THE ROMAN JOURNAL
When we study the ancient societies we are delighted to recognise that on certain sides they resemble ours. This is what establishes a sort of sympathetic understanding between past centuries and our own; we are more closely attached to men like ourselves; we take more pleasure in their company, and we understand them better when we explain them by ourselves. But it is impossible for us not to observe how on many other sides we differ from them, and, though nothing may be more natural than these differences, we cannot refrain from surprise. Our surprise is especially great when it is a question of one of those usages, or institutions rather, which have entered so deeply into our life, that it does not seem to us as if we could get on without them. If it be shown to us that it was unknown to the ancients or that they only knew it imperfectly, we ask ourselves, unable to understand, how they managed to get on without it.
This is what we feel in the case of the press, for example. Who of us to-day could deny himself his newspaper? It has come to be a necessity almost as imperious as eating and drinking. It no longer suffices to receive it morning and evening; there are some at Paris which succeed each other from hour to hour, and there are people to be found who always buy that of the last moment, so as to be the better informed. Our curiosity has been excited by the very satisfactions it has had; it has grown insatiable. For our pleasure it must catch reports in their flight; we want to be told about everything and by every means. As scandal has become a habit, indiscretion has become a trade: we
