1

Here patent pillars raise themselves aloof,
And Palais Royal jewels gem the roof.

Proud peacocks on the walls their plumage preen,
Whilst playful pea-hens coaxingly careen.
The former's splendour gives a fine bizarrity,
The latter's grace a charming regularity.

Full in the vestibule appears a desk
Carved with fantastic flowers in arabesque,
Bearing a quarto volume. By it stand
Willing and Partington on either hand.
A board proclaims, " For payment of a shilling
To write your surname Partington is Willing.'
Another board as certainly denies

Th' impeachment which the period implies,

And meets the statement with the bold rejection,

Willing with Partington has no connection,"

Disproving what with Euclid's axiomatic,
And needs no demonstration mathematic,

That things are equal which are both the same,
And manifesting "Much is in a name."

Reader, erstwhile perchance your childish feet
Have sought the Waxworks once in Baker Street,
Though now, as on the catalogue is shown,

It's façade fronts the Road of Marylebone.
There may you see live talk with dead fellows;
Wax, like misfortune, gives us wondrous bed-fellows:
If you a general idea would gain

Of what I further saw, your way is plain.
Repeat your whilom visit; there are few shows
So well worth studying as Madame Tussaud's.
Of what I more particularly viewed
Unstable memory strips description nude,
Though halting recollection seems to see
The uncertain outline just of two or three.
Yes, there I have it, let me put it down

Before the vision fade for ever flown.

Here in a modest chapel almost new,

See! Humphry Ward sits with a chosen few
Men of the time; and, graven on a board,
ROUTLEDGE ædificavit, fecit WARD.

Again vain recollection 'gins to slip,
As many a cup miscarries to the lip,
And ineffectual attempts to cross
The Lethean waters to "Metempsychos."
But stay! a reminiscence seems to swell,
And hold its shape within the mind's pell-mell.
See see there glows in alabastic white,
From out the darkness of oblivion's night,
A form symbolical of purity-

Sweet childhood slumbering in security,
And graven on an aureole round its head,

The Maiden's tribute to the Martyr Stead."

*

How oft, awake, the erstwhile sleepers find
Jupiter's wife, Mnemosyne, unkind.

I woo again. She cries out "Quantum suff!”
Correct Latinity for "That's enough!"
Forgetfulness, thy empire is restored,†
And Lethe's waters drown th' inspirèd word.
No more, no more! Calliope, good-bye,

It is abrupt, but, ask your mother why!

Then teach me, great Advertisement, to scorn
The faded laurels posthumously worn;

If fleeting fame alone shall be my share,
Yet everything is transitory here.

Great Heavens! grant I may not die unknown;
Grant me a living Fame, or grant me none.‡

* The name of the capital town in the kingdom of Nod.
"Lo, thy dread empire, chaos, is restored."-Dunciad, POPE.
"Oh, grant an honest fame or grant me none!"-POPE.

GEORGE SOMES LAYARD.

N. S. I.

5

FIRST NUMBERS.

By F. BAYFORD HARRISON.

ABOUT 623 B.C. appeared the first number of the Acta Diurna of Rome. This was certainly one of the earliest periodicals on record. Political speeches, law reports, police news, births, marriages, divorces, and funerals were made public in sheets which were hung up at various points of the city, and which served the Romans with the same sort of fare as that which Londoners obtain from the Times. The Acta Diurna are things of the far past; but there still flourishes a journal nearly nine hundred and eighty years old. The King-Pau, or chief sheet, is published at Pekin, and dated its first number, it is said, in A.D. 911, or in whatever may be the Chinese equivalent for that year of the Christian era. It has a circulation of about fourteen thousand copies, and appears weekly. The Venetian Notizie Scritte, dating from 1536, is the ancestor of all our modern journals. But I am not now intending to consider daily papers.

They who read much are probably less influenced by what they read than are they who read little; to-day's information counteracts that of yesterday. But certain books have changed the whole current of men's thoughts. Cervantes found his age so befooled with false chivalry and pseudo-heroism, that he did the world good service when he attacked windmills masquerading as giants, and smote them such weighty blows with his trenchant and doughty pen that they never afterwards troubled the world. In our own days we are informed by the police that boys and lads have occasionally become thieves and vagabonds chiefly through reading highly-spiced réchauffés of the deeds of Jack Sheppard, Paul Clifford, and Dick Turpin. Were there no socialistic newspapers there would be few socialists; no atheistic prints, few atheists; no extravagant writers, few extravagant speakers.

In the same way, though perhaps not so rapidly or so noticeably, all good influences are spread through periodical literature.

A few, very few, men make original researches in history, science, literature; they constantly communicate to the public their conclusions in articles which may be read by those who are running in the crowded race of modern life. We learn a little of everything from "the magazines." And our sources, or rather our cisterns, of knowledge are filled from very various springs. Take an ordinary upper-middle-class household, and look at their newsvendor's bill. For the father comes, say the Contemporary, and probably a professional monthly, with as likely as not a photographic, microscopic, bicyclic, floricultural, or other special journal for his enlightenment on the subject of his favourite amusement. The mother is perhaps content with her daily paper and the Graphic; the sons have Temple Bar and the Boy's Own Paper; the girls take the Queen, the Monthly Packet, and Little Folks; the baby has the Child's Pictorial or Sunshine; the servants read the Family Herald and the London Journal; whilst Cassell's Saturday Journal finds favour in the homes of the people throughout the country. I have often been surprised that the dog and the cat do not combine to subscribe for a magazine of their own, but perhaps they are content with their special column in Gardening.

Among ritualists the Church Times is eagerly perused; among High Church people,” the Guardian; among Low Church people the Record or Rock; Dissenters patronise the Christian World; teetotalers the Temperance Chronicle; "Salvationists" the War Cry; while at the other end of the religious scale our Roman Catholic countrymen read the Tablet. Between and among these periodicals, religious, technical, and general, are others almost innumerable, which one may poetically describe thus : "thick as leaves in Paternoster Row."

The population of England has always been increasing, and yet the increase of literature did not by any means keep pace with the population until quite recently. A hundred years ago the dailies, weeklies, and monthlies might be easily enumerated; now time and space would fail me if I tried to draw up a list of English periodicals; I mean those published in Great Britain, excluding all coming from our colonies, and from England's mighty daughter across the Atlantic. Wherever English people go they must have their English literature. In Paris we meet

with Galignani, in Austria with the Vienna Weekly News; and so forth.

The Gentleman's Magazine holds the first and foremost place among monthly periodicals, being the senior and doyen of them all. The babe in long clothes is not more unlike to the bearded man of forty years later, although the same individual, than is the Gentleman's of January 1st, 1731, to the Gentleman's of November 1st, 1888. Paper and type, of course, are different; spelling and phraseology have changed; and the subject-matter then was, much of it, what would not be tolerated now in any print intended for general reading.

The Gentleman's Magazine; or, Monthly Intelligencer, for the year 1731, promised essays of various kinds, "collected chiefly from the public papers;" "select pieces of poetry;" accounts of "remarkable transactions; " lists of "births, marriages, deaths, promotions, and bankrupts;" also a "register of books;" and, finally, "observations on gardening." The volume is said to be simply "By Sylvanus Urban, Gent.," a style and title still preserved by the editor of this ever-green magazine. An engraving of a hand grasping a bunch of flowers is placed between the mottoes Prodesse delectare and E Pluribus Unum. The imprint is London: Printed and sold at St. John's Gate, by F. Jefferies in Ludgate Street, and most Booksellers.

The introduction is quaint, and contains some curious information. The object of the magazine is said to be "to give Monthly a View of all the Pieces of Wit, Humour, or Intelligence, daily offer'd to the Publick in the News-papers (which of late are so multiply'd, as to render it impossible, unless a man makes it a business, to consult them all), and in the next place we shall join therewith some other matters of Use or Amusement that will be communicated to us.' Mr. Urban goes on to say that upon calculating the number of newspapers he finds that “no less than two hundred half-sheets per month are thrown from the press in London," and that about the same number are printed elsewhere in the Three Kingdoms. With the object of storing up the most interesting "pieces" scattered abroad by the newspapers, the editor intends to treasure them "as in a magazine;" and I am inclined to think that this was the first time in which the word "magazine was used to describe a collection of literary articles. The mention