and it requires considerable influence to get
an interview with the editor, every transac-
tion being managed through the under-
officials. Suits for libel are conducted against
Mr. Lawson, the printer; the editors and pro-
prietors, though known to a select few, being
of the Junius family. Stat nominis umbra.
The Morning Chronicle is generally con-
sidered the leading opponent of the levia-
than of Printing-house Square; but generally
speaking, the journals of London seldom
notice each other, thus imitating Shakspeare,
whose plays contain but two personal allu-
sions to a contemporary: one to Marlowe in
the couplet:

"Dead shepherd, now I see thy saw of might,
'He never loved who loved not at first sight,"

Next to the Times in circulation is the Herald, owned by Mr. Baldwin, who is also the proprietor of the Standard. In consequence of these two papers quoting and praising each other, the "Thunderer" of Printing-house Square affixed the sobriquet of Betsey Prig and Sairey Gamp to the two publications, which annoyed the editors to such an extent that they forgot the usual dignity of English journalism, and commenced a war of the vernacular very unbecoming. In 1846, when Sir R. Peel had determined to repeal the Corn Laws, the Times astonished the good citizens of London one morning by announcing on authority the important fact. The same evening the Standard denied the report most unequivocally, likewise by authority. The next morning the Times returned to the charge, reiterating their previous announcement, while the same day's Herald confirmed the Standard's contradiction, and adding that they were authorized to do so by one of the Ministers themselves. This caused considerable interest, as the Times has never been

the last line being a quotation from a poem of "Old Kit" (just dead) called "Hero and Leander," afterwards finished by Chapman. The other allusion is even more obscure, and consists merely in making Malvolio quote the commencement of one of Lord Bacon's essays: "Some men are born great, others achieve greatness, and some men have great-known to make a blunder in these matters, ness thrust upon them." By the way, while it is upon the tip of the pen, we may as well state that Coleridge was of opinion that Malvolio was meant as a sarcastic picture of the great Chancellor, and that the Lady Olivia was intended for Queen Elizabeth. That Shakspeare could have no respect or affection for Bacon is undoubted, on account of his ungrateful conduct to Essex, the bard's great friend and patron.

We must, however, return to the Morning Chronicle.

Some years ago, this paper had a large circulation and a great reputation; but it has lost both since the Times became a reforming organ. In its best days, when it was edited by Dr. Black and Fox, its articles were distinguished for a more brilliant style of writing than its great rival, and materially helped along the great machine of social progress. It passed from their hands to Charles Mackay and other writers, who were too much of mere littérateurs to conduct a paper of the high pretensions which once belonged to the Chronicle. It consequently declined till its circulation barely reached 3,000 copies, when it was purchased by Sir John Easthope, a member of the Commons and the Stock Exchange. It has generally been on the side of the people.

while the positive announcement that a Cabinet Minister had requested the Herald to deny it made the matter very perplexing. When the truth came out, each paper had been requested by a member of the Cabinet to break the fact to the world. Peel had communicated his intention to Gladstone before naming it to the rest of his colleagues, who communicated it to the Times; while the Duke of Richmond requested Mr. Baldwin to deny what he considered the absurd report. These instances, however, of direct communication with the Government are very rare.

In one respect the Herald deserves great praise. It has ever been the advocate of moderate reform; the abolition of capital punishment it has steadily and ably argued; and it is the decided opponent to all taxes that more immediately press on the poor. Since Mr. Baldwin became its proprietor, it has become Protectionist, but it is liberal in all its other views. It contains much useful and amusing reading, and is very popular in the households both of London and the country. Its circulation has been estimated at 12,000 to 14,000. Its advertising patronage is very valuable, being next to that of the Times.

The Morning Post is the fashionable pa

per of the modern Babylon, being termed the West End organ. It is the register and announcer of balls, fashionable arrivals and departures, aristocratical marriages, divorces, births and deaths. It is the daily history of haut ton. Lord A can hardly look at Lady B, but they will find it chronicled in the next morning's Post. A flirtation is certain of a column, and a fashionable ball, funeral or wedding is a banquet. Fifty years since, when Stuart and Coleridge were its editors, it had a political importance; but of late years it has been merely the High Tory organ, and of little influence in the city. It has, however, still able writers, and its dramatic and musical critiques have been generally well and fairly done. Mr. Rosenberg, now a resident here, was for some years its chief writer on music, drama, fine arts and French politics. He is, perhaps, better known to our readers on account of his long war with the redoubtable Punch; of itself a compliment, as he would not be likely to select any but a man of mark for an antagonist. Morris Barnett, the author of the Serious Family, fills the position Mr. Rosenberg so long and ably held. Michele is the chief proprietor and editor.

The Morning Advertiser has a large circulation, and is the organ of the publicans and brewers. It is violently democratic, written with more force than elegance, and is a great authority with "pot-house politicians." It has no influence out of the bar

room.

The Public Ledger is the Nestor of the English press, and in our great-grandfathers' times was held in high repute. It is now engrossed with commerce, and only occasionally comments on politics. Kings are expelled, thrones overthrown, emperors abdicated, popes disappear, and presidents are made, without moving one muscle of the Ledger's countenance; but a fall in hides, tallow, sugar, cotton or grain, brings tears from its venerable eyes. The only military operations it recognizes are blockades, for that affects trade and arouses its ancient wrath. As for a musical or dramatic critic, they would as soon think of keeping an alligator. Now and then some forlorn notice of a concert, or new tragedy, appears in their grim columns, having possibly lost its way from some other paper; but the editor generally apologizes for the inadvertence, should he ever discover it. It is the smallest paper

printed in London, being a single sheet We about the size of the New-Yorker. should say its editor must be a model Tim Linkinwater.

The youngest paper is the Daily News, which was started some five years ago on the joint-stock plan, the chief proprietors being Dwarganauth Tagore, Bradbury & Evans, Samuel Rogers, and a few merchants. The editing was intrusted to Charles Dickens, under the mistaken notion that his name would give it a prestige equal to that of the Times, which paper it was intended to rival. Now as no paper, more especially in London, can exist without a large advertising connection, and as these invariably come from the mercantile classes, it is important to select a man of undoubted experience and business habits, one who is conversant with markets and funds. Now, the brilliant author of Pickwick was just the man whose opinions on tallow, stocks, the lumber trade, foreign exchanges and cotton, would be sure to be considered wrong by the dealers in those unpoetical articles. They no doubt knew that Dickens was so depraved as to joke, although the markets were falling and cotton a drug. Possibly he did not know Muscovadoes from Mauritius sugar. Even before the first number appeared the paper was doomed. He was not even fit to keep a curiosity shop! The eventful morning, January 26, 1846, came. The first number was born. All conspired against it: it was badly printed; it abounded in typographical errors; but the climax of blunder occurred in the city article, where one of the stocks was, owing to a misprint, frightfully wrong; as Horne said, "ludicrously wrong." This horrified the merchants generally, more especially those who dealt in the article thus irreverently treated. What confidence could be placed in a journal who was careless in three per cent. consols, East India bonds, or exchequer bills? As Shakspeare says, or ought to have said:

"Oh, the offense was rank and smelt to London.” This amputated the mercantile leg, and the next number took off its remaining moral leg.

All who know the English people are aware of the external respect they pay to the Sabbath. Now, in commencing his pleasant travelling letters, (afterwards published. under the title of Pictures from Italy,) the vivacious editor, with more candor than pru

dence, not only somewhat ostentatiously | the evening papers, the principal of which announced that he had commenced his jour- are the Standard, Globe and Sun. The forney on the Sunday, but humorously (as he mer is a mere echo of the Herald, belonging innocently thought) defended it upon the to the same proprietor, while the Globe is a old adage, "The better the day the better moderate Whig paper. The Sun is, like its the deed." This left the paper legless; so New-York namesake, very radical. The that, between the merchants and the church- evening papers, like those here, have little men a newspaper which was expected to circulation or influence. supersede the Chronicle entirely, and prove a formidable rival to the Times, was crippled at once, and placed almost hors de combat. After these escapades, the plodding Londoners came to the conclusion, that so long as Dickens edited the paper, the Daily News might be considered as a sort of supplement to the Pickwick Papers. Dickens himself grew tired of it directly he found that it had not made the hit he expected, and resigned the editorship, which was bestowed upon John Forster; a better choice than the other certainly, but still not the man wanted. Of all the men we have ever met, Charles Dickens is the one least able to sustain an adverse cause. He is the child of sunshine, and loses all his energy when it

ceases.

After four months' hard struggle, Forster resigned his post to Dilke, the proprietor and editor of the Athenæum, who proposed to the managers, Bradbury & Evans, to try the experiment of a cheap paper. It consequently appeared as a three-penny paper on the 1st of June. Owing to its admirable management, it steadily increased its circulation, but it never reached over 15,000, which, although large for an English paper, was insufficient to pay a profit. It has since been put at its old price of five pence English, nearly ten cents of our money.

There never was a journal projected, which had so brilliant a staff of writers. Among them we can number Dickens, Jerrold, Mackay, Horne, Dudley, Costello, Landor, Angus Beach, Thackeray, Leigh Hunt, and the Punch contributors. So confident did the conductors feel of success, that they actually entered into engagements for three years with several of their employés. Horne, the author of Orion, was dispatched to Ireland as their commissioner, and his letters are perhaps the most reliable accounts we have had of that unhappy island; for with a rare freedom from all party bias, the poet-commissioner spoke the truth, and did justice to both sides of the question. We have not space to give the details of

The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette is an evening paper, entirely devoted to the shipping interest; it has a large circulation among ship-owners and the maritime profession. Here the sailings and arrivals of every ship may be seen at a glance. The proprietors have agents in every known port in the world, and considering its multifarious correspondence, its accuracy is truly wonderful.

It has sometimes struck us as a neglect in our commercial system, that we have no institution like the Lloyds of London. What the British consular power is to politics, this is to commerce. There is scarcely a nook in the ocean shores of the globe, where vessels are likely to touch, but this singular maritime inquisition have an agent, specially appointed, armed with powers confirmed by Parliament, and authorized to draw upon the committee in London. Next to the East India Company, this is the most curious display of English perseverance and method existing. In one respect, its omnipresence, it is far more surpassing than even the empire of the Leadenhall-street traders, who really deserve a title of Merchant Princes.

After the morning, the weekly papers have the greater weight; indeed, in a mere intellectual point of view, they are superior to the former. They are all carefully written, and systematically prepared; their course is uniform, and each bears visibly stamped upon it the impress of some particular man. There is an individuality about the very paper. The first in political importance is also the most intellectual-the Examiner, partly owned by Albany Fonblanque, its political editor. The dramatic and literary portions are under the control of John Forster, the ablest general writer connected with the press. Devoid of all pretensions to genius, few men write more pleasantly, clearly and plausibly. His Life of Goldsmith, to which Mr. W. Irving was so largely indebted, is a model of style at once simple and elegant. We question if a man of

each number. It is published every Saturday afternoon, and its circulation is about 5,000. It is also the neatest of the public

press.

The Atlas is one of the most respectable and moderate of its class, but has of late years been declining. It is now, we believe, edited by Robert Bell, the author of the "Ladder of Gold," one of those peculiar men whose very good sense has "tilted" out of genius. He is one of the few Irishmen who have no enthusiasm, being entirely deficient of a gift that has made the first men of that nation so renowned. As we write "currente calamo," brilliant examples drop from our pen in corroboration of our opinion. Wellington in war; Palmerston in diplomacy; Moore in lyrical power; Faraday in chemistry; Burke in oratory and philosophical statesmanship, (a rare instance;) Sheridan in wit, eloquence and comedy; Goldsmith in general literature; Bell himself in biography; Curran in pleading: in a word, wherever the brilliant and the fanciful are concerned, the Irish race is unapproached; while in the "higher law" of mind-in the purer intellect, the AngloNorman reigns supreme under the triumvirate of Shakspeare, Bacon and Bentham; saying nothing of such small men as Samuel Johnson, Locke, Milton, Hobbes, Fielding, Chatterton, Ben Jonson, cum multis aliis, whose inspirations have made the Shakspearian tongue the destined language of the great globe itself.

It is no less true that in a calm collation of facts, and in clear deduction from them, the Scotch are unrivalled, as evidenced by Hume, Smollett, Robertson and Blair. Gibbon is possibly an exception to this rule, but we consider him rather an accident than a design. Although somewhat discursive, we cannot help glancing at the no less singular peculiarity of the French intellect. Bayle (for after all, his nature was thoroughly French) and Voltaire have done more than any two writers to clear the world of cant. What Johnson said to the young theologian ought to be said to all: "Clear your head of cant, young man." Cant is the Barnum of the age. It is the dramatic aside of the human race, of which the true William the Conqueror wrote:

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."

Cant is the insincerity of the heart; what it has been taught, parrot-like, but which it does not believe. It is the understood decency, or rather disguise, of the age; the masquerade which Truth wears to avoid recognition and mobbing. It is the nightmare of the world; the first sin which makes Adam afraid to meet his God; the great lie which paralyzes Cain when he is asked the one question," Where is thy brother?" "I am not my brother's keeper," is the cant which the wealthy now utter when God's voice, Conscience, demands an account of his brother man; and a quibbling lie, the worst of falsehoods, is all modern philosophy can outstammer.

But we must return to our subject. The Weekly Despatch has the best circulation with the worst reputation of all the highpriced press. It is stated they sell ninety thousand copies, which equals the rest of the Sunday papers put together. Alderman Harmer is the proprietor. Miss Eliza Cook is a frequent contributor. Its principles are decidedly republican. Although ably written, it is of no authority with the middle and upper classes, on account of its incessant and virulent attacks upon the Throne and the Church. The previous life of the proprietor is also very much against its good standing in literary society.

The Era is a theatrical and sporting paper, and the most respectable of its class. Its politics are liberal, and for general news it is one of the best published.

The Britannia is a High Tory paper, and devotes more space and attention to literature than any of its contemporaries. It is a staunch defender of Church and State.

Jerrold's Weekly Review promised at its commencement in July, 1846, to be the people's paper; but the characteristic intemperance of the editor's pen, in less than three months, reduced its circulation from 18,000 copies to 7,000. The greatest cause of offense he gave was a fierce attack upon the Queeen, who is a "pet" with all parties in England. Finding the paper declining, Jerrold grew disgusted with it, and sold his interest to F. G. Tomlins, who had been the dramatic critic from its commencement, and he now conducts it with moderate success. He is one of those men, very unusual in the English press, who have little or no education. Brought up as a stone-mason, with an itch for writing, he soared to the sublime