period, Sir Richard Steele, by way of trying the effect of ridicule on this practice of private scandal in the better classes of society, announced in the Tatler, in the form of an ordinary advertisement, that he had provided a box at the publishing office of that journal, for the express purpose of secretly receiving from ladies, any contributions of a scandalous nature respecting other ladies, which they might wish to be published.

Among the advertisements of this time were many announcing the open sale of negro boys, who had been imported from Africa and India. One wonders that any proprietor of a newspaper could have been found at so late a period as the close of the seventeenth century, to advertise a human being for sale, and that human being one who had been stolen; and yet the practice,-which was not uncommon in the early part of the present century,-of husbands leading their wives by the halter to Smithfield, and then putting them up to public auction, and selling them for a few shillings, was not one whit less barbarous. Yet the police authorities never interfered to prevent it. Its discontinuance is entirely to be ascribed to the power of public opinion.

I need not further pursue the subject of advertising in connexion with the newspapers of a past period. By the middle of the eighteenth century the practice became comparatively common, and with the increase of these notifications, the proprietors of newspapers became more particular as to the cha

racter of those they received. Though steadily increasing until the beginning of the present century, the number of advertisements bore no proportion to that which we at present witness. But as I shall hereafter, when I come to speak of the present state of British newspapers generally, have occasion to recur to the subject, I will defer any further observations on it until then.

I referred in a previous part of this chapter to the extraordinary logic of one of the newspaper proprietors of the day, in announcing that with the view of encouraging the advertising department of his business he would double his charge for all advertisements. Of a piece with this logic was that of another newspaper proprietor, who inserted a notice to his readers in his journal, to the effect, that he thought it better to publish his Mercury "in quarterly volumes, desiring to continue it again as a weekly paper, as soon as the glut of news is over." According to the ordinary rules of reasoning, the inference would be, that "the glut of news" would have just been the great inducement to continue the Mercury a weekly, instead of transforming it into a quarterly journal.

Soon after the middle of the seventeenth century numerous papers of a class kind made their appearance. There was one which took to itself a name which escapes my recollection, but which was exclusively devoted to literature. It may be said to have been the Athenæum of two hundred years ago. The medical profession had also their representative in the

weekly press. Though not under that name, they had their Lancet. Its title was the Mercurius Medicus, or a Sovereign Salve for these Sick Times. The clergy too could boast of their organ. It was called the Mercurius Clericus, or News from Zion. This journal was commenced so far back as the year 1641. Nor was the navy wanting in representation in the middle of the seventeenth century. It had its Naval Gazette, which was started in the year 1663 under the title of the Mercurius Aquaticus. Neither was the House of Commons without its organ, prepared to expound its principles and to maintain its rights and privileges, whatever they may have been, or supposed to be, two hundred years ago. The House of Commons had, at times, a host of enemies, and needed such a champion with the public. One of its avowed opponents was entitled the Parliamentary Vulture, which was especially fierce in its attacks on the representative branch of the Legislature. It was the existence and the conduct of this journal that led to the starting of a serial devoted to a vindication of the proceedings of the House of Commons. It adopted a strange title,-none other than that of The Parliamentary Porter, or the Doorkeeper of the House of Commons. What the history of this journal was, or how long it lived, are points on which I have been unable to obtain any reliable information.

Nor were the ladies without their organ in the middle of the seventeenth century. They were faithfully represented and gallantly defended when

assailed by their opponents. It will be seen, therefore, that the ladies of two hundred years ago occupied as high a social position as they do in our day. Let no one, then, accuse our sex of that day as being less gallant than in ours. Even the French residents in London published a journal in their own language; while another journal was published for their benefit in the French as well as the English language. For twenty-two years after its commencement, the London Gazette was published in the French language as well as in the English,-so that the English government of that day were generous to a degree to the people of France resident in London. But the most extraordinary of all the cases of class representation in the journalism of two hundred years ago which have come under my observation in searching among the newspapers of the seventeenth century, is that of smokers actually having their organ. Its title was Mercurius Fumarius, or the Smoking Nocturnal. Sporting seems, too, to have been an institution of the country in those days, as it is in ours, for we find that the sporting world was not without its representative in the press. The title of the sporting paper which was the organ of the sporting fraternity of the latter half of the seventeenth century, was the Jockey Intelligencer; but neither at this time, 1686, nor at any other period of the century, have I discovered any traces of the modern Tattersall.

CHAPTER IV.

NEWSPAPERS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Contributors to the Journals-First Daily Paper-Favourite Newspaper Titles-Strange Titles-Daniel Defoe-Newspaper Stamp Duty-Dean Swift-the Tatler and Spectator Class of Journals Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison-John Dunton-John Dennis.

THOUGH, in adverting to the curious advertisements which appeared in the newspapers of an early date, and transferring to my pages some specimens of them, as illustrating the manners of the times, I have made in that respect an incursion, if I may so call it, into the first half of the eighteenth century,-I have not in other respects brought the newspaper history of our ancestors further down than the close of the seventeenth century. And though I have found no materials until the beginning of the eighteenth century which would enable us to form an opinion as to the position of editors-once called printers—of the newspapers of a previous date, yet in the early part of that century we begin to have our darkness enlightened on the subject. In the year 1704 a paper called the Observator, of great circulation and popularity -great, I mean, in that day-was prosecuted for a libel. Whether this was the same Observator that

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