For the fatherhood of the newspaper we have to travel to a land and date calculated to rob modern civilization of some of its boastfulness. The oldest known newspaper is the “Tsing-Pao,” or “Peking News,” mention of whose publication is made in Chinese annals as far back as A. D. 713, when it was then, as now, the official chronicler of the acts of the emperor, the doings of the court, and the reports of ministers. It has appeared daily for nearly fourteen hundred years, in the form of a yellow-covered magazine, some 3¾ by 7½ inches in size. The pages number twenty-four, and are printed from wooden movable type. Two editions are published, one on superior paper, for the Court and upper classes; the other on inferior paper, for general readers. Its editorship is in the Grand Council of State, which furnishes to scribes or reporters the news deemed fit for publication. As an official organ, it first finds circulation among the heads of provinces, and is by them further distributed to patrons. This ancient purveyor of news seems to have pretty fully gratified the Chinese taste for that kind of literature; for even at the present day there are few newspapers in the empire published in the native language. The few that have sprung up are confined to the larger cities, as Shanghai, Hongkong, and Peking, where they are liberally patronized. But their circulation and influence do not extend far into the interior, owing to the lack of postal facilities. The modern Chinese newspaper can hardly be called a native enterprise. It grew out of the necessity for a literature and a means of news communication which arose at the time the Chinese ports were forced open to the world’s commerce. As a consequence, a majority of the Chinese publications have found their inception in foreign brains and capital, and remain under the management of foreigners. The same is true of Japan, where the modern native newspaper practically dates from the arrival of the foreigner. But by reason of their greater mental and commercial activity, and the rapidity with which they adjusted themselves to modern modes of civilization, the Japanese have far outstripped the Chinese in their evolution of newspaper literature and enterprise. Whereas, what may be called the first modern Japanese newspaper was founded in 1872, there sprang up in the following twenty years the almost incredible number of 648 newspapers and periodicals, not only due to native capital and enterprise, but under native control. This wonderful growth took place, too, in the face of the severest code of press laws existing in any country.