From the New York Gazette and General Advertiser of Wednesday, January 1, 1800.
For three centuries and a half following Gutenberg's invention of type little progress was made in the art of printing, and the production of a newspaper in this country in 1800 was accomplished with crude machinery and involved much slow and difficult hand labor. The printing was done on wooden presses of primitive pattern, the type was large and ill formed, the paper used was in many cases inferior to the lowest grade made at the present time, and the production of a large number of copies of any issue was out of the question. No attempt was made in this country to publish a daily paper until 1784, and in 1800 daily editions were issued only in four or five of the larger cities.
From the New York Gazette and General Advertiser of January 1, 1800.
The publications of that period were not newspapers in the sense in which the word is now used, because no particular effort was made to present an account of the happenings of the day. Notices of the arrival and departure of ships, time tables of mail coaches, and brief announcements of matters of political interest filled the limited space devoted to domestic news. Foreign news consisted entirely of matter reprinted from the English journals received by sailing vessels, and therefore weeks or months old when it appeared. The wooden presses used a hundred years ago were operated entirely by hand. After the type had been set it was placed in a frame or "form," with little or no regard to artistic arrangement of headlines or displayed matter. To print the edition, the "form" was placed on the bed of the press and ink spread over the type by the use of hand rollers. The white paper was then dampened with water, sheet by sheet, laid over the stationary "form," and the impression was made by pulling down the upper part of the press with a lever. This work was so slow that a circulation of three or fourhundred copies of a daily newspaper would severely tax the capacity of the press room. The weekly publications were as a rule limited to about the same figures, because the entire mechanical part of production devolved upon one man, who was often owner and editor as well as printer. Some iron presses were imported from England in 1810, and in 1817 George Clymer, of Philadelphia, invented a lever press that was a marked improvement over the crude machines then in general use, reducing the manual labor required and increasing the speed with which printed papers could be turned out. The first power press used in this country was invented by Daniel Treadwell, of Boston, in 1822, and operated by the American Bible Society, the power being furnished by a team of mules. These presses were not adapted to newspaper work, and the first considerable advance in the mechanical part of the business was made in 1829 and 1830, when a Washington hand press was invented. Seventeen years later a cylinder power press was perfected by Richard M. Hoe, and the mechanical ability toproduce periodicals was more than doubled; but during the time when American ingenuity developed the steam engine, the cotton gin, the sewing machine, and the electric telegraph, the progress made in the mechanism of newspaper making was comparatively insignificant. The process of stereotyping was introduced into this country from England in 1813, and a year later the New Testament was printed from plates, but the discovery was not utilized in the publication of newspapers until 1861.
In the first half of the century journalism did not at any time rank as a profession requiring special training, and capacity, and the returns of the counting room were so meager, the cost of material so high, and the appliances in the mechanical department so imperfect, that the publication of newspapers rose only by slow degrees to recognition as a business enterprise in which capital might seek investment with fair prospect of a satisfactory return. Modeled after English publications, the early American newspapers depended, for whatever of reputation or successthey achieved, upon the fame and ability of the editor. The reporting of current events without comment was a secondary feature of the daily papers, and in the weekly publications it was not attempted. Before the days of railroads and prompt and reliable mail service, communication between men in public life and, in fact, all persons of education, was chiefly by letter. The custom grew into a fixed habit, and to a large extent influenced the character of the newspapers published prior to 1850. The editor addressed himself directly to his readers through long editorials upon topics in which he was interested, and his publication was in reality a mere instrument for the expression of opinions. Public men and politicians were encouraged to write letters for publication upon public questions, and a long communication from a man of national reputation was regarded by the editor as matter of far more value to his journal than any amount of news of the events of the day.
A Municipal Notice from the New York Gazette and General Advertiser of January 1, 1800.
The organization and development of political parties in the early part of the second quarter of the century resulted in a rapid increase in the number of newspapers throughout the country. Party leaders found that they could reach a greater number of citizens by means of published letters and speeches than by the primitive process of campaigning by easy stages from one State or county to another. From writing personal letters to friends in their districts, senators and representatives in Congress found that they could keep their constituents better informed of the progress of legislation and politics by means of signed statements in the press of their respective States. The party organ and the personal journal were the immediate natural results of this condition of public life and politics. Every secular journal supported some political party or organization without qualification, and there was little or no independence of the press. The editorfound his subscribers among the members of his own party, and often looked to the organization or the candidate for financial support. Papers were established and editors hired by parties, factions, and individual leaders to advocate some particular plan of finance or tariff, or some general policy for the nation or State. During this stage of American journalism the influence of a paper depended largely upon the reputation, individuality, and force of character of the editor. He needed not to possess any particular qualification for the work, except a general knowledge of the affairs on which he was to write and a command of vigorous language to compel attention to his utterances. For many years the majority of the periodicals of the country, daily and weekly, were critical reviews of the events of the time, rather than mediums for the spread of general information. News of important happenings at home spread through all the States ahead of the circulation of the papers, and the people looked to the latter for review and comment upon events, rather than for detailed accounts of the occurrences. Foreign affairs, as reported in the English publications received in this country, took precedence in the classification of news in the journals of the first half of the century, and local events, often matters that were subsequently recognized as of great historical value, were briefly and too often imperfectly recorded. It is a matter to be regretted that in the days when American statesmen and orators were making history for the world, when the new republic, having passed beyond the stage of experiment, was advancing with prodigious strides toward glorious achievements in material development, the journals of the country kept but an imperfect and often inaccurate record of events that should have been reported in full.
Advertisements from the New York Daily Advertiser of Wednesday, January 1, 1800.
During the first forty years of the present century there was no system of collecting the news for publication, and the capital invested in the newspaper business was insufficient to permit of any extra outlay to obtain reports of events occurring at a distance in advance of the regular mails. Such reports as were obtained were usually voluntary contributions written by a friend of the editor, and often colored or distorted according to the prejudice of the writer. These letters were, almost without exception, semi-editorial in character, the writers indulging freely in comment and expression of opinion upon the event they attempted to record, so that no political or public matter was reported entirely free from partisan coloring. The drivers of mail coaches, the captains of coastwise or river vessels, strolling peddlers, lawyers, surveyors, and wandering missionaries, who made long journeys into the interior and from town to town, were the news reporters of earlydays. When they arrived in a city or town they would tell the latest news from the places they had visited, and the next issue of the local paper would contain a story beginning, "The Rev. Mr. Bland, the traveling missionary, relates," etc., or, "Captain Smith, of the schooner——, reports having heard," etc. Information received in this way might relate to Indian uprisings, fires, floods, crimes, accidents, or political events; but in every case the published account would be interspersed with opinions of the narrator and the comments of the editor who prepared the story for publication. For news of events happening in the larger cities, the journals of the first half of the century depended almost entirely on reprinting from exchanges. They had no regular correspondents anywhere, and a paper published in New York would reprint from the papers of Boston and Philadelphia such of the news of those cities as impressed the editor as being of more than local interest. During the War of 1812, the subsequent Indian wars, and the conflict with Mexico, news of battles and movements of armies in the field was obtained by the slow process of waiting for official reports to the Government or private letters from officers and men at the front. The Mexican War stimulated the public demand for news, increased the circulation of newspapers, and did more than any other event up to that time to arouse the editors of the country to the fact that the people wanted early and complete information of what was going on in the world, rather than individual opinions on general problems. While that struggle was in progress the arrival of the weekly mail in a remote village was an event of importance. The inhabitants would gather in large numbers at the post office, and the meager war news contained in the newspapers would be read aloud. The postmaster or some subscriber to a paper would often post a copy of the latest journal in some conspicuous place in the town, and from that simple beginning there was developed the newspaper bulletin board, where the public may obtain brief information of great events before the full report can be put in type.
The Daily Advertiser of Wednesday, January 1, 1800.Clickherefor larger image
After the division of the voters of the country into organized political parties, the tariff, banking and currency, the acquisition of additional territory, and States rights developed into great national questions, precipitating prolonged and heated discussion by the statesmen of that period. This condition stimulated the growth of a certain class of newspapers, and brought into prominence many writers of ability. The statesmen and politicians of that time turned to the press as an available and valuable medium through which to disseminate arguments. They sought to convincerather than to inform the public, and the journalism of that period made no substantial progress except as an instrument for the development and exploitation of writers of force and influence. Whatever power the press exerted in shaping events, whatever it accomplished in swaying the public mind in the days when nullification was scotched and territorial expansion was accepted as a fixed policy of the majority, should be credited to the genius and individuality of the leading writers of that time, rather than to a full presentation of facts. The years of agitation of the question of slavery still further developed individuality in journalism. The newspaper became an instrument for educating the people on certain public questions, and an influence upon public opinion by means of editorial writing. That was the period of so-called great editors, of whom Horace Greeley may be mentioned as a conspicuous example, who made and unmade politicians with their praise or criticism, who shaped the policy of political parties, controlled conventions and nominated candidates, changed the current of their country's history at critical points, and in many ways wielded an influence in public affairs greater than that of the leading statesmen. The editor of that time was greater than his newspaper, and the powerof the press was in reality the force of character of the individual exerted through the instrument within his control.
From 1830 to 1860 the progress made in the mechanical department of the business was slow and unimportant in comparison with recent inventions. Cylinder presses came into general use for the printing of daily papers, but the weekly and monthly publications continued to use the primitive hand machines. The speed of press-work was still limited to a few hundred copies per hour, so that an extensive circulation could not be supplied even if there had been a demand for it. The white paper used was still made entirely of rags, and most of the material was imported from Austria and Italy. The cost of production was high, and few newspapers in the United States were published at a fair profit. The uncertainty of the financial returns from the business greatly retarded its development. Inventors found that their ingenuity would receive more substantial rewards in other fields, and editors and publishers were rarely practical men who could discover imperfections in mechanism and suggest improvements in their own shops. Throughout the first half of the century most of theimproved methods of printing were developed in the establishments of book and job printers. There new presses and all new mechanical devices were first installed, and the newspaper followed, instead of leading, in the work of material progress in the art.
J. Russel's Gazette of Monday, September 1st, 1800.Clickherefor larger image
To the New York Herald is generally credited the departure from old-time methods that resulted in the creation of newspapers devoted entirely to the publication of news, the reporting of the happenings of the world day by day. The innovation was not well received by the editors, who believed that the public cared more for opinions than a record of events. The new method proved popular, however, and the development of the newspaper from the personal journal and party organ dates from that time. The founder of the Herald and the new school of journalism spent money to obtain the news of the world ahead of the ordinary channels of communication. He established a system of special couriers, employed correspondents, and made the collection of reports of events of general interest a matter of first importance in the business of making a newspaper. Other editors followed the new movement slowly, and often with much doubt and hesitation, but those who stood still and refused to supply their readers with the news were in time compelled to go out of the business.
From the New York Evening Post of November 16, 1801.
When the civil war began the new order of journalism had progressed far enough to create a general demand for a full report of the progress of that great conflict. All the larger cities of the country were connected by railroads and telegraph lines, the political agitation for five years prior to the beginning of hostilities had aroused the people to a feeling of intense interest in the struggle, the circulation of the daily papers had increased almost to the limit of their mechanical capacity, and every condition favored a rapid development of the business with a certainty of profitable returns. The leading editors of the country still exerted a far-reaching influence in public affairs, and they were consulted bythe highest officers of the Government; but the time had come when the people wanted the news, rather than individual opinions. American genius and ingenuity responded promptly and adequately to the demand, and from the time of the civil war the development of the newspaper has been a marvel of science and art. The telegraph came into general use for the transmission of news, correspondents and artists were sent to the front with all the armies, the men employed in Washington to write their own views of public questions were instructed to send to their papers only a record of the great events then transpiring around them, and in a month, or at most a year, American journalism was well advanced upon a new era of marvelous development. The time when the opinions, the power in phraseology, or the individuality of one man could alone make a daily newspaper a financial, literary, or political success had passed. The press had become an institution, journalism a profession, and the publication of newspapers a practical business requiring and rewarding enterprise and sagacity.
New York Evening Post of Monday, November 16, 1801.Clickherefor larger image
With the sudden demand for more papers came rapid progress in the mechanical department of the business. Double cylinder presses capable of printing twenty thousand papers an hour were soon perfected, folding machines came into general use, stereotyping was employed to save time, labor, and wear of type, white paper was made from wood pulp at greatly reduced cost, and the progress in all departments of the business was by leaps and bounds until every demand was more than supplied and new expectations created. From that time forward invention kept pace with every increase of circulation. As soon as one press was found inadequate or imperfect, the manufacturers were ready to set up a faster and better one. As competition reduced the selling price of the newspaper, invention supplied every demand for the material of production at a reduced rate. The impetus to circulation imparted by the civil war created a new reading public, which rapidly grew to include every person who could read and a demand for all the news of the world once created would not be denied. The collection of news was quickly reduced to a system and perfected, until to-day no event of importance occurring in any part of the world is omitted from the daily record of current history.
A Bookseller's Advertisement from the New York Evening Post of Friday, December 11, 1801.
The great cost of collecting news at the front and transmitting by telegraph full reports of battles during the civil war caused certain newspapers in New York city to enter into an arrangement to receive reports in duplicate and share expenses. Then the cost was further reduced by selling the news to papers in other cities. That was the beginning of the Associated Press, a planof newspaper combination that ultimately made the buying and selling of news a great commercial enterprise. Within a few years after the close of the war this system had been developed until practically all the daily newspapers of the country were interested in it or subscribers to the news collected and sold. This feature of the business continued to grow until agencies for the collection and transmission of news were established throughout the world. Similar associations were formed in England and on the continent of Europe, and news exchanged with the American organization. In the United States the business was developed until newspapers of particular sections of the country and even those of single States formed associations on the principle of mutual benefit for the collection of full reports of all important events within the territory where they circulated. At the present time the system has been perfected until the great news agencies of the country receive reports of important events from every quarter of the globe with a degree of promptness and accuracy rendered possible only by thoroughness of organization and the constant exercise of the keenest intelligence. The collection of all the news of the world would not be possible under any other plan, but the American newspapers, having created a demand for the news, were the first to devise a system of obtaining it promptly at a cost that made possible the publication of daily papers at a profit in almost every town in the country. Brief reports of all important events are transmitted by cable or telegraph to a central office in New York, Washington, or Chicago, where they are condensed or elaborated, as occasion may require, and then sent out over special telegraph wires to papers all over the country that are subscribers to the service. The larger papers of the country, however, do not rely upon this service alone. They are represented by special correspondents not only in all the chief cities of the United States, but in London. Paris, Berlin, and other news centers of the Old World.
An Eden Musée of 1801. From the New York Evening Post of December 23, 1801.
The development of the newspaper into a medium for recording day by day every event of human interest was so rapid during the civil war and the stirring times immediately thereafter that many faults of form and detail remained. The journalism of that period was a new departure, and the men who created it had no precedent to guide them, but all the time there was a steady and intelligent effort to improve in all directions. The efforts of the leading men in the profession, influenced by conditions and surroundings, resulted in the creation of what were for a time known as schools of journalism—that is, one man set up an ideal, and another man strived to create a journal of another character. Theaim of all was to publish the general news of the day, but political influences were still strong enough to control editorial policy, and ultra-partisan and sectional views were incorporated in the record of events. There were still editors of great power and influence in politics and public affairs, and they tried to shape the current of the new condition by the force of editorial writing. A number of editors, of both the old and new order, for a time followed the policy of subordinating to partisan politics all other features of the newspaper. They sought to make the press the dominant influence in politics, and to do that they presented in their journals only one side of public and party questions. They undertook to think and to reason for their readers, and their partisan and sectional views were reflected in the news columns of their papers. So long as party feeling ran high this style of journalism was popular and successful, but the newspaper, being in the nature of an educator of the masses, soon set the people to thinking for themselves, and created a demand for the news of public and political events without the color of individual opinion. The change from intense partisanship to partial or complete independence of editorial utterance has come slowly, and is still under way. To-day there is no great daily newspaper in the United States so entirely subservient to a political party as to support any man or measure without question or protest. Politicians fear this spirit of independence, and therein lies the secret of the great power of the press in public affairs. The most powerful and successful journals are those that combine absolute fairness and honesty with independence.
So-called schools of journalism, in the rapid development of the profession during the past twenty years, have merged into one general system or plan, which is to get all the news and publish it. Journals may be graded or classified by their treatment of news and their judgment as to the intelligence and moral character of the reading public.
A detailed record of the development of the mechanical part of the newspaper business during the past thirty years would be almost a synopsis of all progress in science and art. The newspaper printing press of to-day, which prints, cuts, folds, and counts ninety-six thousand papers per hour, with one man to operate it, is the mechanical wonder of the age. It is justly regarded as the greatest piece of machinery that the ingenuity of man has yet devised. Type is no longer set by hand in the making of a newspaper, the letters being formed from the metal direct and cast in finished lines by machinery.
Octuple Stereotype Perfecting Press and Folders(printing on both sides of the paper). Capacity 96,000 4-, 6-, or 8-page papers per hour; down to 24,000 24-page papers per hour. A, paper rolls (Webb's), sometimes five miles long; B, printing cylinders, each one carrying sixteen plates (pages); C, blanket or impression cylinders; D, inking motion (fountain and inking rollers); F, folding mechanism or formers (four of these); G, deliveries (four of these); H, controlling lever; I, bar slitting, pasting, collating, and collecting devices (between press and folders).(We are indebted to the courtesy of R. Hoe & Co. for permission to reproduce this photograph. This picture and the succeeding one represent the most powerful and complete printing presses which have been constructed up to date.)
Studying the perfection and magnitude of the newspaper printingpress of to-day it is difficult to realize that little more than half a century of time and invention stand between this piece of mechanism, that seems to work with human intelligence, and the Washington hand press, upon which the production of printed sheets was a matter of slow and arduous labor. The great metropolitan newspapers of to-day are printed by monster machines weighing thirty tons, composed of four thousand separate pieces of steel, iron, brass, wood, and cloth. In the great printing-press factory of R. Hoe & Co. eighteen months' time is required to build one of the modern presses, and the cost of it would have more than paid for all the newspaper printing presses in use in the United States at the beginning of the century. These monster machines are known as quadruple presses, which means that four complete presses have been built into one. When in operation, white paper is fed to them automatically from rolls, and this paper, with a speed greater than the eye can follow, is converted into the finished newspaper, printed on both sides, cut into sheets, pasted together, folded, counted, and deposited in files of fifty or one hundred at one side of the press. White paper is fed to the press from two points, and finished newspapers are delivered at two places on the opposite side. An idea of the speed with which the work is done may be gained by watching the printed papers fall from the folder. They drop so fast that the eye, no matter how well trained, can not count them. These presses have a capacity of ninety-six thousand four-, six-, or eight-page papers per hour, and forty-eight thousand ten-, twelve-, or sixteen-page papers. Their mechanism is so perfect and so carefully adjusted that the breaking of a narrow band of tape in the folder, the loosening of a nut, the slightest bending of a rod, friction in a bearing, or any other derangement, no matter how slight, is instantly apparent to the skilled machinist in charge.
Sextuple Stereotype Perfecting Press and Folders(with color attachment for printing three additional colors on outside pages). It prints per hour 48,000 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, or 12-page papers, 36,000 16 page papers, or 24,000 14-, 16-, 20-, or 24-page papers—all delivered folded, pasted, and counted. Also magazines with pages half the size of the newspaper pages, one half the pages printed in four colors and the other half in one color, at the rate of 48,000 of 8, 12, 16, 20, or 24 pages, and 24,000 of 28, 32, 40, or 48 pages, delivered folded to page size, cut open at the heads, bound with wire staples, and counted.(We are indebted to the courtesy of R. Hoe & Co. for permission to reproduce this photograph.)
The white paper used in making the newspapers of to-day is manufactured from wood pulp and is put up in long rolls, wound about an iron cylinder that can be adjusted in place at one end of the press. These rolls contain from two to four miles of paper, and weigh from eight hundred to twelve hundred pounds each. As soon as one roll is used up another is lifted into place, the loose ends of the two are pasted together, and, after a stop of less than two minutes, the great press is again belching forth finished newspapers at the rate of sixteen hundred a minute, or two hundred and sixty-six each second.
Almost every invention and device of recent years in connection with the use of electricity is in some way utilized in the production and distribution of the daily newspapers. The evolutionof journalism having finally established the fact that the chief function of the daily newspaper is to publish the news of the world, the problem of the business is how to obtain the news surely, accurately, and promptly. The ocean cable has taken the place of the sailing vessel, the trained correspondent has succeeded the occasional contributor, the electric telegraph and telephone have entirely superseded the mail in the transmission of domestic news, and every event of human interest throughout the civilized world is placed before millions of readers within a few hours of its actual occurrence.
The collection of news is not restricted by any question of the cost of obtaining it. Fifty years ago it was considered a remarkable feat for one newspaper to obtain information of an important event in advance of competitors. To-day it is a matter of comment if any newspaper fails to publish all the news desired by its readers. If a war is fought on any part of the earth there are reporters on the firing line, and no expense is spared in collecting and transmitting by the quickest method available full reports of any event of world-wide importance. To-day the hiring of special trains, the stringing of a special line of telegraph wire, the charter of a ship, the fitting out of an exploring expedition, or any other great enterprise in the way of collecting information for the newspapers of the United States, is so much a part of the everyday business of journalism that such things are accepted as a matter of course, or cause no more than a passing comment.
Half a century ago the result of a national convention or election was not known all over the country for weeks afterward. In the case of a national convention to-day, telegraph wires lead from the convention hall into the offices of all the newspapers in the larger cities. An operator sits near the platform of the presiding officer, and with a muffled key he sends over the wire a full report of the proceedings, with a description of every incident of interest. At the other end of the line is an operator at a typecasting machine receiving the report and putting it into lines as fast as received. When a candidate for President has been nominated, extra editions of the daily papers are selling on the streets of cities a thousand miles away almost before the applause for the winning man has died out in the convention hall. The people of every city and town in the United States where a newspaper is published would feel themselves cheated of their rights if they failed to receive news of the result of an election by midnight of the day on which the ballots were cast.
In enterprise and originality the journalism of America leads the world at the end of the nineteenth century. As a profession,it commands, with alluring prospects of fame and fortune, the services of men of genius and learning. Those who enter it from choice succeed or fail quickly. It is a life of activity, a work where energy and intelligence are essential qualifications, and honor and honesty are certain of reward. There is no enduring place in the profession for hypocrisy, indolence, or mediocrity.
ByGEORGES PERROT.
Georges Perrot is one of the leading art writers and teachers of France. Born in 1832, not far from Paris, he was graduated from the École Normale about 1855, and was then for three years at the French School at Athens. From his return to the present day he has occupied, with honor and distinction, many positions in the world of letters. At present he is a member of the Institut, an officer of the Légion d'Honneur, a professor à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris, and the director of the École Normale Supérieure. He is best known to scholars outside of France by the magnificent work on the History of Art in Antiquity, which he is writing, assisted by Charles Chipiez, architecte du gouvernement, and of which seven superb quartos have already appeared. (Hachette et Cie.) In 1891, by a decree of the Minister of Public Instruction, the study of the history of the fine arts was introduced into a section of the studies pursued at the lycées. In an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1899, Perrot pleads for an increase of the time assigned to the study and for its introduction into other parts of the curriculum.I have translated those pages of the article which are of general interest as a contribution to a subject which is deservedly attracting the attention of American institutions of learning.D. Cady Eaton.
Georges Perrot is one of the leading art writers and teachers of France. Born in 1832, not far from Paris, he was graduated from the École Normale about 1855, and was then for three years at the French School at Athens. From his return to the present day he has occupied, with honor and distinction, many positions in the world of letters. At present he is a member of the Institut, an officer of the Légion d'Honneur, a professor à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris, and the director of the École Normale Supérieure. He is best known to scholars outside of France by the magnificent work on the History of Art in Antiquity, which he is writing, assisted by Charles Chipiez, architecte du gouvernement, and of which seven superb quartos have already appeared. (Hachette et Cie.) In 1891, by a decree of the Minister of Public Instruction, the study of the history of the fine arts was introduced into a section of the studies pursued at the lycées. In an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1899, Perrot pleads for an increase of the time assigned to the study and for its introduction into other parts of the curriculum.
I have translated those pages of the article which are of general interest as a contribution to a subject which is deservedly attracting the attention of American institutions of learning.
D. Cady Eaton.
Written and spoken language, the language of which the signs are words, is not the only language which man uses to convey his ideas. There is also the language of forms, which, with no less clearness and force, conveys the conceptions of the intellect and the sentiments of the heart. We study the history and the literature of bygone people for the purpose of acquiring a better knowledge of ourselves, and this knowledge is secured by becoming conscious of the different states of mind, to use a modern expression, through which our ancestors have passed. Even the most elementary and the most remote of these successive conditions are, unconsciously perhaps, represented in the depths of our being by beliefs and customs for which the present order and progress of civilization can not account.[16]
Not to go back to the Quaternary period or to the cave dwellers, there are many of these mental ideas or conditions which would remain hidden from the inquiry of the historian if he were limited to written testimony. One example may suffice: the discoveries of Schliemann, at Troy, Mycenæ, and Tiryns have rescued from oblivion a primitive Greece of which the Greeks themselves had preserved but a faint remembrance. Thus has been given to the Homeric epoch a background of many centuries. Now this Greece, contemporary of the Thutmoses and the Ramses of Egypt, anterior to not only Grecian history but even to Grecian tradition, could not write, but could work and use stone; could hew wood and fashion it for carpentry; could mold and bake clay; could melt and hammer lead, bronze, gold, and silver; and could carve ivory. Every bit of material fashioned by the instruments of this period has the value of an authentic document. How society was constituted, the life that was led, what notions were held of the hereafter—all these things are revealed by the marks the hands of man have left upon everything he touched. The colossal walls of Tiryns, the majestic funeral cupolas of Mycenæ, the divisions of the royal abodes of which the outlines can still be traced on the surface of the soil, and the arrangement of the sepulchres hidden beneath it all testify. So, too, the weapons, the instruments, the vases, and the jewels which have been found scattered about amid the ruins of the buildings or buried in the tombs. Thanks to all these monuments, we are beginning to recognize in a shadow which year by year glows with a brighter light the features which characterized the world of Achæan heroes of which the image, transformed by oral tradition and singularly enlarged by power of invention, is reflected in the Iliad and the Odyssey.
From these obscure and remote ages let us transport ourselves to the Greece of Pisistratus, of Pericles, and of Alexander. Instructors of youth tell of the losses which have been made, and of how small a part of the literary work of Greek genius has escaped the great shipwreck of antiquity. Should they not also indicate where precious supplements of information may be found to fill the voids of written tradition? There are many variations of important myths, hardly mentioned in passing by obscure epitomizers of the lower centuries, which have furnished to ceramic artists subjects for pictures which make us acquainted with personages and with episodes of which writers have hardly left a trace. But even if we had the works of the cyclic poets, all of which have perished; if we had the lyric poets, of whom only Pindar has survived, and Bacchylides whose fragments are to-day the joy of Hellenists; if we had the whole of tragedy, of which we have but the remnants;if we had all of that comedy which is represented by Aristophanes alone; if we had all of the more ancient comedy, all of the middle period and all of the new, with Menander who since the Renaissance is the regret of all critics of fine apprehension—all this poetry could not exhaust the multiple fecundity and the prodigious richness of the imagination which created it. If malevolent Fortune had decreed the destruction of every bit of Greek plastic art we should have been condemned to perpetual ignorance of many aspects and methods of the Greek soul. Is there anything in literature worth the little clay figures of Tanagra in making clear how the Greeks apprehended and enjoyed female beauty: how they loved it not only in the noble and serious types of a Pallas or an Aphrodite, but even as presented by the humble inhabitants of little villages in the gracefulabandonof their everyday life and in the liberty of their most ordinary attitudes? If we base an opinion of the religion of the Greeks only upon the epithets used by poets in defining the gods and upon actions they attributed to them, we run the risk of judging wrongly. In contemplating their images we obtain clearer notions of the ideas associated with each divine type. Alas! we do not possess the great works of Phidias which according to men of authority made men more religious—the Athene of the Parthenon and the Zeus of Olympia. But even in the reduced copies of these two masterpieces which have reached down to our time we can divine how the master expressed in the one the idea of calm and luminous intelligence and of supreme wisdom, and in the other the idea of that sovereign force in repose and of that omnipotence, tempered by goodness, which were conceived to exist in the sovereign of the universe, the father of gods and men.
In subsequent paragraphs Perrot imagines the Greek statues of the Louvre thus addressing a classical student:
"Young man, you who are studying Greece in Homer and Plato, in Sophocles and Herodotus, do not pass us by so quickly. We also belong to that Greece which you discern and which you seek in their writings, of which not without difficulty you decipher the prose and the verse. To understand and to love us, to read in our features the thoughts of which we are the expression, to seize in the modeling of our flesh and in the pure outline of our limbs the secret of the genius which created us, no grammar nor dictionary is needed; only apply yourself to the education of your eye. In this exercise, in this apprenticeship, you will find a pleasure which will become more and more keen as you become more capable of perceiving rapidly the finest gradations. If you aspire to become an authorized interpreter of Greek genius, do not fear thatyou may be losing time. When, by long and affectionate intercourse, you shall have sufficiently entered into our intimacy to be able at any given hour to evoke in your spirit, as clearly as if we stood before you, a vision of the forms which shall have become dear to you, then the images which shall be awakened in your memories when you read the poets will be akin to those which the same recitals and the same epithets suggested to the Greeks who saw us born. To them you will be drawn by similarity of impression. You will be nearer to them, nearer to thinking and feeling after their fashion, at least by moments, than the most subtle grammarian or the most learned Hellenist who never has seen us."
Turning from Greece to Italy, Perrot derives a no less striking lesson from the statues of Roman emperors:
"Is there a lesson, though given by the most learned professor, that could cause to live before us all the life of the Rome of the Cæsars as do these effigies? In the long succession of portraits which embrace three centuries of history the differences of times and of men are contrasted more keenly and more vividly than in the recitals of ancient authors or in the dissertations of modern erudites. Augustus and Tiberius, Constantine and Theodosius, all bore the same title—'imperator'; all were called consuls, Cæsars, Augusti,patres patriæ, etc. Nevertheless, from the first to the fourth centuries the supreme power was greatly modified. Volumes have been written to explain the change, but there is nothing that makes it so clear as the comparison of the images of these princes. Augustus, in perhaps the most beautiful of all his statues, calledde Prima Porta, has his head, arms, legs, and feet bare. Over the soldier's short tunic he wears a cuirass, and over it is thrown the military mantle of command. He is represented as supreme chief haranguing his troops. Another statue may represent him as a simple citizen, clothed with the toga and holding in his hand the manuscript of the discourse he proposes reading to the senate. The statues still show forth the Roman Republic, at least the customs and the style of it. Most vividly is the spirit and also the deception of the system perceived which, while investing a single individual with a power almost limitless, affects for two centuries a preservation of ancient liberties. Turn from these to an image of one of the successors of Diocletian, one who preferred to reside in Constantinople, the new capital of the empire. Do not seek his image in one of the ceremonial statues where, by force of routine, the sculptor may perchance have preserved classic rules; but in monuments of another order, where the artist kept closer to reality, in miniatures adorning manuscripts, in mosaics, in ivory diptychs, etc. There you will find figures which have nothing leftof the simplicity and nobility which Rome borrowed from Greece, but figures which in some particulars recall the old art of Asia, and in others already announce the art of the middle ages. The head is encircled with a diadem. The body and the limbs are entirely hidden by clinging draperies which are very long and very narrow. The materials which form this species of case are decorated from top to bottom with rich embroideries in the shape of medallions, flowers, animals, and even persons. There is no more deception; we are no longer in Rome; fictions so long preserved have finally disappeared; the empire has turned into an Oriental despotism.
"Between the two extremes of the series, how many degrees are there which furnish the very best commentaries of history? The heads of all the Cæsars, even those of Claudius, the accidental scholar, and of Caligula, the wicked and witty fool, are aristocratic. They show the nobility and the pride of race. You recognize in them the descendants of those grand patrician families which at first seemed to hold exclusively the right to give masters to the Romans. With Vespasian, scion of a middle-class family pushing its way into second-class public positions, the advent of a new order is evident. Vespasian has the round and smooth, double-chinned face of the chief clerk of a commercial or banking establishment. Trajan has the features of a soldier who has probably pushed his way to the front from the ranks. Hadrian, who turns his head to hear the better, whose bright eyes gleam even in the marble, whose half-opened mouth seems in the act of speech, shows the features of a learned and intelligent scholar. Marcus Aurelius, with his bristling hair and beard, would be taken for a Greek philosopher. In Caracalla's looks there is derangement. His eye betrays that murderous and fantastic frenzy which seized more than one emperor, especially of those who from early youth had been exposed to the temptations of absolute power.[17]
"Not to personages alone do pictured monuments give life.The same character of sensible reality is imparted to the frame and to the surroundings of the picture, to all the theater where these actors played their parts. Of this truth no one of our teachers, when I was a collegian, seemed to have a suspicion. There was not an illustration in the cold and dry compendiums which were placed in our hands. I can almost ask myself if, when I studied Greek and Roman history, I was really convinced that Sparta and Athens, Rome and Carthage had actually existed. I certainly did not know how or where to place them in space, what idea to have of their situation, or of the outlines made by the ridges of their walls, their houses, and their temples. All these cities were to me vague shadows, floating between heaven and earth. No one of them answered to a distinct and defined form.
"If this be the case with classical antiquity, in spite of the color and splendor of the narratives of its writers, how much more difficult is it to know and understand France of the middle ages when condemned to study it in its literary work alone! The literature of the period is partly in debased Latin, partly in early French. The French of the day was not the language of the thinkers. The deep thought of the age is not to be found in minstrelsy and ballads. It must be asked of the learned, of philosophers, of theologians, and of sacred writers. But to follow them in the subtle analyses and in the excessive complications of symbolism, in which they delight, requires mental efforts which are made all the more laborious by the artificial character of the church Latin, which no longer continued to renew itself at the source of popular speech. It is impossible to see how such works, in spite of their value to erudition, can be called to take part in the education of the young. It is for this reason that lately, by a judicious innovation, a discreet place has been made in the curriculum for histories and poems written in the common language, for the Chanson de Roland, and for the works of Villehardouin and Joinville. But the student can only read these in translations, or in those adaptations which so modernize the language as to leave but a little of its original flavor, and which therefore make but an imperfect contact between the original work and the mind of the reader. But supposing the scholar capable of mastering the original text: can its formless and superabundant prose, or the tiresome monotone of its flowing dissonances, give him emotions which have the vivacity of those which a page of Tacitus or a song of Virgil gives to those who know even a modicum of Latin? Can they have the power to excite the imagination in the same degree as any strong and concise sentence of the historian, any sonorous and glowing verse of the Roman poet?
"It is only exceptionally and as by flashes that the writings of the middle ages give the impression of true beauty. The conceptions are often grand, but the expression is always weak and dragging. On the other hand, Roman or Gothic churches are not less beautiful after their manner than Greek temples. Their beauty is of another fashion, but many souls are touched more deeply. They manifest no less clearly the power of the religious faith which constructed them. The particular character of Christian faith is shown with singular clearness in their majesty, in the elevation of their vaults, in the half lights which flood them, and in the thousands of figures which populate and animate every surface. As in Greece, the sculptor co-operates intelligently and docilely with the architect and has occupied no less happily the allotted fields. As Phidias and Alcamenes represented on the pediments and friezes of Doric temples the great gods of Greece and the local myths of Athens and Olympia, so anonymous masters, called to decorate the cathedrals of the middle ages, have placed impressive statues on the sides and in thevoussoirsof the portals, in the open galleries which run along the façades, on the top of the pinnacles which throng the roof—in fact, everywhere where space is offered. These statues, distributed in an order regulated by doctrine and tradition, show forth the Saviour, the Virgin, saints and angels, prophets and apostles, and hosts of personages and scenes suggested by Holy Writ or by local and popular legends. Among these images there are many at Bourges, Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, and Nôtre Dame de Paris, which are marvels of severe elegance, of chaste and haughty grace, and of lofty moral nobility. This wonderful statuary has but lately been investigated, exposed, and studied, but already it would be difficult to find a connoisseur unwilling to compare with the most boasted statues of antiquity that admirable image of the teaching Christ of the west portal of Amiens, to which the popular surname has been attached ofle Beau Dieu d'Amiens.
"For evident reasons, French sculpture of the thirteenth century did not, as did Greek sculpture, devote itself to the study and reproduction of the nude. It denied itself this attraction. All figures are clad; but beneath the drapery, which is in fine masses with large folds, the outline and the movement of form are indicated with precision. The principal interest and the rare originality, however, of this sculpture is that it is perhaps the most expressive that has ever existed. This expressiveness appears in the general effect of the pose, in the disposition of the drapery, but especially in the character which the artist has succeeded in giving to the features of the face.
"The august mysteries of the Christian dogma, the poetry of the Old and of the New Testament, the triumphant deaths of martyrs, the miracles of saints and their infinite charity—these things which the middle ages failed to put into clear and intelligible words are fully rendered in sculpture. The work of the chisel is large and firm. Difficulties are not sought, nor are they feared. Whatever be the material, the form is sure. To understand how superior the plastic is to the literary work, and to measure the distance, compare the Amiens statue with the portraits the authors of the Mysteries endeavor to draw of the Son of God. 'What can be more flat than these poor verses, which are nevertheless of the sixteenth century? The authors had good intentions and an apprehension of what should be done, but they were betrayed by the language in which they wrote. The sculptors of the thirteenth century, on the contrary, who possessed fully the grammar of their art, expressed all they felt, and have left us the most divine images of Jesus Christ in existence.'[18]
"Italy of the Renaissance is quite unintelligible to any one who has not measured the place held by art in the preoccupations not only of artists who practice it, but of all men of all conditions—of princes, nobles, tradesmen, and of citizens of most humble occupations. No one in any rank is without a passionate love for plastic beauty. This love was Italy's life and Italy's death. She died of it, because all her sap was consumed in satisfying it. It made her indifferent to her dismemberment, to the hard yoke of her tyrants, to the loss of her political liberties, and of her independence. But, at the same time, it constituted the intensity of her life which was exhausted and renewed again in the ardor with which she pursued her ideal and in her endeavors to realize it under all its aspects. Let him who would wish to obtain an exact idea of this condition reside for a while in Mantua, in Parma, in Sienna, in Florence, or in any other less-known city which nevertheless had its local school of art, its architects, its sculptors, its painters, some of whom, though they only worked for their native city, were not far from manifesting genius.[19]
"The written history of the seventeenth century and its rich literature can not alone give an idea of the situation occupied by Louis XIV in Europe when he was admired, imitated, or rather servilely copied, as pre-eminently the type of the modern king even by those who hated him the most. After two centuries, have wenot seen his wonderful prestige still potent in dominating the sickly mind of Louis II of Bavaria? In his desire to copy his chosen model Louis ruined himself in building palaces. In this folly he showed discrimination. Louis XIV, when dying, may have accused himself of having indulged too great a love for building; but his edifices, with their majestic grandeur and the opulence of their decoration, gave that royal life a frame which had much to do with the dazzling which all Europe experienced when in the presence ofle Roi Soleil. In order to recognize and experience, though but for a moment, a little of the impression felt by all contemporaries, Versailles must be visited; the apartments of the palace, the terraces, and the alleys of the park must be traversed. Thus will be thrown upon this historic figure a light far more brilliant and true than could possibly be the result of learning by heart accounts of all the campaigns of Turenne or Condé, or all the clauses of the treaties of Nimègue and Ryswick.
"The same may be said of the eighteenth century, of which only an incomplete idea can be had without a knowledge of its art. This century, to which Voltaire gave the note, seems to have had no sentiment of poetry. Down to the time of André Chenier everything called poetry was no more than rhymed prose. The imagination, however, did not lose its rights. Like a stream which changes its bed, it withdrew from literature to flow into the arts of design. There it gives evidence of invention and of light and spontaneous grace. Architects adopt plans of happy arrangement. They employ forms of rare elegance both in the elements of construction and in the ornaments which decorate them. Such sculptors as Capperi and Houdon give to portraiture a marvelous intensity of life, while the terra cottas of Clodion, with their fantastic and voluptuous charm, recall the clay modelers of antiquity. Such painters as Greuze, Lancret, and Boucher spread before the eyes living idyls, while Watteau and Frangonard conjure dreams of ideal Cytheras, of a chimerical paradise where reign eternal youth and eternal desire. The politics of our kings and of our ministers of the period is but a succession of faults and weaknesses. The best concerted plans come to naught. The most brilliant victory produces no useful results. If France, in spite of so many reverses, still held her supremacy in Europe, she owed it to her writers and to her artists."
Perrot's arguments might be used with even greater force in reference to those notions which have had no Comines, no Joinville, no Froissart, no Villehardouin, but the history of whose civilization may be traced in monuments along the Rhine and the Danube, the Ems and the Elbe. In the last part of the articlePerrot considers the best methods of giving the desired instruction. However interesting and valuable his suggestions may be in communities where the instruction has already been established, it is evident that there must first be a conviction of the value and necessity of such studies and the determination to have them started. Methods are not difficult to devise, and will vary with national and individual tastes. That American colleges of thirty, forty, or fifty years ago should have objected to the introduction of the history of the fine arts into their curricula is easily understood. Art in any form was regarded by the New England mind as an emanation of the devil, and the New England mind controlled American colleges. Why the repugnance continues to exist is harder to understand. It may subsist from ignorance, from prejudice, or from conservatism. Conservatism may still regard all information to be derived from art as objectionable. Prejudice may still be strongly fixed in the notion that written and spoken words are the only vehicles of instruction, and that the arts are useless and idle vanities, while ignorance may be awaiting demonstration which will have to be strong and conclusive to awake it from self-satisfied apathy. May the good words of Perrot help on the cause and accelerate the time when the best and the fullest education will be offered by the American university!
By T. B. WILLSON, M. A.
Almost everybody knows that observatories are the places from which standard time is sent out and corrected daily or hourly. But comparatively few have more than the vaguest idea of the means used at the observatories for obtaining it.
Probably the majority of people suppose that the observatories obtain the correct time from the sun. When the average man wishes to give his watch the highest praise he says, "It regulates the sun," not being aware that a watch which would keep with the sun around the year would have to be nearly as bad as Sam Weller's. The farmer may safely decide when to go in to dinner by the sun, but if the mariner was as confident that the sun marked always the correct time as the farmer is he would be sure to be at times two or three hundred miles from where he thought he was. In other words, the sun—that is, a sundial—is only correct on a few days in each year, and during the intervening times gets as far as a whole quarter hour fast or slow.
These variations of the sun from uniform time caused no end of trouble between the astronomers and the fine clockmakers before it was discovered that sun time is subject to such irregularities. The better the clock, the worse it often seemed to go.
But as the variations in sun time are now accurately known, correct time might be obtained from the sun by making proper allowance, were it not for the difficulty of observing its position, with sufficient exactness. The large disk of the sun can not be located so perfectly as can the single point which a star makes. For this reason astronomers depend almost wholly upon the stars for obtaining accurate time. It is the method of doing this which we propose to describe.
There are several hundred stars whose positions have been established with the greatest accuracy by the most careful observations at a number of the principal observatories of the world. If a star's exact position is known, it can readily be calculated when it will pass the meridian of any given place—that is, the instant it will cross a north-and-south line through the place. The data regarding these stars are all published in the nautical almanacs, which are got out by several different observatories for the use of navigators and all others who have uses for them. These stars are known as "clock stars."
Every observatory is provided with at least one, or, better, several clocks that are very accurate indeed. Every appliance and precaution which science can suggest is resorted to to make these clocks accurate. The workmanship is, of course, very fine. What is known as the "retaining click" prevents their losing a single beat while being wound. The small variations in the length of the pendulum which changes of temperature would cause are offset by compensation. The rise of the mercury in the pendulum bob, if the weather grows warmer, shortens the pendulum precisely as much as the expansion of its rod lengthens it, and conversely if it becomes colder. Such clocks, too, are set on stone piers built up from below the surface of the ground and wholly independent of the building itself. Often the clocks are made with air-tight cases, and sometimes are placed in tightly closed chambers, only to be entered when absolutely necessary. Some fine clocks even have appliances for offsetting barometric changes, but these affect such clocks less than other influences or imperfections which can not be accounted for, and thus they are seldom provided against.
The astronomer's principal clock—the one he uses in all his calculations—marks what is known as sidereal, not ordinary, time. The revolution of the earth in its orbit sets the sun back in itsplace in the heavens at the rate of about four minutes a day, or one whole day in a year, so that this clock, indicating star time, gains this amount and is only with ordinary clocks once a year. After it is once adjusted, no attempt is made to regulate it exactly, as the astronomer would better calculate its differences than disturb its regulation, always provided its rate is very uniform and accurately known.
One or more of the other clocks, however, are made to show ordinary time, and corrected by observations taken every few days. It is from this clock that the standard time is sent out.
It is possible to connect any of these clocks telegraphically with an instrument in the observatory, known as a chronograph. It consists of a cylinder with a sheet of paper around it, on which rests a pen connected with the telegraphic instrument which follows the beats of the clock. The cylinder is turned slowly by clockwork, and the pen, carried slowly along by a screw, describes a spiral on the paper with jogs or teeth in it about a quarter of an inch apart, caused by the beats of the clock. In this way the astronomer secures a visible record of the beating of his clock, or rather of the movements of his telegraphic recorder. Thus, if he has another key on the same circuit with the clock, connected with his chronograph recorder, and should touch it between the beats of his clock, it would put in an extra jog or tooth on his record, and it will show, what he could not have told in any other way, in just what part of the second he touched this key, whether in the first or last part of the second, and precisely how far fromeither end—that is, he can determine fractions of a second with great nicety.