sages, eternally shut up in the closet of the editorial rooms. He desired to learn of the wise men who from their own brains seemed to materialize intellect and argument for the rulers of the nation, and who were looked to for daily sustenance as parents are by their children. Yet he was studious to avoid the least contact with those feeble, maudlin, snivelling bits of frothy daily vituperation, who now and then stole cold scraps from the feast of learning which these bountiful providers sometimes spread. He desired to hold communion only with the successors of those lawful sovereigns of the journalistic world whose long, fierce struggle for mankind had maintained civil rights as the foundation of the American state. He wanted first to learn what judgment these noble guardians of freedom pronounced over the repudiation of civil rights; above all, he waited with impatient anxiety to learn what light the Argus-eyes of the press had discovered, and in what direction this hundred-handed Briareus, whose proud conquest was liberty and whose offspring was civilization, would hereafter lead the vanguard of emancipated thought.
Our student was courteously received by all the American gentlemen whom he sought, and, after extended discussion with the leaders of public opinion , he could discover no marked diversity among them in their attitude towards the question of the civil rights of the adopted citizens. One of the profoundest representatives of the press, whose treatment of the schemes of political men seemed to our student to resemble a Bengal tiger playing with mice, voiced the prevailing sentiment of his brethren of the press when, in explanation of its apathy upon the subject of civil rights, he replied, with playful irony,—
"Each of our hands is as full as any ordinary school-master's. The big and little children who are under our instruction cannot be kept in order or under any discipline without continual individual watching. All of them are more or less engaged in a variety of monkey-tricks for the applause of their fellows; and no sooner are their unruly sessions closed, and the doors locked on them, than the surrounding country, which is their playground, begins to resound with their canine eloquence.
"The management of the tariff, labor, land, and various other
