With its issue this week the Guardian reaches its eightieth
birthday. We offer it our hearty congratulations and good wishes for the future. If we are not mistaken it overlooked, or at all events did not call attention to, its more Scriptural birthday of three score years and ten. It has a great record of scholarly editing and sound judgment. As the Observer points out, Lecky said of the Guardian that it was not merely habitually 'written in the style and temper of a gentleman but reflected in its criticism the best intellectual influences of the time. We must also give a welcome to the series of pencil sketches of eminent persons by " Low " which has begun in the New Statesman. The first drawing is of Mr. H. G. Wells and is exceptionally happy. We have no doubt that there is a great future for the class of weekly papers to which the Spectator and the New States- man belong, and it is, therefore, a pleasure to see new aspects of vigour in any one of them. As education grows there is bound to be an expanding public for papers which, avoiding fripperies, offer to an essentially serious public the matter of serious thought.
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