positors. The second remains for an hour, and then hurries away like the former; while the third is taking notes for another hour; and he is followed in the same manner by the fourth. The first reporter is now ready to succeed the fourth; he takes notes for another hour, is relieved by the second, and so on till the House breaks up. The time of taking notes is frequently limited to three-quarters of an hour, or even less. By this process the whole of a series of debates, which began at four or five in the afternoon, and continued till three or four in the morning, is issued to the public within a few hours after the debate has terminated. Accidents and offences, provincial incidents, and the like, are supplied by a class of contributors who have no regular engagement, but are paid by the job. The Times,' when composed, is printed by a machine worked by steam-power, capable of printing 2500 copies in an hour, perfect-that is, on both sides. The paper is generally put to press at five in the morning, and at ten the whole impression is worked off. Mr. Babbage, after describing the manner in which eight-and-forty columns are formed into eight pages and placed on the platform of the printing-machine, says: " Ink is rapidly supplied to the moving types by the most perfect mechanism: four attendants incessantly introduce the edges of large sheets of white paper to the junction of two great rollers, which seem to devour them with unsated appetite; other rollers convey them to the type already inked, and having brought them into rapid and successive contact, re-deliver them to four other assistants completely printed by the almost momentary touch." The Times,' when printed, consists of eight pages of six columns each. The printed area of the whole paper (both sides) is more than 19 square feet, or a space of nearly five feet by four. On a rough estimate, it contains about 113,000 words. Compared with an octavo volume, having a page of print measuring 3 by 6 inches, the area of the Times' is equal to more than 120 of the octavo pages; and allowing for difference in size of type, to perhaps 200. In addition to this the Times' has of late, in order to find room for its advertisements, been accompanied by a supplement of half the size of the paper, on an average three times a-week. All this is sold to the public at the price of 5d. The enormous circulation and the charge for advertisements enables the proprictors to incur the expenditure above indicated, allow a fair profit to publishers and newsvenders, and grow rich themselves by their property. During the last quarter of 1842, the Times' took out 1,475,000 stamps, and paid 3500l. 17s. of advertisement duty. All the other morning papers have a similar establishment to the Times,' though on a smaller scale: the establishments of the evening papers are of course rather less expensive. Some estimate of the comparative influence of the different daily journals upon public opinion, and of their comparative value as properties, may be formed by the aid of the following extract from the returns of the newspaper stamp and advertisement duty for the last quarter of 1842:

The weekly newspapers (for the papers published thrice a-week are in general mere pendants of the dailies, and those published twice a-week do not differ in any material respects from their weekly brethren) take the staple of their news from the daily papers. Their outlay is chiefly incurred for literary or political communications, and for printing. Some weekly papers have their own establishments, while others employ a printer to do the work at his own establishment. When the proprietors print their own paper, they require to engage a printer or manager, whose duty it is to give out the copy to the compositors, to see that the proofs are ready by the time the editor requires them, to put the articles into columns, arrange paragraphs, &c. &c. A reader is also employed. to read the first proofs, after the compositor has put the types together. The number of compositors varies in such an establishment from five to thirty; an extra number being generally required at the end of the week, when the late news has to be finished off, or when supplements are given. The majority of weekly papers are now, however, printed under contract by some established London printer with his own materials. The proprietors find this more economical than going to the expense of taking and paying rent for a printing-office, purchasing founts of type and all other materials, and, in short, incurring all the expenses which printing is heir to. This is not the only new subdivision of employments and combination of labour occasioned of late years by the increased capitals invested in the printing business, the general adoption of the steam-press, &c. there are proprietors, who have their paper composed on their own premises by their own workmen, and have it printed off at the steam-press of some of the great printers. Such arrangements have a twofold effect,-they encourage the starting of new papers by diminishing the pecuniary risk; and they increase the number of short-lived newspapers; for when less capital is invested in dead stock, men let go a losing or not very profitable speculation more lightly. On the whole, however, they give greater vivacity to the newspaper business. If the weekly papers are shorter lived, there are always successors to those which drop off ready to rush into the field-there are more of them jostling and squabbling for a circulation at the same time. If the magnificent scale on which operations are conducted at the Times' office in Printing House Square is striking from its magnitude, the getting up of the multitudinous weekly papers in some of the courts of Fleet Street is perhaps the more bustling and vivacious subject of contemplation. Several adjoining courts may have their half-dozen printing establishments each; and to each of these editors and sub-editors (great part of whose work is done elsewhere) repair for a few hours in each week to superintend the progress of printing. The houses which lay themselves out for this kind of business have rooms fitted up to accommodate the editors at their periodical visits. Sometimes, in addition to two, three, or four different newspapers composed and printed at one of those establishments, there may be the "forms" of two or three more duly transmitted to be printed. The head-work which passes

through those establishments in its way to the public is inconceivable, both in its quantity and varied quality. The fingers of the compositors cease not; the clash and clang of the steam-press' knows no intermission. In the topics and manner of treating them the establishment takes no concern. Nonconformists, Railway Times, Illustrated News, Roman Catholic, Colonial, and all other kinds of organs or mouthpieces are set up and thrown off with the same conscientious accuracy, and the same utter indifference to their contents. These printing establishments are indeed machines which receive without feeling the tender thoughts of anxious and harassed editors and contributors, and tease and shake them into a shape fit to appear before the public, incapable of sympathising with the anxious anticipations of the brain-parents.

And now having got our newspapers into shape, let us look to the mode of their publication. The business of the publisher is to deal out to the different newsmen the number of papers they require, and receive payment for them. It is a feature of the news-trade, as between publisher and newsvender, deserving of notice, that it is essentially a ready-money business. Except in some few cases, or under peculiar circumstances, no credit is given. The newsman knows that he must get his paper or lose his customer, and the publisher is thus enabled to dictate his own terms. The publisher, properly speaking, is a person appointed by proprietors, with more or less extensive powers of management, to dispose of their paper to the retail dealers, or news-agents. But there is a class of newsmen who, from the extent and nature of their dealings, come very near to the publishers, and are indeed generally called by that name. Their business consists in buying large quantities of newspapers of all sorts, and retailing them to the trade. Their profits are derived from an allowance of 1d. on every nine papers that sell at 5d. each, and 2d. on every nine papers that sell at 6d. each. Newsvenders, in a small way, who do not sell so many as nine of any paper, find it more convenient to send to a shop, where they get their papers as cheap as if they sent to each office, and get all they want at once. The profit of a penny or twopence on nine papers may appear trifling; but when it is taken into account that several of these publishers will take more than a hundred quires of some papers, it will be apparent how a great many pennies must come to a considerable sum.

The small newsvenders, just mentioned, supply only private customers in country or town. They are thickly scattered, not only through the town and suburbs, but are to be found in the towns and villages round about for many miles. There are some who live as far as six or eight miles from town, and yet send daily to their publisher for papers. It will be evident that this class cannot depend entirely upon their small trade in newspapers for a subsistence, but must take to it merely in order to eke out other ways and means. There is among them a considerable diversity of character and employment: most frequently they are, especially in the suburbs, stationers, booksellers, or circulating-library keepers in a small way, and with their occupation newsvending seems to connect itself most legitimately and naturally. But there are interlopers of all trades: greengrocers, who bring out a few papers in the same little spring-van that goes to Covent Garden for vegetables; barbers, who in the semi-rural environs of the metropolis are as great gossips as ever; and the whole tribe of small huxters. Sometimes your newsvender (in the suburbs and suburban villages) is a lady-like person,

whom the clergyman and good ladies of the neighbourhood have set up and patronise in a small elegant stationer's shop. Sometimes the newsvender is a pompous gentleman in black, with an immense gold chain and seals—so grand, you can scarcely conceive how so great a man comes to be fiddling with an assortment of second (or third or fourth) hand books, most of them exposed in the open air, and a library (by courtesy so-called) consisting of some hundred or two of every soiled volume of the most common-place modern novels, evidently picked up as chance bargains. At last you find that he was regularly bred in some large bookselling shop, but either could never contrive to get into business for himself, or having got in could not contrive to manage it, and so subsided into his suburban from-hand-to-mouth trade. The lady's shop is generally the resort of the religious gossips of the neighbourhood-she is secretary to half-a-dozen small coal, soup, and clothing societies, and carries on a little manufacture in Berlin wools. The gentleman's shop is the resort of the more free-thinking, literary, and political characters of the vicinity, to whom he recounts his experiences of the innertown life-affects to know all its ways-explains intricate political questions (he is generally a liberal with a strong dash of the aristocrat), and is particularly cloquent on the degeneracy of modern newspapers. "If he had 50,000l. to begin with, he could show what a really liberal newspaper might and ought to be made." As a counterpart to these gentilities we must not forget their neighbour the radical newsvender. He is generally a shrewd self-educated artisan, who, having been bitten by a mad politician, has got thrown out of employment, if, indeed, he have not fared worse. Being a high-spirited man, he will not live on agitation as a trade; his own is closed against him; so a number of friends agree to take their stationery and papers from him, in order to start him in a small shop. He looks pretty steadily to the general business, and his wife (a woman such as England alone can produce-whose love was at first a sentiment of admiration for one whom his class regarded as their champion), minds the details. He is not quite cured of his taste for public business; but he struggles earnestly to confine it to a safe channel. He is secretary to some anti-corn-law association; or an opposition member of the vestry; or, if no better employment in this way is to be had, he puts up with a mechanics' institution. His wife thinks in her secret soul that they might prosper better if he would keep himself entirely to their own business; but she never breathes a word about it, for it might make him give up what he takes so much pleasure in. He has himself misgivings of the same kind, and every time the twinge comes across him attends with double vigour to business for two or three days. On the whole they scramble on tolerably well-never out of difficulties, never sinking under them-respected by all who know them.

A much bigger person than the kind of newsvenders we have been describingthough by no means so topping a character as the publisher-is the London agent, who deals with and supplies country news-agents. Men of this class generally take large supplies of papers direct from their publishing-offices. One we know whose papers cost him a 1000l. a-week. Ten or twelve of this class send their papers by railway-trains. The morning papers sent by the Great Western Railway must be at Paddington by six A.M.; they reach Bristol by eleven A.M. Those for the north of England are sent by the Birmingham train, which leaves Euston Square at six A.M. The Southampton and Gosport train starts from

Nine Elms at seven A.M. By this route the papers reach Gosport about halfpast ten A.M.: a steamer is waiting for the arrival of the train, and with its assistance the London morning papers are delivered in the Isle of Wight by half-past eleven A.M. The inhabitants of that island are reading their Times,' while the London publication of the paper has scarcely finished. An agent who supplies the early papers to Gosport and the Isle of Wight, informs us that his Gosport customers are often supplied before his town customers. The publisher of the 'Times' gives off the papers that are to be sent by railway first, and the agents who receive them are not allowed to supply their town customers with these first oozings of the press.

Little did honest Nathaniel Butter, when in 1622 he began to publish Certain Newes of the present Week,' contemplate the extent to which the trade he was inventing was to grow. In the course of little more than two centuries the small weekly newspaper has expanded into 139 daily, weekly, &c. newspapers. The activity set in motion to keep up these papers may be partly inferred from what has been stated above. So many news-collectors incessantly perambulating the streets; peeping into the senate and courts of justice; into the theatres and other places of public amusement; or posting night and day to and from public dinners, agricultural and political meetings in all the provinces of the empire. So many honest spies residing in the capitals both of Christendom and Islam, gathering and transmitting to the London newspapers every rumour of court intrigue-so many theatrical and artistical critics-so many writers of essays, political, moral, (and immoral,) humorous, and instructive-all for the edification of the patrons of the London newspaper press. So many editors devising means of rendering their paper more attractive, collecting matter from all ends of the earth-so many expresses to convey information to the newspapers, or the newspapers to their readers-so many reporters listening (what a penance) to the lengthy speeches of modern orators, and translating them into grammar and English idiom, in order that they may not discredit the columns of the newspaper-so many newsvenders, with their bags, fetching, and folding, and despatching, by foot-messengers, by post, and by railway-trains. It is a brave bustling life, and one in which there is no stint or stay. No sooner do the nightowls, whose business it is to "compose" the morning papers, quit work, than their brother typos, who work by day, are setting to work upon the evening papers. The last copy of the Sunday paper is scarcely "worked off" when the compositors on the Monday morning journals are beginning to bestir themselves. Sunday and Saturday are alike days of sale with the newsvender. The half-opened shopwindow, the wall beplastered with placards announcing the contents of the Sunday newspapers, show that the newsman is at his receipt of customs; and at the omnibus-stands and the steam-boat piers the volunteer venders of the newspapers attend to supply the country-going parties with something to read should the time hang heavy on their hands. These last are the lingering remnants (sadly tamed down) of the vociferous itinerants whose vera effigies adorns the tail of this sketch, as the title of one of our earlier newspapers does its head.

The printers of newspapers are much like other printers, but both the authors of newspapers (editors, writers of "leaders" and reviews, reporters, penny-aliners, &c.), and the newsvenders are classes with marked distinctive characters.