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the organs which command the largest circulation are those Sunday papers which are chiefly distinguished by the objectionable violence of their tone, by their frequent selection of disgusting law reports, by their attacks upon the reigning family, and by otherwise pandering to the worst instincts of the uneducated classes. Nor is it necessary to speak of those "religious' newspapers which represent the interests of the various sections of the Church of England and other religious bodies. Upon the borderland between these journals and the secular press are, however, a number of penny prints of very large circulation, half magazine and half newspaper, which are worthy of some notice. First on the list comes the Christian World, which is published twice a week, and which having a very large circulation is in great favor with advertisers. The news which it gives may be succinctly described as a brief summary of the information and opinions of the Daily News, with a strong infusion of sectarian pietism. Religious intelligence, or rather the doings of the dissenting sects, occupies a large share of the space, and a sermon is occasionally given; but the leading feature is the part of the paper which bears the heading, The Family Circle," and which usually consists of a large instalment of a floridly sensational religious novel, depicting the influence of evangelical theology upon the manners and morals of the upper classes. The intention is undoubtedly excellent, but the effect is slightly ludicrous-much such as that which might be expected to follow the exertions of a lady's maid of humble origin, and of profound reverence for the aristocracy, who had been brought up in the family of a dissenting minister of the lower class. The advertisements are, however, the strongest point of the paper. All the quack medicines of the day -especially those which are owned or used by dissenting ministers, and which form a curiously large proportion of the whole*-are advertised in these columns at great length, as are also bargains in drapery

* It is curious to note how long this connection between Dissent and quack medicines has existed. Wesley, very early in his career, found it necessary to forbid his local preachers to sell "pills, potions, or balsams."

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and haberdashery, and wonderful offers of articles of jewelry and personal adornment which are to be forwarded in return for twenty-six stamps and a coupon." The young ladies of a serious turn who want situations behind the counters of drapers' and milliners' shops, and the young gentlemen of the same type who are willing to assist in the shops of drapers, grocers, and buttermen all over the kingdom, also place their wants before the public in the columns of the Christian World.

Another paper, much of the same type as to matter, and with a considerable resemblance in the character of its advertisements, is the Christian, which, however, is more especially the organ of the Plymouth Brethren, and of the somewhat erratic members of other sects who sympathize with them. It will be remembered that it was in the columns of this paper that Lieutenant Carey gave vent to the pious satisfaction excited in his own bosom by his conduct on the occasion of the murder of the Prince Imperial in South Africa. The Christian Age, Christian Globe, and Christian Union, are papers much of the same description. The first is the organ of Dr. De Witt Talmage, of New York, whose visit to this country may be remembered

though perhaps with somewhat mixed emotions-by the managers of many dissenting "interests" on whose behalf he undertook to lecture for the moderate fee of a hundred guineas and his expenses. His sermons are regularly reprinted in the columns of this paper, as also in the Christian Globe, neither of which calls otherwise for special remark. All of them contain specimens of sensational preaching, short religious essays, and pious stories, of greater or less length, while the general advertisements are pretty much of the character of those of the Christian World. The Christian Herald stands upon a somewhat different footing. It is advertised as "edited by the Rev. M. Baxter, clergyman of the Church of England: circulation over 195,000 a week. This journal (with which is incorporated the Christian Signal) contains every week a portrait, a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Talmage, of Brooklyn, U. S., and, by special permission, a sermon or exposition by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon; also

always a prophetic article and summary of current events, as well as stories, anecdotes, etc. Also in every issue of its penny monthly supplement there are sermons by the Revs. W. Hay Aitken and W. M. Punshon, LL.D." The principal feature of this paper is, as will probably be guessed by the judicious reader, its prophetical articles. The sermons, and the meek little anecdotes which fill the greater part of its pages, are comparatively insignificant by the side of the amazing predictions of the gentleman who interprets current history by the light of the prophet Daniel and the Book of the Revelation. The number of the Christian Herald before us as we write, contains an article on "The New Radical Liberal Parliament," which is described as "a step towards fulfilling five prophetic events and order of coming occurrences. The writer has quite made up his mind on this sub.ject, and reads in the constitution of the present parliament a certain sign of the approaching end of the world. At the risk of appearing tedious it may be worth while to append a specimen or two of the matter which finds a weekly sale of 195,000, and according to the usual proportion between sales and readers, nearly a million of readers. Speaking of Mr. Gladstone's administration, the prophetic writer says:

"The existence of an unprecedentedly strong Liberal Government, which may promote extreme radical measures or a democratic policy distasteful to our Sovereign Lady the Queen, tends in the direction of occurrences which may lead to her abdication in favor of the Prince of Wales, as has already been rumored in recent times, on the ground of advanced years and impaired health. Consequently, the present conjuncture of affairs points more than ever before toward the fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy that A MAN SHALL BE REIGNING OVER BRITAIN (whether he be a king or a Republican president) at the time of the final crisis, when the latter-day ten-kingdomed confederacy shall come into existence, and when Ireland shall be separated from Eng

land."

A little lower down in the same article we find the remarkable statement that as Prince Jerome Napoleon (who is identified with "that eleventh king and future great Antichrist of the last days') will be sixty-seven years old in 1890, the end of the world cannot be deferred much beyond that year. The writer goes on

"The order of coming occurrences during the decade of 1880 to 1890, which will be the most eventful and momentous decade in the

history of our world, will be briefly as follows: Unprecedented wars and revolutions will produce (probably by about 1883) the formation of the whole extent of Cæsar's original Roman empire into an allied confederacy of ten kingseparated from Ireland, France extended to the Rhine, Spain, Italy, Austria, Greece, Egypt, Syria, Thrace-with-Bithynia, and Bulgaria, with some enlargements (as explained in the foregoing article). Then there will be parcelled out of one of the four horn kingdoms of Greece, Egypt, Syria, or Thrace, a little horn kingdom i.e., a small territory-such, for example, as Macedonia or Palestine, etc.-and a Napoleon (probably Prince Jerome Napoleon) will be appointed its ruler, and will thus become Daniel's little horn, or sovereign arising out of one of the four horns, and predicted gradually to 'wax exceeding great,' and to subdue three of the ten kings, and also to make a seven years' cove nant with the Jews about seven years before the end of this dispensation (Dan. 9:27). If the end is to be about 1890 he must make the covenant about 1883, but if he makes it later.

doms-the ten toes and ten horns--viz, Britain

the end will of course be proportionately later."'

Last on the list of the religious papers comes the Fountain, which is described as as "Literary, Religious, and Social," and which appears to be the organ of Dr. Joseph Parker, of the Holborn Viaduct. The paper contains but little that is likely to interest any one not attached to the Rev. Doctor's particular form of faith, but it is said to have a large circulation, and judging from the fact that it contains about nine pages of advertisements the facts probably bear out this statement. The principal attraction is to be found in the publication of Dr. Parker's weekly sermons-extempore discourses, which, with the equally extempore prayers before them, are reported from a shorthand writer's notes. Besides these sermons there is a certain amount of fiction together with a few reprints from American religious newspapers and magazines. It is not necessary to criticize the sermons in this place, but there are probably few who read them who will be surprised at the quality of the fiction which Dr. Parker. purveys for the use of his congregation. The most remarkable feature about all these prints is, however, not so much their contents as their circulation. It is not very easy to get at accurate statistics on this point, but there is good reason for believing that the eight papers in question enjoy an average circulation

among them of from a million and a quarter to a million and a half copies every week. One of the principal evidences of their great circulation is the immense number of costly advertisements which they contain. The persons who advertise thus largely are usually keen business men, and it may be taken for granted that they would not continue to expend from five to ten pounds per week on advertisements in religious weekly papers unless they found the investment a profitable one. The proprietor of one quack medicine has been shrewd enough to perceive what this implies, and he has accordingly started one of the most unctuous of these papers, in the advertising columns of which his nostrum is regularly and most vehemently announced.

Somewhat akin to these prints, but of a more distinctly philanthropic character, is a small group of papers, the circulation of which, under the most favorable circumstances, could hardly pay the cost of production, while as they have no advertisements- quack medicine or other to fall back upon, it is probable that they are issued at some pecuniary loss to the proprietors. First on the list is the British Workman, an imperial folio sheet, published in the interests of teetotalism and of evangelical Christianity. The illustrations are excellent and the printing is admirable; nothing of the kind could, in fact, be better, but it is to be feared that the paper does not reach the class at which it is aimed. Copies may be seen occasionally in cabmen's shelters and similar places-usually the gift of philanthropic ladies, and in a suspicious state of cleanliness-but there is good reason to doubt if the working classes as a body trouble themselves much about tracts in disguise. If they are put in their way they will read them—perhaps; at all events they will accept them for the sake of the pictures, which they think will please their children. But of all people in the world the working classes are the most suspicious and the most haughty. There is nothing that they resent so much as being lectured and treated like children, and the idea that they are being angled for with baits of pretty pictures and stories of an almost infantile mildness, such as are found in the Brit

ish Workman, will probably do more to prejudice them against teetotalism and

Sabbath keeping" than all the mild exhortations of that paper can counterbalance. No one can doubt the excellent intentions of its founders and of those who distribute it among the members of the class which it is intended to influence, but at the same time it is impossible to live among working men and to observe their habits without becoming convinced that nothing is less likely to influence them than tracts and magazines of the tract type. They infinitely prefer Lloyd's or Reynolds's newspapers as the companion of their after-dinner pipes and pints of modest four 'arf;" while if they want fiction they patronize a class of literature of which we shall have occasion to speak later on. The same remark applies to Old Jonathan, who appears to be a sort of successor of that friend of our youth, Old Humphrey. The illustrations are good, but the letterpress is of the type sometimes called

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goody goody," and some of the reflections and observations strike the average reader as being remarkably trite and obvious, while matters of fact are given with less attention to accuracy that is quite desireable. Thus, for example, in an account of his summer holiday by an obviously youthful curate, which appears in the number for July last, may be found the following sentence :-" As soon as we had steamed a little farther south of the Admiralty Pier, but before arriving off the Shakespeare Cliff, we passed close to the scene of the wreck of the German ironclad, the Grosser Kurfürst, which foundered off Dover the month before with four hundred souls on board '-a sentence which contains almost as many blunders as lines. After such a specimen of accuracy as this the reader will be quite prepared to light upon a remarkably apocryphal anecdote of George III. as one of the principal points of the number. The British Workwoman does not issue, as might be expected, from the office of the British Workman, but is published under the auspices of the National Temperance League. Its circulation is stated to be considerable, but it may be doubted whether it is bought by many of the class to which it is addressed. In the first place, as compared with the

secular papers, it is rather dear, and in the second working women, like their husbands, are not greatly given to expending their pence in buying tractsto which class these well-meaning and rather dull papers must, after all, be relegated. Another paper, which somewhat ostentatiously announces itself as "a journal of pure literature," is the Daisy, which is now in its ninth volume. The editor is Mr. John Lobb, who also conducts the Christian Age, already mentioned. Its contents are stories, essays, and social papers, and as the greater part is reprinted from other papers, chiefly of American origin, it does not call for much attention.

Turning now to the purely secular papers, we find ourselves in a very different atmosphere. These last are not very wise perhaps, but they are free from the forced and pietistic air which hangs about the class of prints to which reference has just been made; and as they are very largely bought by the lower middle, and working classes, they afford a fair criterion of their intelligence and intellectual tastes. First on the list by right of seniority, and it ought perhaps to be added, of character also, is the Family Herald. This paper is now approaching its 2000th number, having been founded in 1844; and if it does not deserve all the rapturous eulogy once poured out upon it in the Saturday Review, and since lavishly used in advertisements, it is an eminently creditable specimen of the penny magazine of the day. It usually contains in each number a complete story, with instalments of two serials; a leading article on some current topic of the day, about three pages of selected reprint, some small quantity of original poetry, and a page of answers to correspondents. Of the fiction it need only be said that it is very good stuff of the second order. A great many threevolume novels are issued every year by fashionable publishers which fall far below the standard of most of these stories. If the heroes and heroines are rather "intense," and if the scene is somewhat too frequently laid in the highest places, the fault is one which the writers share with authors of much greater pretension. The late Mr. Thackeray had a story, which he was

wont to tell with great enjoyment, of a novelist whose first MS. was sent back by the publisher's reader with a hint that it would be well if he would give every character a step or two in rank. The country squire was to be turned into a wealthy baronet; the city knight into a mushroom peer, ennobled for his wealth; the earl was to become a duke; and the mysterious artist an illegitimate scion of royalty. The scheme was adopted; the novel succeeded, and its author, who has since largely contributed to the revenues of the trunkmaker and the butterman, never afterwards introduced a character into his stories of less rank than a captain in the Guards. Small blame then to the novelists of the Family Herald if their tales are usually of the aristocracy. It can do no harm, and the smart housemaids and milliners' apprentices, who are the chief patrons of these prints, are naturally made happy by the discovery that the higher classes are in novels-as vulgar and as frivolous as themselves. The leading articles of the Family Herald are not distinguished by profundity, but they are readable and intelligent. At one time they were usually the work of the author of The Gentle Life, whose place as a purveyor of mild moralizings and pleasant platitudes it has not been altogether easy to supply. The great feature of the paper is, however, its answers to correspondents. For many years this department was under the care of a man of letters of considerable ability, who was accustomed to answer many of his correspondents with brief essays of much pith and point. His successors follow his example, evidently with the object of making this page amusing to the general reader as well as to those for whose benefit it is more especially intended. The following is a fair average specimen of the kind of answer to which we refer :—

"G. R. S.-We have it on the highest poetic authority that there is much virtue in 'if.' But there are 'ifs' and 'ifs '-possibilities dering, conditions the statement of which is that are solemn and that demand careful pon

apt to provoke a smile. The author of 'The World Unmasked' gives a beautiful illustration of the former. In calling attention to the Christian doctrine of perseverance as affording a stable prop to upright minds, yet lending no wanton cloak to corrupt hearts-as bringing a cordial to revive the faint, and keeping a guard

to check the froward-he says that the guard attending this doctrine is Sergeant If, low in stature, but lofty in significance, a very valiant guard, though only a monosyllable. Kind notice, he adds, has been taken of the sergeant by the Master and His apostles, and much respect is due to him from all the Lord's recruiting-officers and every soldier in His army. Instances of the sergeant's speech are given in John 8:31; 2 Pet. 1: 10; 1 John 2:24, and elsewhere. Here is 'if' in all its telling gravity and immeasurable importance, with eternal results depending on its consideration. Butto take the other class of improbable possi

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bles'-if the sun go out of the zodiac, as Sterne asks-what then? It is a terrible thought, yet how many will waste a moment over it? If it rained macaroni, what a fine time it would be for gluttons, says an Italian proverb; but the contemplation of such a contingency would hardly satisfy needy and hungry lovers of this nutritious comestible. Writes G. R. S. 'If all the sons of the Queen of England were to die, and their sons and daughters were to die also, would the Crown Princess of Germany come to the throne, or who else, at the death of the queen?' Here is a question for editorial leisure and editorial wisdom. It has taken away our breath! Dear G. R. S., if a beard were all, the goat would be a winner; more, if we let correspondents put the calf on our shoulders, we fear they would soon clap on the cow! We are willing, as far as we are able, to reply to readers' inquiries; but those that are put we expect to be reasonable.

Within the brain's most secret cells
A certain Lord Chief-Justice dwells,
Of sov'reign power, whom one and all
With common voice we reason call.

Is there reason in the matter upon which you wish to be enlightened?"

Besides answers of this kind, replies are given to questions on a host of other subjects. In the number from which the above paragraph has been cited there are no fewer than ninety-three answers on matters ranging from the price of Norwegian timber houses and the difficulties of a literary career, down to a recipe for cleaning terra cotta, and a little sensible advice to a person afflicted with a too florid complexion.

The London Journal was founded about a year and a half after the Family Herald, and consequently is now in the thirty-sixth year of its age. It is distinguished from its elder rival by its illustrations and by the more gushing and sensational character of its fiction. In the earlier years of its existence the artistic work was chiefly supplied by the present President of the Society of Painters in Water Colors-Sir John Gilbert, R.A.-whose place was afterwards

held by his brother, Mr. Frederick Gilbert. The drawings are now supplied by two or three artists, and though somewhat rough in execution and conventional in design, they are not much. worse than the illustrations to many more pretentious magazines. The designers of these compositions appear in almost all cases to labor under the delusion that the proper height for a man is six feet and a half. at the least eight feet, and for a woman The stories were

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for many years supplied by a Mr. J. F. Smith, who is entitled to whatever credit may be due to the founder of the "London Journal School" of romance. Within certain limits his work was sufficiently clever. was exceedingly florid, sensational after a mild fashion, and it had the merit of being almost ostentatiously moral. His successors, among whom were Mr. Charles Reade (with White Lies'), Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mrs. Henry Wood, and the late Pierce Egan the followed younger, prettly closely in the footprints of their great exemplar. Their stories certainly contained plenty of crime and not a little vice, but the criminal always came to grief in the end, and virtue was duly rewarded with wealth and titles and honor. The villains were generally of high birth and repulsive presence; the lowly personages were always of ravishing beauty and unsullied virtue. Innocence and loveliness in a gingham gown were perpetually pursued by vice and debauchery in varnished boots and spotless gloves. Life was surrounded by mystery: detectives were ever on the watch, and the most astonishing pitfalls and mantraps were concealed in the path of the unwary and of the innocent. Nor were reflection and observation wanting. Maxims of the most tremendous morality, overwhelming aphorisms and descriptive passages of surprising fineness were scattered lavishly over the pages. The result was perhaps a little bewildering to the sober-minded, but it suited the tastes of a certain class, and the London Journal became the most popular of the penny weeklies. Such popularity naturally excited no little rivalry, under which the circulation of the London Journal has, I believe, somewhat fallen off. It still stands, however, very high in favor with domestic

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