and the constant deterioration of his work.  Every morning the public comes fresh and eager to the newspaper:  fresh and eager minds should alone minister to it.  No work done on this earth consumes vitality so fast as carefully executed composition, and consequently one of the main conditions of a man’s writing his best is that he should write little and rest often.  A good writer, moreover, is one of Nature’s peculiar and very rare products.  There is a mystery about the art of composition.  Who shall explain to us why Charles Dickens can write about a three-legged stool in such a manner that the whole civilized world reads with pleasure; while another man of a hundred times his knowledge and five times his quantity of mind cannot write on any subject so as to interest anybody?  The laws of supply and demand do not apply to this rarity; for one man’s writing cannot be compared with another’s, there being no medium between valuable and worthless.  How many over-worked, under-paid men have we known in New York, really gifted with this inexplicable knack at writing, who, well commanded and justly compensated, lifted high and dry out of the slough of poor-devilism in which their powers were obscured and impaired, could almost have made the fortune of a newspaper!  Some of these Reporters of Genius are mere children in all the arts by which men prosper.  A Journalist of Genius would know their value, understand their case, take care of their interest, secure their devotion, restrain their ardor, and turn their talent to rich account.  We are ashamed to say, that for example of this kind of policy we should have to repair to the office named a moment since.

This subject, however, is beginning to be understood, and of late there has been some advance in the salaries of members of the press.  Just as fast as the daily press advances in real independence and efficiency, the compensation of journalists will increase, until a great reporter will receive a reward in some slight degree proportioned to the rarity of the species and to the greatness of the services of which he is the medium.  By reporters, we mean, of course, the entire corps of news-givers, from the youth who relates the burning of a stable, to the philosopher who chronicles the last vagary of a German metaphysician.  These laborious men will be appreciated in due time.  By them all the great hits of journalism have been made, and the whole future of journalism is theirs.

So difficult is the reporter’s art, that we can call to mind only two series of triumphant efforts in this department,—­Mr. Russell’s letters from the Crimea to the London Times, and N.P.  Willis’s “Pencillings by the Way,” addressed to the New York Mirror.  Each of these masters chanced to have a subject perfectly adapted to his taste and talents, and each of them made the most of his opportunity.  Charles Dickens has produced a few exquisite reports.  Many ignorant and dull men employed on the New York Herald have written