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examples of a most costly and complex organization. A great change was impending. In A Guide to the Electric Telegraph' by C. M. Archer, published in 1852, it is stated that the application of the Electric Telegraph to the purposes of the Press is due to the author of that handbook. This was in May, 1845, when there existed only one Telegraph in this country,-that between Nine Elms and Portsmouth, that in the Morning Chronicle,' with which he was connected, appeared the first practical application in England of the Telegraph to the purpose of reporting public meetings. Speeches are now reported through the telegraphic wires at as great a length as if the reporters had transmitted the words in the old ordinary way. So instantaneous is the collateral dispatch to provincial towns that it is possible for a statesman to speak at Glasgow in the evening, and to find on his breakfast table next morning, in the Local Paper, the comments of the London editors on his speech. It is not the practice now for every leading newspaper to have its own telegraphic reporter, for if that were the case, the ordinary business traffic would be seriously impeded. If each of the Morning Papers required a report of the same proceedings, and some of the leading Provincial Papers also wanted special reports, the wires would be blocked. Thus it is that the Telegraph Companies have organized an "Intelligence Department.” Few, perhaps, have any notion of the nature and extent of this wonderful organization. Its national importance can scarcely be over-rated.

The labours of this "Intelligence Department" may be measured by the fact that it has agencies all over the kingdom, who constantly receive news, and very frequently transmit it. How vast is the machinery employed in this one intellectual operation may be collected from the fact that ocean telegraphy has reached such an extent since the first conducting wire was laid in 1850 from Dover to Calais, that there are now more than eighty submarine cables, connecting nation with nation by their mysterious and

sublime agency.

Of the national importance of such

operations we give one example:

"On the 8th of November, 1861, Messrs. Slidell and Mason, Confederate Commissioners, were forcibly removed by Commodore Wilkes, a Federal officer, from the British mail steamer Trent.' This proceeding was a casus belli according to the law of nations. The news reached London on the 27th of the same month; and on the 29th a cabinet council resolved on demanding the release of the commissioners, as the only way of avoiding hostilities. On December 2, despatches to this effect left England; they reached Halifax on the 15th, and Washington on the 19th. The United States Government yielded to the demand, and gave up the commissioners on the 27th. The news of this surrender left New York on the 28th, and reached Cork on the 8th of January, 1862. In the interval troops were sent out to Canada, to be prepared for war; and enormous expenses were incurred for military and naval preparations. It was felt at the time, and has been acknowledged since, that if a transatlantic submarine telegraph had been at work, millions of money might have been saved; seeing that the commerce of the country was seriously interrupted during this period of suspense, irrespective of the direct cost of warlike preparations. Between the date of the offence, and the arrival of the news that reparation had been made, exactly two calendar months elapsed; if an electric messenger had reduced this interval to a week, or fortnight, or even a month, the saving of money and anxiety would have been immense."*

To carry out all this scientific conquest of time and space, by the most perfect mental and mechanical arrangements in the newspaper office itself, appears, at first sight, almost as great a wonder as the rapid communication. Nothing but the most perfect organization of the division of labour could accomplish this feat.

There is, after midnight, in the office of a morning paper,

* From an article by Mr. G. Dodd in the Companion to the British Almanac for 1866.'

a constant necessity for adapting the labour of every quarter of an hour to the requirements of the instant time. Much of the newspaper matter may have been in type in the evening; some portion may be quite ready for printing off. But new necessities may derange much of this preparation. Say that the Parliament is sitting. The reporters are in the gallery at the meeting of the House, and each arrives at the office with his assigned portion of the debate. A heavy night is not expected, and the early reporters write with comparative fullness. Suddenly an unexpected turn is given to the proceedings. A great debate springs up, out of a ministerial statement or an opposition objection. Then come reply and rejoinder. Column after column is poured in. Smaller matters must give way to greater. The intelligence that will keep is put aside for the information that is pressing. The debate is prolonged till one or two o'clock, and the paper is approaching its completion. But an electric telegraph communication has arrived-perhaps an important express. Away goes more news. Advertisements, law reports, police reports, correspondence-all retire into obscurity for one day. There is plenty of manipulating power in the great body of compositors to effect these changes. But not in any department is there any apparent bustle. Nor is there any neglect in the labours that wait upon the work of the compositors. One word is not put for another. The readers are as vigilant to correct every error-to have no false spelling and no inaccurate punctuation as if they were bestowing their vigilance upon a book to be published next season. The reporters are as careful to make no slips which would indicate a want of knowledge, as if they were calmly writing in their libraries after breakfast. The one-presiding mind of the editor is watchful over all. At four or five o'clock the morning paper goes to press.

But there are many hundred copies to be despatched by the morning mails. Manchester and Glasgow would be frightened from their propriety if the daily London papers did not arrive at the accustomed hour. The London mer

chant, banker, lawyer, would go unwillingly to his morning labour, if he had not had one passing glance at the division in the House, the state of the money-market, the last foreign intelligence. Late as the paper may have been in its mental completion, Manchester, Glasgow, and London will not be kept without that illumination which has become almost as necessary as sunlight. Machinery has been created by the demand, to carry the demand farther than the warmest imagination could have anticipated. In 1814, Koenig, a German, erected the first printing machine at the Times' office, and produced eighteen hundred impressions an hour on one side. The machine superseded the duplicates of the type which were once necessary, painfully and laboriously to keep up a small supply, worked by men, with relays, at the rate of five hundred an hour. In 1818 Edward Cowper produced his cylinder machine, which effected a revolution in the commerce of books.

Koenig's machine, which was a very complicated instrument, has been supplanted by machines of far more power, and by improvements in the process of rapidly producing stereotype plates, which enable such a newspaper as the 'Times' to meet the greatest demand in the smallest time.

The amount of the change which has been produced in ten years by the abolition of the Newspaper Stamp and the Advertisement Duty-in some degree also by the repeal of the tax upon paper-is sufficiently indicated by the following figures :-There were published in England, at the commencement of 1864, 919 journals. Of these 240 belonged to London; and these included 13 daily morning papers, 7 evening, and 220 published during the week and at intervals. But these London Journals, not daily, comprise the purely literary and scientific papers-the legal and medical, and, more numerous than all, the religious journals. Further, there have started into flourishing existence no less than 32 district journals of the metropolis and its suburbs. Taking these 240 metropolitan and suburban papers from the total 919 published in England, we find that there are now 679 Country newspapers, instead

of the 261 which were existing in 1855. We may infer, therefore, without going into a minute examination of the matter, that the 350 populous places which, at that time, had no newspaper of their own, are now not left without a vehicle for the publication of their local affairs, whether important or frivolous, whether affecting a nation or a parish. To finish this summary, I may add that Wales has 37 journals; Scotland 140; Ireland 140; the British