The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

In 1842 appeared the first pictorial newspaper, The Illustrated London News. It was started by Herbert Ingram, who began life as a provincial newsboy, and died, in the vigor of his age, member of Parliament for his native town. It was a success from the first, so great that numerous competitors sprang up and endeavored to undersell it. But these were all vastly inferior, and one by one withered away, the most persistent of them at last passing into the hands of The Illustrated London News, which now enjoys a larger circulation than any other weekly newspaper, amounting to about six millions a year!

There was a satirical paper at this time, called The Age, which, being of a strongly libellous character, was continually feeling the weight of the law. It did not improve in character as it grew older, and its editor, Tommy Holt, was proved upon a trial to have received bribes to suppress a slander that he had threatened should appear in his paper. This same Tommy Holt was very successful in inventing 'sensation' headings for his columns, and by no means either delicate or scrupulous in so doing. There was another rascally paper of the same description, called The Satirist, which was at last finally crushed by the Duke of Brunswick, the result of several actions for libel. Among other new literary oddities at this time may be mentioned The Fonetic Nūz, the organ of those enthusiastic reformers who were endeavoring to accomplish a revolution in our orthography. It lasted, however, but a very short time.

The year 1850 saw the initiation of the final campaign directed against the only remaining burdens of the press. Mr. Ewart and Mr. Milner Gibson brought forward a motion for the repeal of the advertisement duty, but were defeated by two hundred and eight votes to thirty-nine. But they were not cast down by their want of success, but manfully returned to the charge. In 1851, they procured the appointment of a committee to inquire into the question, and in 1852, gathering strength, like William of Orange, from each successive defeat, they brought forward a triple set of resolutions, one for the abolition of the advertisement duty, another levelled at the stamp, and the third for the repeal of the paper duties. They carried the first, but lost the others. In 1854, Mr. Gibson made a fresh motion concerning the laws affecting the press, and received a promise that the subject should receive the early attention of the House; and in 1855, Sir G.C. Lewis, then chancellor of the exchequer, who had hitherto opposed the repeal of the duty, brought in a bill for its abolition. After a struggle in both Houses the measure passed, and received the royal assent on the 15th of June.

In following up this final struggle, we have passed over one important period, the railway mania in 1845, which gave birth to no less than twenty-nine newspapers, entirely occupied with railway intelligence, in London, besides many others in the provinces. Only two of these have survived, for the other two railway newspapers which still exist were established before that memorable madness fell upon the nation. Of these, Herapath's Journal is the oldest and best, and is the oracle of the Stock Exchange on railway matters. There are some slight symptoms of the madness returning in the present year, as far at least as the metropolis is concerned, and one new railway journal has just been started in consequence. There are many amusing anecdotes told of newspapers at this epoch, of which we will quote one. One of these railway organs had published and paid for, from time to time, lengthy and elaborate reports of the meetings of a certain company, supplied by one of the staff of reporters. At length the editor told the reporter that he thought it was high time for the company to give the paper an advertisement, after all the favorable notices that bad been given to the undertaking in question. The reporter acquiesced, and promised to get the order for an advertisement, but putting it off from time to time, the editor was induced to make inquiries for himself; whereupon he had the extreme satisfaction of learning that no such company had ever existed, and that the elaborate reports of meetings, speeches, etc., had been entirely fabricated by his ingenious employé! An endeavor was made last year to resuscitate one of these defunct daily journals, The Iron Times, and Tommy Holt was the editor. It lingered for some weeks, and then smashed utterly. The editor called the contributors together, and told them that there was nothing to pay them with—nothing in fact remained but the office furniture. 'Take that, my boys,' said he, 'and divide it among you.' This was accordingly done, and one man marched off with a table, another with a chair, a third with a desk, a fourth with an inkstand, and so on!

When the stamp duty was abolished as a tax, it remained optional with the publishers to have any number of their issue stamped they pleased for transmission through the poet. The number of stamps thus issued in the first six months after the repeal was 21,646,688, whereas the number in the corresponding period of 1854, when the tax still existed, was 55,732,499. The number of stamps issued in the year 1854 to the principal newspapers was as follows: Times, 15,975,739; Morning Advertiser, 2,392,780; Daily News, 1,485,099; Morning Herald, 1,158,000; Morning Chronicle, 873,500; The Globe, 850,000; and The Morning Post, 832,500. Of the weeklies, The Illustrated London News was then the second, 5,627,866; The News of the World, a Liberal, unillustrated journal, started in 1843, standing first, with 5,673,525 (the price of this paper is now reduced to twopence, and it is an admirably conducted journal); Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, 5,572,897; The Weekly Times, price one penny, 3,902,169; Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, also a penny journal, which is best described by the epithet 'rabid,' 2,496,256; The Weekly Dispatch, price fivepence, an advanced Liberal journal, which is emphatically the workingman's newspaper, and originally started in 1801, 1,982,933; Bell's Life in London, 1,161,000. Of the provincial newspapers, The Manchester Guardian heads the list with 1,066,575, followed by The Liverpool Mercury, with 912,000, and The Leeds Mercury, with 735,000. Foremost among the Scotch newspapers stands The North British Advertiser, with 808,002; and the Irish paper with the largest circulation was The Telegraph, with 959,000. Of the London literary papers the chief was The Examiner, with 248,560. With one or two exceptions, the circulation of these journals may be considered to have increased enormously. There are now published in Great Britain 1,350 different newspapers, of which 240 are London papers, 20 being dailies, 776 English provincial papers, 143 Irish, 140 Scotch, 37 Welsh, and 14 are published in the British Isles. Many of these enjoy but a limited circulation, as naturally follows from the narrow limit they assign to themselves. Thus several trades have their special organs, as for instance, the grocers, the bakers, and even the hairdressers among others.

Before concluding this article it will be well to notice a few of the leading journals which have not been mentioned. The Daily Telegraph was originally started at twopence, in 1855, by Colonel Sleigh, but he, getting behindhand with his printers to the amount of £1,000, sold them the paper for another £1,000, and in their hands it has since remained. The price was reduced to a penny, and, under the new management, its circulation rapidly increased. The Standard dealt a heavy blow at it in 1858, by coming out suddenly one morning, without any previous warning, as a double sheet. This first number was given away in the streets, in vast quantities, thrown into omnibuses and cabs, pitched into shops and public houses, and so on. The sale of The Telegraph so decreased that it was found necessary to enlarge it to the same size as The Standard, when its circulation rose again immediately. It has now the largest circulation in the world, more than 100,000 daily, a much larger London circulation than The Times, though a smaller provincial and foreign sale; and its clear profits are variously stated by persons who profess to be well informed, at different sums, the least of which is £20,000 a year. The chief causes of its success are its independent and uncompromising tone, the great pains it takes to gain early intelligence—it has frequently anticipated The Times itself in foreign news—and the vigorous and able social articles of Mr. George Augustus Sala. The Daily News was started as a Liberal and Reform journal in 1846. An enormous sum of money was sunk in establishing it, for it was not at first successful. Charles Dickens was the first editor, but politics were not much in the line of the genial and unrivalled novelist, and he was soon succeeded by John Forster and Charles Wentworth Dilke, whose connection with the South Kensington Museum and the great Exhibition has made him a knight, a C. B., and a very important personage. The Daily News is now one of the ablest and most successful of London journals, and has had and still enjoys the assistance of the best writers of the day in every department. The line which this journal has always maintained toward America will forever earn it the admiration and gratitude of the United States. Another firm friend of the great republic is The Morning Star, the organ of Mr. Bright and the Manchester school, started in 1856. In addition to its political claims, it has a great hold upon the public as a family newspaper, by the careful manner in which everything objectionable is excluded from its columns. Its twin sister, born at the same time, is called The Evening Star. Bell's Life in London, a weekly journal, was originally brought out in 1820, and, although it has more than one successful rival to contend against, it still maintains its preëminence as the first English sporting paper. It is very carefully edited, each department being placed under a separate editor, and is the great oracle in all matters relating to sports and games. The history of one of the ablest contributors to this journal, who wrote some most charming articles on fly-fishing and other kindred topics, under the signature of 'Ephemera'—though he was said never to have thrown a fly in his life—is a very sad one. His name was Fitzgerald, a man of good family and connections, married to a lady with £1,200 a year, and living in a good house at the West End. But the alcoholic demon had got hold of him. He would disappear for days together, and then suddenly present himself at the office of the paper with nothing on but a shirt and trousers. He would then sit down and write an article, receive his pay, go away and purchase decent clothes, return home, and live quietly perhaps for a month, when he would—to use a prison phrase—break out again as before. He was last seen, in the streets of London, in a state of complete intoxication, being carried upon a stretcher by two policemen to the police cell, where he died the same night.

At the head of the Sunday papers stands The Observer, founded in 1792. Like The Globe, it is extremely well informed upon all political matters, for very good reasons. It spares no expense in obtaining early news, and is an especial favorite with the clubs. The Era is the great organ of the theatrical world, but joins to that specialité the general attributes of an ordinary weekly journal. It was established in 1837. The Field, which calls itself the country gentleman's newspaper, is all that it professes to be, and a most admirable publication, treating of games, sports, natural history, and rural matters generally. It was started by Mr. Benjamin Webster, the accomplished actor manager, in 1853. But to particularize the principal papers, even in a short separate notice of a few lines, would far transgress the limits at our disposal. All the professions are well supplied with journals devoted to their interests, and it is impossible here to dwell upon them or those which represent literature and the fine arts. With regard to religious papers, their name is legion, and they would require a separate article to be fairly and honestly considered. Punch, too, and his rivals, dead and living, are in the same category, and must, however reluctantly, be passed over. Two curiosities, however, of the press must be mentioned. Public Opinion was started about two years and a half ago. It consisted of weekly extracts from the leading articles of English and foreign journals, and scraps of news, and other odds and ends. It has succeeded mainly from its cost of production being so slight, owing to its paste-and-scissors character, and also because it freely opens its columns to correspondents de rebus omnibus, who are willing to buy any number of copies for the pleasure of seeing themselves in print. The Literary Times, in addition to reviews of books, professed to criticize the leading articles in the various papers, but, after an existence of some six months or so, one Saturday morning The Literary Times was non est inventus.

In concluding this series of articles, which has run to a much greater length than he originally intended, the writer is conscious of many shortcomings and omissions, which he trusts will be pardoned and overlooked when his principal object is borne in mind. That object has been to give a general outline of the history of the press, and especially of its struggles against 'the powers which be;' and, though tempted now and again—he fears too often for the patience of his readers—to wander away into particularities, he has always endeavored to keep that object in view. Above all, he hopes he has at least been successful in showing the truth of that sentiment which was first publicly expressed as a toast at a Whig dinner, at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in 1795: 'The liberty of the press—it is like the air we breathe—if we have it not, we die!'

OUR MARTYRS

Lightly the river runs betweenHanging cliffs and meadows green.Blackly the prison, looking down,Frowns at its shadow's answering frown.Shut from life in his life's fresh morn,Crouches a soldier, wounded and worn.Chained and starved in the dungeon grim,Day and night are alike to him;Save that the murmurous twilight airStings his soul with a deeper despair.Day by day, as the taunting breezeWafts him the breath of orange trees,He fancies in meadows far awayThe level lines of odorous hay;And sees the scythes of the mowers runIn and out of the steady sun.Night by night, as the mounting moonClimbs from his eager gaze too soon,The gleams that across the gratings fall,Broken and bright, on the prison wall,Seem the tangles of Northern rills,Like threads of silver winding the hills.When, sinking into the western skies,The sun aslant on the window lies;And motes that hovered dusty and dim,Golden-winged through the glory swim:He drops his head on his fettered hands,And thinks of the fruitful Northern lands.Between his fingers' wasted lines,Tear after tear into sunlight shines,As, wandering in a dream, he treadsThe ripened honey of clover heads;Or watches the sea of yellow grainBreak into waves on the windy plain;Or sees the orchard's grassy gloomSpotted with globes of rosy bloom.Through the shimmer of shadowy hazeRedden the hills with their autumn blaze.The oxen stand in the loaded teams;The cider bubbles in amber streams;And child-like laughter and girlish songFloat with the reaper's shout along.He stirs his hands, and the jealous chainWakes him once more to his tyrant pain—To festered wounds, and to dungeon taint,And hunger's agony, fierce and faint.The sunset vision fades and flits,And alone in his dark'ning cell he sits:Alone with only the jailers grim,Hunger and Pain, that clutch at him;And, tight'ning his fetters, link by link,Drag him near to a ghastly brink;Where, in the blackness that yawns beneath,Stalks the skeleton form of Death.Starved, and tortured, and worn with strife;Robbed of the hopes of his fresh, young life;—Shall one pang of his martyr painCry to a sleepless God in vain?

ÆNONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME

CHAPTER X

But though Ænone's sanguinely conceived plan for Cleotos's happiness had so cruelly failed, it was not in her heart to yield to his passionate, unreflecting demand, and send him away from her, even to a kinder home than he would have found at the house of the captain Polidorus. It would but increase his ill fortune, by enforcing still greater isolation from every fount of human sympathy. Though the affection of the wily Leta had been withdrawn from him, her own secret friendship yet remained, and could be a protection to him as long as he was at her side; and in many ways she could yet extend her care and favor to him, until such time as an outward-bound vessel might be found in which to restore him to his native country.

Whether there was any instinct at the bottom of her heart, telling her that in the possibility of trying events to come his friendship might be equally serviceable to her, and that, even in the mere distant companionship of a slave with his mistress, she might feel a certain protecting influence, she did not stop to ask. Neither did she inquire whether she wished to retain him for his own benefit alone, and without thought of any happiness or comfort to be derived by her from his presence. Had she been accustomed closely to analyze her feelings, she might have perceived, perhaps, that, in her growing isolation, it was no unpleasant thing to look upon the features and listen to the tones which carried her memory back to her early days of poverty, when, except for a short interval, her life had been at its happiest. But had she known and acknowledged all this, it would not have startled her, for she would have felt that, in her heart, there was not the slightest accompanying shade of disloyalty. Her nature was not one to admit of sudden transfers of allegiance. It was rather one in which a real love would last forever. When the first romantic liking for Cleotos had consumed itself, from the ashes there had sprung no new passion for him, but merely the flowers of earnest, true-hearted friendship. And it was her misfortune, perhaps, that the real love for another which had succeeded would not in turn consume itself, but would continue to flourish green and perennial, though now seemingly fated to bask no longer in the sunshine of kindly words and actions, but only to cower beneath the chill of harsh and wanton neglect.

Cleotos therefore remained—at first passing weary days of bitter, heartbreaking despondency. His lost liberty he had borne without much complaint, for it was merely the fortune of war, and hundreds of his countrymen were sharing the same fate with him. But to lose that love upon which he had believed all the happiness of his life depended, was a blow to which, for a time, no philosophy could reconcile him—the more particularly as the manner in which that loss had been forced upon him seemed, to his sensitive nature, to be marked by peculiar severity. To have had her torn from him in any ordinary way—to part with her in some quarrel in which either side might be partially right, and thenceforth never to see her again—or to be obliged to yield her up to the superior claims of an open, generous rivalry—any of these things would, in itself, have been sufficient affliction. But it was far worse than all this to be obliged to meet her at every turn, holding out her hand to him in pleasant greeting, and uttering words of welcoming import; and all with an unblushing appearance of friendly interest, as though his relations with her had never been other than those of a fraternal character, and as though, upon being allowed her mere friendship, there could be nothing of which he had a right to complain.

At first, in the agony of his heart, he had no strength to rise above the weight which crushed him, and to obey the counsels of his pride so far as to play before her a part of equally assumed indifference. To her smiling greetings he could return only looks of bitter despair or passionate entreaty—vainly hoping that he might thereby arouse her better nature, and bring her in repentance back to him. And at first sight it seemed not impossible that such a thing might take place; for, in the midst of all her change of conduct and wilful avoidance of allusion to the past, she felt no dislike of him. It was merely her love for him that she had suppressed, and in its place there still remained a warm regard. If he could have been content with her friendship alone, she would have granted it all, and would have rejoiced, for the sake of olden times, to use her influence with others in aid of his upward progress. Perhaps there were even times when, as she looked upon his misery and thought of the days not so very far back, in which he had been all in all to her, her heart may have been melted into something of its former affection. But if so, it was only for a moment, nor did she ever allow the weakness to be seen. Her path had been taken, and nothing now could make her swerve from it. Before her enraptured fancy gleamed the state and rank belonging to a patrician's wife; and as she wove her toils with all the resources of her cunning, the prize seemed to approach her nearer and nearer. Now having advanced so far, she must not allow a momentary weakness to imperil all. And therefore unwaveringly she daily met her former lover with the open smile of friendly greeting, inviting confidence, mingled with the same indescribable glance, forbidding any renewal of love.

And so days passed by, and Cleotos, arousing from his apathetic despair, felt more strongly that, if the lapse of love into mere friendship is a misfortune, the offer of friendship as a substitute for promised love is a mockery and an insult: his soul rebelled at being made a passive party to such a bargain; and he began himself to play the retaliatory part which a wronged nature naturally suggests to itself. Like Leta, he learned to hold out the limpid hand in careless greeting, or to mutter meaningless and cold compliments, and, in any communication with her, to assume all the appearances of indifferent acquaintanceship. At first, indeed, it was with an aching heart struggling in his breast, and an agony of wounded spirit tempting him to cast away all such studied pretences, and to throw himself upon her mercy, and meanly beg for even the slightest return of her former affection. But gradually, as he perceived how vain would be such self-abasement, and how its display would rather tend to add contempt to her indifference, his pride came to rescue him from such a course; and he began more and more to tune the temper of his mind to his actions, and to feel something of the same coldness which he outwardly displayed.

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