Not for to hide it in a hedge,

Nor for a train attendant;

But for the glorious privilege

Of being independent.

The next mail brought me news that already the master of one of the primary schools of Bridgetown had taken steps to start a school bank in his school.

But the movement across the Atlantic has not been confined to our own Empire. In October last letters began to arrive from the United States showing the same practical interest in the matter that had been awakened in the colonies. One of a particularly gratifying character was from Mr. Thiry, a former Commissioner of Education in Long Island City, which carried a weight of its own; for it was through Mr. Thiry that in March 1885 the system of school banks was first introduced into the public schools of the United States. Soon after this date the system was established in Rutland, Vermont; and since September 1886 five other school banks, besides the one started by Mr. Thiry in Long Island City in 1885, have been established in Long Island, N.Y. They have also, with the warm approval of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of that State, been introduced into the public schools of Nebraska since October; whilst in Amsterdam, N.Y., the establishment of a savings bank in accordance with the laws of the State was quickly followed by the establishment of school banks in the public schools of the city last April.

The strong personal interest of the teachers of the United States in their school banks has been remarkable, especially in one casethat of the Third Ward School of Long Island City. The principal and teachers of this school all signed an address warmly acknowledging the assistance that had been afforded to their undertaking by recent publications in England.

In speaking of the zeal of the teachers, it would, however, be unjust were I to omit mention of the support that has been given to their efforts by the press. This has been equally striking. Indeed, some of the papers are publishing weekly reports of the gross amount of the deposits in several schools.

There is, however, just a fear that this practice, unless modified and accompanied by certain protective details, may lead to the fatally erroneous view that large deposits are the chief object and real test of the success of a school bank. But, as I have said more than once, and it cannot be repeated too often in the present stage of our progress, the primary object of the weekly exercise of a school bank is the practical inculcation of provident and orderly habits. And though the large gross sums that the children's pence quickly amount to have a certain fascination in their appeal to our sense of wonderso marvellous is it that the weekly farthings and pence of poor

THE

ENGLISH AND THE AMERICAN PRESS.

In two articles published in this Review I have tried to explain the organisation of a newspaper office, and to show the causes which differentiate the great provincial from the great London papers. I now seek to make a comparison between the chief journals of England and of America. When I visited the United States a year ago many journalists asked what I thought of the American papers, and whether I liked them better than those of my own country. Such questions are apt to be answered without reflection, and without duly considering the differences on which a judgment to be of any value ought to be pronounced. The importance of the matter merits more careful treatment. In Great Britain and the United States alike the newspaper constitutes the chief reading of the bulk of the people, and inasmuch as it is at once the creature and the creator of national character, its right appraisement must needs be of great interest to thinking men. Of the two peoples it is generally believed that the Americans are the more assiduous newspaper-readers, and so far as statistics and my personal observations go the belief seems to be founded on fact. In the United States, with a population of fifty millions, there are in round numbers about eleven thousand newspapers and periodicals; in the United Kingdom there are about four thousand of all sorts, from the daily newspaper to the annual.

To a traveller through the United States it is a frequent matter of surprise that small, out-of-the-way towns support their own local papers. They are, I find, greatly assisted in their enterprise by what are known as patent outsides. Let us suppose that the local paper consists of four pages. Two of these are amply sufficient for local requirements. The other two are printed in New York or elsewhere, and consist of miscellaneous reading and advertisements. Thus at one transaction the local proprietor buys paper, saves one half of the composition of a four-page paper, and makes an advertising contract. The outside advertisements, that is to say, are valued according to the circulation of his paper, and taken into account in arranging the price of the printed outsides. The device is ingenious, although the effect to one while travelling is often amusing. You buy a local

paper, say in Schenectady; you go further west and buy one at Rome, a third at Auburn, a fourth at Canandaigua. At Rome you suspected you had previously read some of the matter, at Auburn you are sure of it, at Canandaigua you are confounded by what looks like a fraud. You compare the four papers. Their names are different, but their first and fourth pages are identical. In the second and third pages they differ in news, type, politics, and everything else. You have merely been introduced to the patent outside. You might have made its acquaintance in Britain, where a trade of that kind is done. But the custom which is infrequently followed in the one country is general in the other, and accounts in part for the number of American newspapers, and of small towns supporting a local paper.

A further fact tending to the multiplication of newspapers in America is found in the many different nationalities and religious sects, each of which has its own journal. Of religious sectarian papers the name is legion. As to nationality, the New York Germans have the Staats-Zeitung, and I know not how many other papers; the Irish have their own journals, including Ford's notorious Irish World; the English used to have a strong and prosperous representative in the Albion, the Scotch have the Scottish American Journal, the Spanish have Il Nuovo Mondo, and so on. Men of all countries take the paper which makes a speciality of news from the land they have left, and they take in addition one or more American papers to keep abreast of events in the land in which they live.

The remainder of the explanation of the vast bulk of American journalism lies in the more general demand among Americans for newspaper reading. Sardou and others have burlesqued and ridiculed American avidity for news, and that avidity is a fact which may be appreciated in any car or steamboat. And here we reach the second point of contrast. Though greater in volume, American journalism does not exercise the influence wielded by British journalism. No American journal possesses the power either of the London Times or of any one of several other metropolitan and provincial journals. I content myself, meantime, with the mere statement of a fact the causes of which are manifold and may be gathered from the general tone and character of American journalism.

These things, however, are matters that can only be ascertained by inquiry and time. What first strikes an Englishman on getting the New York papers from the pilot boat is the fulness of their English news. When on shore he will appreciate this still more thoroughly, because there he will be more adequately impressed by its promptness. In his hotel at New York he can read an account of the previous night's Parliament as complete in all essentials as what he would get in the Times or Standard of the same day, and more easily comprehended. He will also get what the English provincial, but not the London papers, supply-a gossipy narrative

of the aspect of the House, the flower that Mr. Gladstone wore in his button-hole, and the manner in which he did or did not speak to Lord Hartington. He will be told also what the Times said about the debate. He will get the criticism of last night's play, or a review of a book issued yesterday afternoon. He will also find a copious supply of telegrams from India, Afghanistan, and from all the capitals of Europe, dealing with the chief events of the day. Finally, and more especially in the Sunday issues, he will get from time to time, written in the first person singular, some news about 'Society,' or some gossip about 'H.R.H.,' or some revelation of politics calculated to make him ask amazedly who is this mighty I that searches out the hearts of princes and of statesmen, and even condescends to penetrate the powdered bosoms of the ballet. The surpassing speed and fulness with which European news is disseminated throughout the United States depends in part upon the course of the sun. At four o'clock in the morning in London it is only eleven of the previous night in New York. Behold the artful correspondent's chance! He seizes the early copies of the Times, the Standard, the Telegraph, the Daily News, and the Morning Post, and with rapid shears and lightning paste-brush he culls the morning fragrance of news whose collection has' cost unlimited gold and unstinted thought; and straightway he telegraphs his extracts to New York, where they arrive in ample time for publication that morning. Does the Standard obtain by a cipher telegram the exclusive news of a bombshell thrown at the Czar? If so, all the American papers print it in big type in issues of the same date as that from which they copied it, and all America knows what all London, save the clientèle of the Standard, is ignorant of.

The course of the sun accounts for apparent speed, but the contrast between the American supply of European news and the European supply of American news stands upon other grounds. Europe does not reciprocate America's interest. Englishmen cannot be expected to be profoundly agitated by the fate of a bill in the New York State Legislature for the better education of undertakers. It is, on the other hand, a matter of the first moment that New York journals, published in a community containing nearly half a million of Irish and numbering its German element by the hundred thousand, should tell all about the debate upon the Crimes Bill, and about the celebration of the Kaiser Wilhelm's birthday. The other cities of America take their cue from New York, in which the great news agencies are centred. American journals thus devote an amount of attention to European complications and English events generally which the British journalist would rightly consider wasted if devoted to United States politics or the eccentricities of New Mexico cowboys. It must, however, be admitted that the American editor makes a far more judicious selection of European news than the British