THE VALUE OF THE NEWSPAPER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5541, 31 December 1878, Page 3

THE VALUE OF THE NEWSPAPER.

(From the Albany Sunday Press.)

Everything considered, the newspaper is the best and most available of libraries. The one fact of cheapness is so strongly in its favor as to overbalance the majority of arguments thatcan be advanced upon the opposite side. It is within the reach of everyone, no matter how ; poor, and finds an entrance where books (as a rale) never can ; it comes weekly, and is read and loaned until actually worn out ; can be caught up if one has but a moment of time, some knowledge can be gained, and laid down again without detriment to the sense. A single brief item frequently gives what passages of book-bound matter would have to be waded through to learn ; for the newspaper is the epitome of the entire world. In the briefest possible space all that - is necessary to the correct understanding of the subject is given—to such perfection has the art of condensation been brought. The newspapers, with the present facilities for almost instantly learning what is transpiring in every "portion of the habitable globe, is the reflection of the hour equally as much aa of past ages. By it the north and the south, the east and the west are brought together. We know of the crashing of the ice and the curling heat of the sun ; we are with the daring explorist seeking for the North Pole ; travel through the jungles of Africa ; have a bird's-eye view of great battles ; sail over every Bea ; dive with the whale to its fabulous depths ; are present in the parliament of nations; listen to the last words of an expiring Pope and take by the hand his successor. A wonderful, concise, most skilfully painted panorama of tho affairs of the world is the newspaper; a map of its busy life ; a faithful reproduction of all its flights and shadows, and at the most nominal cost ; at the merest bagatelle to books, even in these days of exceptional cheapness. Week after week the paper comes filled with all that is rare, new, interesting, and instructive. It is a history of nationg- itv~fiffrj--&Ti-o- volumes ; an -ever continued' encyclopaedia of trade, science, biography, agriculture, and the arts; is the " boiling down " of all books into so minute a form that the mind can grasp at a single glance and be saved the wading through ponderous volumes of uninteresting detail—to the great saving of time. It is, in fact, the grandest of all circulating libraries, at only a penny fee; the throwing open to the publio of all the costly archives of the world. The newspaper of to-day is a perfect omnium gatherum. Nothing escapes its notice. ' Every event of importance is instantly photographed upon its pages. The whispers breathed in every clime are caught and fixed. It is a marvel of intelligence ;is the stereoscope of every mind. We look back in wonder at the time when it was not, and human intelligence shudders to think of the barbarism and. ignorance, and superstition that would follow the blotting out of this the sun of the solar system. Not a single word would we say against books. Multiply them as much as possible; there can never be . too many; the world can never have too much of light ; but as the grandest, and cheapest, and widest circulating medium of intelligence —as libraries for mankind—they never can comparo with newspapers.