* * * * *

MODERN TYPES.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S OWN TYPE WRITER._)

NO. XV.--THE JACK OF ALL JOURNALISMS.

In order to become a successful Journalist of a certain sort, it is
only necessary that a man should in early life provide himself with
a front as brazen as the trumpet which he blows to announce to the
world his merits and his triumphs. It is, of course, essential that
he should rid himself of any trace of sensitiveness that may remain to
him after a youth about which the only thing certain is its complete
obscurity, in order that no hint may be sufficiently broad to fit
in with the tolerant breadth of his impudence, and no affront
sufficiently pointed to pierce the skin with which Nature and his
own industry have furnished him. Literary culture must be eschewed,
for with literary culture come taste and discrimination--qualities
which might fatally obstruct the path of this journalistic aspirant.
For it must be assumed that in some of its later developments
journalism has entirely cast off the reticence and the modesty which
successive generations of censors have constantly held to have been
characteristic of an age that is past. Indeed, while it is established
that in 1850 the critics of the day fixed their thoughts with pleasure
on the early years of the century, though they found nothing but abuse
for the journalism of their own time, it is curious to note that many
of those who hurl the shafts of ridicule and contempt at the present
period have only words of praise for 1850. Without, however, going so
far as these stern descendants of CATO, it may be affirmed that the