennings is an Englishman. One would think that these three, led by two ripe scholars and gentlemen like Godwin and Dana, would alter the character of the old partisan warfare in one respect at least, and that if they have need to be personal, they will be wittily so, and not brutally and dirtily personal; the which will be an advance. There will never be an end to the personality of journalism. But there is already an end of the efficacy of filth. In this, as in other things, there are fashions. What ill thing, for example, can be said personally injurious of Reid, Marble, Jennings, Bundy, and the rest, all hard-working, painstaking men, without vices or peculiarities, who do not invite attack? On the whole, the newspaper prospect in New York is very good. There will be, perhaps, less of what we call “character” in New York journalism, but more usefulness, honesty, and culture and as the New York dailies, like the New York milliners, set the fashion, these excellent qualities will diffuse themselves over the country. They may even reach Nashville and Memphis. It is an age of miracles. Who can tell?