ART. II.-1. The Wide-awake Library. Price One Penny. London: 1883. 2. The Boys' Comic Journal. London: 1884. 3. Dicks's English Library. London: 1884. 4. The London Journal. London: 1884. 5. The Family Herald. London: 1884. 6. Oliver Twist. Price One Penny. The Pickwick Papers. London: 1886. 7. The Boys of London and New York. London : 1884. 8. The Ghostly Hand, &c. London: 1886. 9. Something to Read. London: 1883. 10. The Family Novelist. London: 1883. THERE are, it is said, upwards of five millions of children * now on the roll of the schools scattered throughout England, a large proportion of whom are able and eager to read. These happy millions are being diligently crammed day by day, for many long weary hours, with every kind of so-called useful knowledge; far, far exceeding in range the exploded régime of the old 'thrce R's,' and soaring even to algebra, Latin, chemistry, and most of the 'ologies.' The curriculum, in fact-so says the enemy-excludes nothing but the element of religion; and on this one intolerable diet of hard dry fact are these young disciples fed until the requisite number of Standards' be passed, and each hapless child is ready for the school inspector, to win for his teachers an increased Government grant-or fit to go in for a competitive examination, and win for himself the post of errand boy, school monitor, or telegraphic messenger. This he does at the risk of an overtaxed memory, or a diseased brain, and a disgust for any further pursuit of knowledge. Meanwhile, the great world of Babylon applauds, or is content to endure; inspectors write long Reports; the minister in charge of the education of the people points with complacency to the increasing millions under his benign care; and the ratepayers of the mighty city and the petty village once more bless the School Board, and surrender another penny to the insatiable taxgatherer. ""Bless you," says Mr. Carcass, the Butcher, to an admiring audience * Eighty thousand children between the ages of thirteen and eighteen leave school in London every year. you at The Blue Lion, "bless you, you should see my boy Sam, if want to know what the School Board is up to. He do get on; he do. Why, he's got to Biology now; and Fluxions was the last thing he did before he passed Standard Seven; and he can patter off up to 24 times 24 in the Multiplication Table, just as you like, and all the Saxon kings, born, crowned, died, and buried, back to Julius Cæsar!" And as it is with Sam Carcass, aged fifteen, so is it with tens of thousands of other young scholars of less or greater ability, after a few years of similar diet-on catechisms of history, manuals of arithmetic, short cuts to a smattering of science, and guides to universal knowledge. These, and only these, morning, noon, and night; hardly a grain of room, hardly a moment of time, for any appeal to the fancy or to the imagination; scarcely a ray of colour or light to cheer that innate love of fiction which rightly belongs to and invigorates every youthful mind when in health and strength. But the passionate desire for fiction is not to be thus stifled; it must be satisfied, and food it will have: wholesome and good if good can be had, and at a price within reach, or unwholesome and vicious trash if no better can be found. * One object of the present article is to show how far this demand for fiction is at present met, at what cost, with what materials, and with what result. If there be millions of youthful and hungry readers, what are they to read? How are Sam Carcass and his tens of thousands of companions, male and female, to employ their scanty leisure, the idle minutes of the dinner-hour, or the chance morsel of time not sacred to cramming? What shall the stray waifs of Drury Lane and Seven Dials find to amuse them? for they, too, can read, and it is possible to beg, borrow, or steal a penny. And with these forlorn creatures must be taken into account others-older, but in this respect equally forlorn-the whole race of shopgirls, errand boys, young maidservants, et hoc genus omne, all possessed with the same craze for a tale, a story, a romance, whether of love, war, or adventure, comedy or tragedy, sentiment, crime, suffering, pathos, or mystery. Of all these there is more than an abundant supply always ready in what may for want of a better title be called 'the Penny Dreadfuls.' Fifty years ago such a title would have been almost unintelligible. The few things in print for a penny were as dry as the Multiplication Sixty per cent. of the Board School children in Liverpool have, it is said, accounts at the Savings Bank, amounting in toto to upwards of 3,000l. This good habit has not as yet made much way in London. Table, and as tasteless as Tupper. Cheap books, in the modern sense of the word, were all but unknown. They were few in number because there was no demand for them, juvenile readers being counted out of the question. A boy, the son of even well-to-do people, had to be satisfied with Robinson Crusoe,' The Pilgrim's Progress,' Sandford and 'Merton,' and perhaps half a dozen other well-known favourites. These he read and re-read scores of times, and was fairly content. The children of tradespeople, artisans, and the labouring class, both in town and country, had to do the best they could on a scantier and rarer diet. An odd number of the 'Penny Magazine,' a page or two of 'Mavor's Spelling Book,' or, if lucky, a tattered copy of 'Sindbad the 'Sailor,' were all they could possibly hope to obtain. The poor, as a class, had no literature provided for them; their fathers and mothers had done well without any, and what was good enough for them might surely suffice for their children's children. Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Bumble then reigned supreme over the educational department; and fortunate indeed were the youngsters who for a brief season tasted even of the rich delights of the three R's,' as an alderman of that epoch is said to have designated the mysteries of reading, writing, and arithmetic. But all this now sounds like the record of a forgotten age. With the mighty increase of population, the host of young readers has multiplied a thousandfold. Even Bill Sykes,' if driven to pen and ink, can sign his name; and any one of his numerous offspring can read with fluency the weekly 'Police News,' or the last edition of the Newgate Calendar,' and criticise the details of the latest burglary, outrage, or murder, with the flippant ease of a connoisseur in crime. Murder as one of the fine arts is not too much for him. His library is both extensive and varied, and to be had at the rate of a penny a volume. It is to be found anywhere and everywhere, throughout the whole domain of poverty, hunger, dirt, and crime. It tempts him under a hundred different and seductive titles, alike in country and in town. Every alley and foul court in Babylon reeks with it, and the remotest hamlet can no more escape from some sign of it than from the ubiquitous placard of the last new transparent patent soap. But the fountain head of the poisonous stream is in the great towns and cities, especially in London itself; and it is with that we have now to deal. Here the readers are to be numbered by hundreds of thousands, and the supply exceeds even the wildest demand. There is now before us such a veritable mountain of pernicious trash, mostly in paper covers, and all Price One Penny:' so-called novelettes, romances, tales, stories of adventure, mystery, and crime; pictures of school life hideously unlike the reality; exploits of pirates, robbers, cut-throats, prostitutes, and rogues, that, but for its actual presence, it would seem incredible. To expect our readers to wade through such a nauseous mass would be useless, even if the task were possible. All that can be done is to select from the whole heap a few specimens, widely and carefully chosen, that may serve as types of the mental diet now provided for millions of poor children, who buy and devour it with intense relish. It matters little where we begin, so we take first Joanna Polenipper, Female horse-stealer, Footpad, Smuggler, a complete romance in eight quarto pages, four chapters of small print, as a sample of the entire series. For, in point of general style, colour, incident, and character of the dramatis persona, all these volumes of trash are as like each other as the peas in a single pod. Every sentence fairly bristles with adjectives of tremendous and fiery strength; the characters are of but two kinds, whether angels or demons in mortal guise; fools or sharpers; rogues or the victims on whom they prey. Every page is crammed with incidents of the most astounding kind, which succeed each other as swiftly as the scenes in a transpontine drama. Bombastic rant, high-flown rhodomontade, and the flattest fustian flow from the lips of all speakers alike; and Joanna' is no exception to the rule. Chapter I. opens on the coast of Blankshire, in the midst of a furious thunderstorm, a dense fog, and forked lightning like fiery serpents.' † A number of dark objects succeed in landing a long dark boat; each one seizes a portion of the cargo, rushes stealthily inland and disap'pears.' This operation having been twice repeated, there suddenly ensues a terrific encounter between Captain Despo' of The Black Tiger' and his crew, and Paul Manley,' captain of the Coast Guard. The gigantic pirate having drawn his huge and bloodthirsty sword, whirled it round his head, and consigned the whole troop of Preventive It is asserted, on good authority, that of this penny fiction the weekly sale amounts, in toto, to upwards of two million copies. In this, as in every similar case, the exact words of the author are used, wherever their use is possible. men to their patron saint the Devil,' and having moreover commanded his crew to riddle the miserable skins of the 'foe until nothing remained of their miserable carcases,' in a whirlwind of fury his orders are obeyed. The pirates then retire to the rocks, and after a circuitous journey, emerge into a cave, to drink deeply and converse in 'whispers of hideous import!' The reader may here feel inclined to take breath for a moment at such an awful climax as this, but he must hurry on. After a brief interlude, the whole gang of bloodthirsty ruffians emerge' once more, and make their way out to a neighbouring cottage, the peaceful abode of Mr. and Mrs. Polenipper and two lovely daughters. Their first demand is for whisky, the second for Joanna,' whom the pirate loudly claims as his own. Both demands being sternly rejected, the ruffians at once butcher the old man and woman in cold blood, set fire to the cottage, and having flung a faithful cowboy into the raging flames, and carried off both the shrieking damsels as lawful plunder, finally like tartarian imps levanted, amidst shouting, cursing, and ' dancing over their evil work.' Chapter II., Seven Years After,' introduces us to a handsome youth, in magnificent attire, alighting from a superb steed outside the Bull Inn, Aldgate, one summer night in 1775. This is no other than the famous Captain Raven, a noted highwayman, for whom six Bow Street runners are there and then lying in wait. Tim Wisp,' the cstler, in league with the Captain, at once informs him of the presence of the constables, and their resolve to take him alive or 'dead.' The 'Raven,' however, is more than equal to the occasion, and in the next two pages of small print we read how he calmly walked into the room where the six awaited him, managed to lock the door, and having knocked down two of his enemies with the butt end of a pistol, jumped through an open window into the yard below, 'carried off 'six horses,' and shot three of the assailants who followed. him, and retired swiftly into the fastness of the Bagnigge Wells, leaving the chief of the Bow Street runners yelling (sic) Murder, blue fire, and stewed brains!' until he could yell no longer. 6 Chapter III. opens on the towering cliffs of Blankshire,' where in the moonlight kneels a young man in a black cloak before a rude cross in the barren waste. To him suddenly advances a stranger, of herculean proportions and for |