The Pekin Gazette.
--Few of our readers have a correct idea of the importance of the
Pekin Imperial Gazette, the official organ of the
Government, and will be surprised to hear that it is conducted on a greater scale than any paper in Christendom, not even excepting the London Times.
The
Gazette, which may be properly considered as the patriarch of periodicals, is a daily paper, got up in pamphlet form, of about sixty or seventy pages each number.
The price of subscription amounts to only $14 a year, or less that four cents a number, and might consequently defy any competition, even in these
United States, the country of cheap publications.
Nothing can be put in the columns of the Gazette without being previously and carefully read by a committee of political or literary men, according to the nature of the article.
The official portion of the paper is sent directly from the
Cabinet of the
Emperor, and is made up with a brief account of the principal events of the day, judiciary reports, a leader on the political situation, petitions and memoirs addressed to the
Sovereign, together with his answers, his orders, his instructions to the mandarins, and whatever he chooses to give of his views on various questions.
Nothing is to be altered in those official articles even involuntarily, under the penalty of death!
Therefore, the unfortunate compositors and proof- readers of the
Imperial paper live in a continual state of trepidation; for all know how easy it is for a type-setter, in a hurry, to mistake one letter for another.
The newspapers in the provinces are obliged to republish that official portion of the Gazette for which the public has the greatest reverence, and which is, by that way, a powerful instrument of government, centralization, and of justice.
It can be understood by that, how important it is for Christian diplomats, concluding treaties with the
Chinese Government, to insist on having them published in the
Imperial Gazette.
It is the best sanction which they can receive, and, moreover, a kind of public consecration.
The remainder of the paper is made up pretty much as our own newspapers, with various pieces of intelligence, items of all kinds, and literary articles; with this difference, however, that the greater number of columns is devoted to poetry, fables, odes and poems, particularly on the virtues, genius, and one thousand and one admirable qualities of the
Emperor.
The
Gazette has also, as well as the
French papers, a
feuilleton, or serial novel, generally written by the most popular pens of the age. With the exception of the ugly things said in those novels of the
Western devils — i. e., the
Fou-lang-sai, (
French,) and
In-ki-li, (
English,) which are, of course, nonsensical falsehoods, the Gazette is written in a most creditable manner, and we may hope, one day before long, to see that model of
Chinese newspapers exchanging with our own, and contributing a fair quota of extracts to the
American periodicals.--
N. O. Picayune. 
