Targeting the educated, the New Quarterly commented on literary and theatre criticism and Continental journalism from Portugal to Russia.

1. Latouche, John [Oswald Crawfurd]. “Notes of Travel in Portugal.” 2 (1874): 443–65, 667–705; 3 (1874–75): 399–415.

Part of a series quoted Charles Dana that ocean travel, by depriving people of “their daily dose of newspaper reading,” left them little to say. Agreed that he was correct about the English and Americans but not others, who “seldom read newspapers.”

“The newspaper fills but a small part of the life either of Spaniards or Portuguese. Religious, literary, scientific, legal, and social life in Portugal are hardly reflected at all in the journals.” People only read the newspapers for politics, but the parliamentary speeches were “scantily reproduced,” and “deliberate discussion of home politics” was rare. The gazettes were replete with “rumours that fill the columns of European journals.” The Portuguese tribunes were tiny, about the same size as early “English News Letters” and “Flying Mercuries,” and like those sheets, concentrated on foreign events and appealed to the emotions. The Portuguese aped the French, reporting everything, even the weather, “with literary artifice.” Obituaries were “exquisitely pompous and stilted,” probably because relatives paid for them. Critics earned money for puffs. By contrast, the British press had news and views. Thanks to a “free and cheap press” the British press was immense, whereas in Portugal, “newspapers are scarce and small.”