deepen. Everybody is served in turn, and the greatest pains are taken by the attendants to make the bathers comfortable. By dressing in machines which are drawn up the disagreeable access to them by plank is avoided, and the toilette is never spoilt by a wave bursting the door open and floating out your shoes. This dressing on shore, too, enables servants to come and assist their mistresses more easily. The machines are comfortable and roomy; there is a hanging-place for your watch, a pincushion and looking-glass beside abundance of pegs; moreover, being of canvas, you do not knock the skin off your knuckles when flourishing about with the towel. You may depend upon it that—much, as I confess, Mr, and Mrs. Mayor astonished me when I first went down to the beach at St. Malo—the French method of sea-bathing, as practised in public, is far preferable to that which is common in England.
“AND BACK AGAIN.”
“The sentence of the court is,” said the Judge to a very hardened criminal, “that you be tied to the cart’s tail, and whipped from one end of this town to the other.”
“Thank ye, my lord,” instantly exclaimed the culprit, impudently. “Thank ye, old Wigsby; now you’ve done your worst.”
“And back again,” added the Judge, composedly, and as if in continuation of his speech.
It is not on record whether the criminal made any further observations, or whether this display of the resources of the bench induced him to hold his tongue, lest the sentence should receive another member.
The story always comes back to one’s recollection when a certain newspaper arrives from New York. One cannot help wishing, in the interest of the two great and glorious nations whose common language is prostituted to the use of the journal in question, that its conductors stood in the place of the individual for whose benefit the Judge appended the four syllables to his sentence. At this moment, when every honest man on both sides of the Atlantic is doing his best to prevent the irritability and soreness, which have been produced between England and the Americans, from becoming an incurable wound, it is difficult to express, with becoming moderation, a just judgment upon such a print as the “New York Herald.” Such a mouthpiece as the Judge could most fittingly convey English sentiment upon the subject. But as the brief address which he could make to the parties interested is not likely to be delivered at present, the next best thing is to show some of the reasons why it would be peculiarly appropriate. If one cannot get an offender whipped, it is something to point out to society that he richly deserves it.
English readers rarely read an American paper. The aspect of the article is not very inviting. The exceedingly small print deters most persons except those who have an object in struggling through it, and the staring summary of the contents, in large letters at the commencement of the journal, gives an idea of vulgarity and clap-trap. This idea, of course, arises from mere association. We are accustomed to our own broadsheet, with its eminently readable columns, and to the absence of any attempt at “sensation,” to use an odious word which had better be left to the play-bills. The American paper is, in many respects, a triumph of typography, and the mass of printing which is presented to you for a nominal price is extraordinary. But it is difficult even for a determined reader to become as pleasantly familiar with a New York journal as he is with his own “Times.” He has to master a good deal of local phraseology, and a good deal more of less tolerable local slang, and he is seldom quite sure that amid the ever-shifting sands of the small politics of the States he is safe on his nomenclature. The nickname of to-day may mean something else to-morrow; the modifications of Whig and Tory which have taken us a century would take the Americans a fortnight to effect. Then the contractions and abbreviations which a fast nation likes are troublesome unless you keep the eye in constant practice, and can recollect instinctively that Mr. Brown, Va, and Mr. Jones, Ky, means gentlemen from Virginia and Kentucky. But all these difficulties are comparative trifles—an American is not bound to produce a paper that shall be pleasant reading in London—and if you like to stick to the tiles as they come over, you will soon be tolerably easy with your American reading. Was it not Porson who complained that, although he knew as much Greek as most people, he could not exactly skim off the meaning of Greek at sight as he would the meaning of a newspaper? Work hard, and you will read your American newspaper about as comfortably as Porson could read Greek.
These remarks apply generally to the American press. The “New York Herald” assumes to be the leader and type of all the rest. The assumption is as impudently false as most of the statements of the journal, for many American papers are written by gentlemen, and their temperate and scholarly writing presents a pleasant contrast to the ignorance, and violence, and brutality of the “Herald.” But its sale is enormous, and its influence upon the half-educated millions—educated up to the unfortunate stand-point of being able to read and understand, but not to judge—is very great. At the present time the efforts, scarcely disguised, of the “Herald,” are directed to the object of producing or increasing ill-will between the North and England. Whether that paper is actually hired with Southern money to do this, or whether its policy be merely dictated by a desire to extend its sale by pandering to the worst feelings of the worst men, we have no means of knowing. The “Herald” was, but a short time ago, entirely in the interest of the South, when the Southerns had the mastery in the Government. The foulest abuse was lavished upon the present President, and he who is now the Herald’s “honest Abe,” and “our manly and patriotic chief governor,” was then an “ignorant old woodchopper,” a “stupid clown,” and a “Forcible Feeble.” The conversion of the paper was effected with weather-cock celerity, and it is now as vituperative in behalf of Mr. Lincoln as it used to be against him; but its dearest sympathies are with