Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/410

358 the warrior, and the monarch, received their education; and thence issued the faint light which was progressively diffused among the rest of the social body. We should never have ceased to depend on cenobitical instruction, if the surprizing and most useful invention of the press had not generalized the ideas of literature, facilitating at the same time both its study and acquisition. The press associated the talents of the whole world; and by its means the meditations of the swarthy Lydian were transmitted to the remote inhabitants of the British isles.

Among the different objects which have occupied the press, no one has been more useful than that of periodical papers, the adoption of which has established, in a certain degree, the epoch of the intellectual acquirements of nations. London alone maintains an infinite number of flying sheets, which appear daily, to record domestic and national transactions, foreign intelligences, and the physical and moral results drawn by certain sages, who examine man in the wide extent of his complicated relations. Spain, France, Germany, Italy, &c. have, as it were, endeavoured to surpass each other in the production of similar works. We shall now see the progress which has been made in this way, in South America.

The city of Mexico has been sufficiently prosperous to support a gazette, a civil diary, and another of natural history. In Lima, the first periodical work which made its appearance, was the Diario Economico (Economical Diary), the production of Don Jayme Bausate, whose plan was chiefly confined to the intelligence of the moment, and the more important events which took place in the country. The date of its earliest publication is not mentioned; but it was soon followed by