Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/475

 Rise of Metropolitan Journalis»i 465 Independent journalism, as represented first by the Sun and Heratd, had won a complete victory over old-fashioned partisan journalism. The time had forever departed when an Albany Re- gency could tune the press of the state as easily and simply as Queen Elizabeth used to tune the English pulpits. The partisan editor could no longer expect to rule as absolutely over the polit- ical opinions of his readers as the priest had once ruled over men's religious opinions. As James Parton phrased it, " An editorial is only a man speaking to men ; but the news is Providence speaking to men." For good or for ill, the victory of Bennett's Herald came to mean this exaltation of fact over opinion ; it meant the recognition of journalism as a profession, as a profession with an end and aim in it- self alone, utterly separate from merely political or religious pur- poses. That victory of Bennett's Herald helped to introduce into the world an ideal of devotion to journalism, i. e., to truth-telling for its own sake, to which neither Bennett nor his paper could ever lay serious claim. Bennett was often little better than a mountebank ; his channel of truth discharged its contents without discrimination, sometimes clear water and sometimes the filth of a sewer. The stream cannot rise higher than its source ; and no newspaper can be better than its dominant mind. We may regret that the cultured Bryant did not assume the prerogative of holding the mirror up to nature, did not transform the Evening Post into a keyboard across whose surface ran all the wires of human thought and passion. But the stubborn fact remains that the unmoral Bennett had this capacity for successful enterprise and had shaken off every ambition but the journalistic one. The virtuous Bryant had neither the capacity for such enterprise nor the freedom from distracting bondage to two or even more masters. Charles H. Levermore.