Now this was very natural, for in those days there were no newspapers. But had 'The Times' then existed, the woeful lady of the ballad need not have been reduced to unavailing hand-wringing: she would immediately have inserted, in the advertising columns of his newspaper-"Why does the knight of a gallant mien come no more to the Baron of Mowbray's castle?" Every morning daily, as he took his breakfast, would he be reminded of his offence. Afraid to touch the harassing monitor, his matutinal meal would lose more than half its relish. No place of refuge could he fly to where the wailings of his mistress could not follow him. They would be heard in the coffee-room, they would penetrate even into the asylum of the club. A spell would be upon him, rendering life miserable till he knelt for mercy at the feet of his mistress again. The fair dames of romance could only stab, poison, or betake themselves to sorcery, but our forlorn ones can advertise their lovers as "stolen or strayed."

The following advertisement, which appeared in the Chronicle' of the present year, not long after St. Valentine's, may also have reference to the tender passion; the hero of it might serve for the loutish lover so frequently introduced as a foil to the serious and elegant inamorato of a tale: "If the author of the lines, of which the following is a skeleton of the first stanza, will communicate with the person to whom they were recently addressed, which is earnestly desired, the result cannot but be gratifying to both parties :

The rhyme is somewhat peculiar. The mystery of this advertisement is easily solved. The Police Reports noticed, a few days before its publication, that a gentleman had appeared at one of the offices in high dudgeon because, on applying at the Post Office to have the postage of a Valentine returned, he was politely informed, "that it was the practice to return the postage of all anonymous letters-except Valentines." Doubtless, the communication which was to be in its result "gratifying to both parties," was a mere bait to catch the offender who had mulcted the angry gentleman in twopence; and if the sweet youth was caught, it needs no spirit of divination to tell that assuredly he tasted of cudgel. Matrimonial advertisements are at a discount, but a class which still retain a soupçon of matrimonial speculation continue to haunt the newspapers. Here is a specimen :-" A Lady in her thirty-third year wishes to meet with a situation as Companion to a Lady, or to superintend the domestic concerns of a Widower. She has been accustomed to good society, and can give unexceptionable references. As a comfortable home is the principal object, a moderate salary will suffice.” For "thirty-third" read "thirty-eighth." It is a buxom widow, who wishes to secure a good house over her head, with a chance of becoming its mistress. If her appearance please the honest man who accepts her services, he had best go to church with her at once, for "to this complexion it must come at last." Perhaps, however, he would prefer to mate himself with the "Respectable Widow" in the next column, who is "fully competent to superintend the household affairs of a Single Gentleman, or a Mercantile Establishment;" or, better

still, a female" of high respectability and of the Established Church," who “would be found invaluable where children have been recently deprived of maternal care; and, being clever in millinery and dress-making, would take them under her entire care." Yet something more than being clever in millinery and dress-making is sometimes thought necessary to qualify for the charge of children; so perhaps the widower might prefer sending his daughters to the innumerable admirable seminaries of education where young ladies are taught― "French, Italian, and German; English Composition; Mathematics, Political Economy, and Chemistry; the use of the Globes; Calisthenics (and singlestick?); Drawing, Entomology and Botany.-N.B. Latin and Greek, if required;" and where, in addition to all this cramming, "the Diet is unlimited!" Our British fair do not lavish all their attentions on the other sex-they have some sympathy left for their own:-"Two Ladies, residing within a few miles of town, wish to receive a Lady suffering under Mental Imbecility. While every attention would be paid to her health, it would be their study to promote the comfort and amusement of the patient, as far as circumstances might allow. The use of a carriage is required," whether the patient be able to use it or not. The benevolent and disinterested attention to the comfort of utter strangers, implied in the advertisement of the ladies under consideration, is not confined to the breasts of the softer sex. Here is a male philanthropist, who, unable to find occupants enough for his roomy benevolence, steps from the circle of his acquaintance into the regions of the unknown, and volunteers his services to all and any persons:-"Any Gentleman desirous of engaging in an easy and agreeable profession will have an opportunity that offers-provided he has 1000l. to employ as capital." Indeed, in these days, when, according to some statesmen, the whole country is labouring under a plethora of capital, it is astonishing to see how many humane individuals advertise their services to bleed the patients. All classes of readers find advertisements suited to their different tastes. To literary men, aldermen, and other sedentary and masticating characters, of a dyspeptical tendency, the medical advertisements are irresistible. One learned practitioner proclaims-"No more gout, no more rheumatism!" Another, borrowing a metaphor from the worshipful fraternity of bum-bailiffs, talks of "Bleeding arrested;" we have "Ringworm cured by a Lady," and "Toothache cured by a Clergyman of the Church of England."* "Parr's Life Pills" may be such in reality as well in name; but "Cockle's Antibilious Pills" are certainly a passport to immortality, for the learned vender of them enumerates among his active and influential patrons several whom the ill-informed public had long numbered with the dead. Young men turn with interest to the advertisements of the theatres and other places of public entertainment: these are generally well classified, but to this praise there is one exception. An ingenious clergyman who takes for his texts-not passages from the Scriptures, but-the most recent topics of the day, and preaches upon the themes of journals in a style quite as entertaining, duly advertizes in the course of each week the topics he is to discuss on the following Sunday. It is rather hard upon this gentleman that

*Speaking of toothache, some may have an interest in knowing that-" A lady, having discovered an invaluable article for the toothache, now submits it to the public as unequalled, it not requiring any application to the teeth, or producing the slightest inconvenience."

neither the Times' nor the Chronicle' will place his advertisements among those which immediately precede the "leading article "--that being evidently their proper place, say between the announcement of the "Dissolving Views" of the Polytechnic exhibition, and that of the Zoological collection at the English Opera House. On a theme so copious one might run on for ever: but, before drawing bridle, let us, at least, give immortality to an advertisement which must speak trumpet-tongued to every warlike and patriotic soul::

"AUX ETATS FOIBLES, voisins, d'aucune puissance dominante aggressive, l'inventeur propose l'emploi de son arme nouvelle, nommée par lui, LE PACIFICATEUR, qui par son pouvoir destructif enorme contre les masses, egalisera les forces les plus disparates, et entre les mains d'un peuple rendra nuls les attentats d'un étranger sur leur independance nationale. Les agens pleinments autorisés peuvent s'addresser à Mons. Charles Toplis, Poultry, London.”

What a crow from the Poultry! What a huge turkeycock gobble! This is man-traps and spring-guns" on a magnificent scale, set to guard kingdoms instead of cabbage-gardens. The terrific emanation shakes all our nerves, and forces us to seek refuge from the stormy passions of the present, amid the silence and repose of the dead and buried past.

Not, however, before we have paid a hasty but heart-felt tribute to the greatest master of the advertising art in ancient or modern times-the illustrious George Robins. We are obliged to stick him in here, because, as is generally the case with original genius, he fits into none of our categories. His advertisements are calculated alike for the posting-bill, the distributary bill, and the newspaper, and look equally well in all. Typographical they are, and yet the types assume, in them, a pictorial character. No man ever made his letters speak like George Robins. His style is his own: to speak in the language of the turf, one could imagine he had been " got by Burke out of Malaprop." He has carried the eloquence of advertising far beyond all his predecessors. And, as was the case with his great precursors in eloquence, Demosthenes and Chatham, his "copia fandi” has raised him to great charges-to be Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Drury Lane renters, and founder of a colony at the Cape of Good Hope, the annals of which he is writing in his own advertisements.

The art and science of advertising even in London did not reach the state of perfection in which we find it all at once. Enough has been said to show that even the young among the present generation may have noted a progressive improvement. But our forefathers, though not quite equal to us, were, after all, pretty fellows in their way; they understood something about advertising too, as we shall soon be able to convince our readers. The perishable placards and posting-bills of the ancients are gone-they have perished, like the frescoes of Leonardo da Vinci-but the domesticated advertisements of the newspaper have been stored up in libraries for the inspection of the curious. There are at this moment lying on our table some stray journals and Gazettes of the good days of Queen Anne and the two first Georges, and a complete set of the 'Tatler' in the folio half-sheets in which it first appeared, with all the real advertisementswe do not mean Steele's parodies upon them; and, examining those archives carefully, we are sometimes almost tempted to give the palm to the advertisers of that remote era. The art of advertising is perhaps in our days more uni

versally known and practised-there are no such crude, unlicked lumps of advertisements as there were in A.D. 1711; but, again, there is scarcely the same racy originality. The advertisers of those days were the Shaksperes of this department of literature: those of the present time can rarely be estimated above the contributors to the annuals.

Place aux dames! There are plenty of wealthy and titled dames in our day who like to see their benevolence blazoned abroad by the advertised lists of subscribers to charities: but, apart from the spice of romance in its story, the following advertisement by the Duchess of Buckingham, in 1734, combining a skilful blazonry of her own humanity with a caution against over-drawing on her bank of benevolence, throws their timid, indirect self-praise at second-hand entirely into the shade :-" Last Tuesday evening, a female child, of about three weeks old, was left in a basket at the door of Buckingham House. The servants would have carried it into the park, but the case being some time after made known to the Duchess, who was told it was too late to send to the overseers of the parish, and that the child must perish with cold without speedy relief, her grace was touched with compassion, and ordered it to be taken care of. The person who left the letter in the basket is desired, by a penny-post letter, to inform whether the child has been baptized; because, if not, her grace will take care to have it done; and likewise to procure a nurse for it. Her grace doth not propose that this instance of her tenderness should encourage any further presents of this nature, because such future attempts will prove fruitless." These were the days in which The History of a Foundling' might have been read.

Even the reverend orator who advertises that the newest and most fashionable topics are discussed every Sunday from his pulpit had a prototype in those days, and one of much more daring genius-the Reverend Orator Henley. Here is one of that grave divine's announcements for 1726:-" On Sunday, July 31, the Theological Lectures of the Oratory begin in the French Chapel in Newport Market, on the most curious subjects in divinity. They will be after the manner and of the extent of the Academical Lectures. The first will be on the Liturgy of the Oratory, without derogating from any other, at half an hour after three in the afternoon. Service and sermon in the morning will be at half an hour after ten. The subjects will be always new, and treated in the most natural manner. On Wednesday next, at five in the evening, will be an Academical Lecture on Education, ancient and modern. The chairs that were forced back last Sunday by the crowd, if they would be pleased to come a very little sooner, would find the passage easy. As the town is pleased to approve of this undertaking, and the institutor neither does nor will act nor say anything in it that is contrary to the laws of God and his country, he depends on the protection of both, and despises malice and calumny." The advertisement of November, 1728, is still more daringly eccentric:-" At the Oratory in Newport Market, to-morrow, at half an hour after ten, the sermon will be on the Witch of Endor. At half an hour after five the Theological Lecture will be on the conversion and original of the Scottish nation, and of the Picts and Caledonians; St. Andrew's relicks and panegyrick, and the character and mission of the Apostles. On Wednesday, at six or near the matter, take your chance, will be a medley oration on the history, merits, and praise of Confusion and of Confounders in the road and out of the

way. On Friday, will be that on Dr. Faustus and Fortunatus, and Conjuration; after each the Climax of the Times, Nos. 23 and 24.-N.B. Whenever the prices of the seats are occasionally raised in the week-days notice of it will be given in the prints. An account of the performances of the Oratory from the first, to August last, is published, with the Discourse on Nonsense; and if any bishop, clergyman, or other subject of his Majesty, or any foreign prince or state can, at my years, and in my circumstances and opportunities, without the least assistance or any partner in the world, parallel the study, choice, variety, and discharge of the said performances of the Oratory by his own or any others, I engage forthwith to quit the said Oratory.-J. HENLEY."

Medical quackery was in full blossom at the beginning of last century. In 1700 we are informed:-" At the Angel and Crown, in Basing Lane, lives J. Pechey, a graduate in the University of Oxford, and of many years standing in the College of Physicians, London; where all sick people that come to him may have, for sixpence, a faithful account of their diseases, and plain directions for diet and other things they can prepare themselves; and such as have occasion for medicines may have them of him at reasonable rates, without paying anything for advice; and he will visit any sick person in London or the liberties thereof, in the day-time, for two shillings and sixpence, and anywhere within the bills of mortality for five shillings; and if he be called by any person as he passes by in any of these places, he will require but one shilling for advice." This excellently graduated tariff of charges might be recommended to the consideration of the faculty at large. Dr. Herwig's announcement is more artistically put together than Dr. Pechey's :-" Whereas, it has been industriously reported that Dr. Herwig, who cures madness and most distempers by sympathy, has left England and returned to Germany: this is to give notice, that he lives at the same place, viz., at Mr. Gagelman's, in Suffolk Street, Charing Cross, about the middle of the street, over against the green balcony." Lest, however, the superiority of Dr. Herwig in the science of humbug should be attributed to his foreign birth, we quote from the advertisements in the Tatler,' August 24 to 26, 1710, the advertisement of an indigenous quack:-" Whereas J. Moore, at the Pestle and Mortar, in Abchurch Lane, London, having had some extraordinary business which called me into the country for these five or six weeks last past, and finding I have been very much wanted in my absence, by the multitude of people which came to inquire for me; these are to inform them that I am returned, and am to be consulted with at my house as formerly." This class of practitioners employed largely the services of the industrious fraternity of billdistributers-as, indeed, they are still their principal patrons. Malcolm, in Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century,' has preserved rather an ingenious bill which men were engaged to thrust into the hands of passengers :-"Your old friend Dr. Case desires you not to forget him, although he has left the common way of bills."

Some of the nostrums of these gentlemen must have been rather agreeable to the taste. The following appears frequently in the Tatler :'—" The famous chymical quintessence of Bohea tea and cocoa-nuts together, wherein the volatile salt, oil, and spirit of them both are chymically extracted and united, and in which all the virtues of both tea and nut are essentially inherent, and is really a plea