The Miracle of the Press.
In a speech in New York last week responding to a toast to “The Press,” Wm. Cullen Bryant said:— “I thank this company in the name of the journalists for the compliment just paid to their profession. I do not intend now to pronounce a eulogy on journalism. I can do that in my own journal at any time, but I wish to say a word or two by way of illustrating the convenience of a daily journal to some who are not journalists. You, Mr. President, and other gentlemen who have been heard and applauded this evening, have apparently spoken to a small company of guests in this dining-room. It is not so. Through the journals you have been speaking to thousands, perhaps to millions, and in a few hours those applauses will have been echoed over all the country. The busy agents of the press have taken down the utterances of your lips; while you are asleep, the record will be on its way in a thousand different directions, and with early light will be laid at thousands of doors. Let us go back to the time when there was no printing press, and of course no journals. When Cicero in ancient Rome launched his fiery invectives against Catiline and delivered his grand defense of the poet Archias, small indeed must have been the circle of those who had any conception of his eloquence. But let us suppose that by some inscrutable means a communication could have been established between the world of that day and the world of modern times, and that an accomplished reporter of our daily press and one of Hoe’s steam printing presses could have been quietly smuggled into the Rome of Cicero’s time. We will suppose the stenographer silently to take down in his manuscript those noble examples of ancient eloquence as they were uttered; we will suppose the steam press to perform its office. We will suppose the reporter early the next morning to visit the orator with copies of his oration. He might say to him, “Mr. Cicero”—for your genuine journalist is ever courteous, as is shown by some notable examples—“Mr. Cicero, here is your yesterday’s speech. You suppose that the manuscript in one of the pockets of your toga is the only copy of it in existence, but here you see are several others. Here are your exordium, your arguments, your illustrations, your peroration; and not only those, but here are all your figures of speech, your exclamations, your rounded sentences, your well chosen words, every one as they fell from your eloquent lips, with notes of the applause of the audience in their proper places. The boys are already hawking it in the streets; men are reading it in the wine-shops; the patricians are conning it at their breakfast tables; groups of plebeians are assembled in the forum, where one reads it aloud for the benefit of the rest. To-morrow they will have it at Parthenope and Baiæ, and in the northern cities of Italy; and it will soon be read in our colonies in Gaul, in Spain, and in Africa. Read for yourself!” What would Cicero have said to such a phenomenon? or, rather, what would he have thought, for we may suppose amazement to take away the power of speech? What could he have thought save that there was the interposition of some divinity—Apollo or Minerva—working a miracle to astonish mankind, and confound those who disbelieved in the gods?”