The necessity of filling this space causes the writer, instead of
stating his idea in the shortest compass in which it can be made
perspicuous and telling, to beat it out thin, and make it cover as much
ground as possible. This, also, is vanity. In the economy of room, which
our journals will more and more be compelled to cultivate, I venture to
say that this tradition will be set aside. I think that we may fairly
claim a superiority in our journals over the English dailies in our habit
of making brief, pointed editorial paragraphs. They are the life of the
editorial page. A cultivation of these until they are as finished and
pregnant as the paragraphs of "The London Spectator" and "The New-York
Nation," the printing of long editorials only when the elucidation of a
subject demands length, and the use of the space thus saved for more
interesting reading, is probably the line of our editorial evolution.
To continue the comparison of our journals as a class, with the English
as a class, ours are more lively, also more flippant, and less restrained
by a sense of responsibility or by the laws of libel. We furnish, now and
again, as good editorial writing for its purpose; but it commonly lacks
the dignity, the thoroughness, the wide sweep and knowledge, that
characterizes the best English discussion of political and social topics.
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