to the kingdom uniformly opposed and defeated."
The viceroy to whom this special compliment was
paid was Lord Westmoreland. Poor Ireland!
well up in the grievance market, even in those
distant days! In the same number I found the
advertisement of a "Proposal for a complete
History of England, by David Hume, Esq," a
notice of a gallery of pictures, "by Messrs. Barry,
Copley, Fuseli, and T. Lawrence," and an
announcement of the performance of Richard the
Third. "The Queen, Mrs. Siddons, being the
first time of her performing that character."

I proceeded to a suite of rooms occupied
by the sub-editor and the principal reporters.
In the outermost of these rooms is arranged
the electric telegraph apparatus, three round
discs with finger-stops sticking out from them
like concertina-keys, and a needle pointing
to alphabetic letters on the surface of the
dial. One of these dials corresponds with
the House of Commons, another with Mr.
Reuter's telegraph office, the third with the
private residence of the proprietor of my
journal: who is thus made acquainted with
any important news which may transpire before
he arrives at, or after he leaves, the office. The
electric telegraph, an enormous boon to all
newspaper men, is specially beneficial to the
sub-editor; by its aid he can place before the
expectant leader-writer the summary of the
great speech in a debate, or the momentous
telegram which is to furnish the theme for
triumphant jubilee or virtuous indignation;
by its aid he can "make up" the paper, that
is, see exactly how much composed matter
will have to be left "standing over," for the
tinkling of the bell announces a message from
the head of the reporting staff in the House, to
the effect, "House up—half a col to come."
Sometimes, very rarely, wires get crossed, or
otherwise out of gear, and strange messages
relating to misdelivered firkins of butter, or
marital excuses for not coming home to dinner,
arrive at the office of my journal. The sub-
editor has a story how, after having twice given
the signal to a West-end office which Mr.
Reuter then had, he received a pathetic
remonstrance from some evidently recently awakened
maiden, "Please not to ring again till I slip
on my gown!" On the sub-editor's table lie
the weapons of his order—a gigantic pair of
scissors, with which he is rapidly extracting the
pith from the pile of "flimsy" copy supplied
by the aid of the manifold writer and
tissue paper, by those inferior reporters known
as penny-a-liners—and a pot of gum, with which
he fits the disjointed bits together; here also
are proofs innumerable in long slips, red, blue,
and yellow envelopes, with the name of my
journal printed on them in large letters,
envelopes which have contained the lucubrations
of the foreign and provincial correspondents;
an inkstand large enough to bathe in; a red
chalk pencil like the bowsprit of a ship; and two
or three villanous looking pens. At another
table, a gentleman, gorgeous in white waistcoat
and cut-away coat, is writing an account of
a fancy fair at which he has been present;
printers, messengers, boys, keep rushing in,
asking questions, and delivering messages, but
they disturb neither of the occupants of the
room. The fancy fair gentleman never raises
his eyes from his paper, while, amid all the
cross-questioning to which he is subjected, the
sub-editor's scissors still snip calmly on.

Next, to the composing-room, where I find
about seventy men at work "setting" small
scraps of copy before them. The restless
scissors of the head of the room divide the
liner's description of horrible events, at a
position of breathless interest, and distribute the
glorious peroration of a speech among three or
four compositors, who bring up their various
contribution of type to the long "galley" in
which the article is put together. These men
work on an average from four P.M. till two
A.M., or half-past two (in addition to these
there are the regular "day-hands," or men
employed in the daytime, who work from nine till
five); they are mostly from twenty-five to thirty-
five years of age, though there is one old man
among them who is approaching threescore-
and-ten, and who is reported almost as good as
any of his juniors; they earn from three to four
guineas a week each. The room is large, and
though innumerable gas-lights are burning, the
ventilation is very good.

I glanced at some of the writing at which the
men were working, and as I thought of the
fair round text in which my ledgers and day-
books were always entered up, and then looked
at the thin jigging hieroglyphics which, in close
lines, and adorned with frequent erasures and
corrections, lay before the eyes of those poor
compositors, I shuddered at the contrast. On
inquiring, however, I found that the compositors
made very light of cacography, and that it was
seldom, indeed, that a man had to refer to his
neighbour to help him in deciphering a word.

From the composing-room I, and a certain
amount of type duly set and locked up in a
"forme," proceeded to the foundry: a workshop
covered with scraps of metal-filings, and with a
furnace in the middle of it. Unlike their fellow-
workmen of the village of Auburn, as described
by Goldsmith, the smiths in the foundry of my
journal by no means relaxed their ponderous
strengths and leaned to hear, but were obviously
far too hard at work to do anything of the kind.
So soon as the type-containing formes arrive,
they are hammered all over with a mallet, to
reduce them to an average level and consistency,
then they are oiled, and an exact imprint is
taken of them on what is called a "matrix"—a
preparation of French chalk on stiff paper. This
matrix is then dried over a furnace on hot metal
plates, a mixture of lead and antimony in a
liquid boiling state is poured on it, taking the
exact form of the indented letters, filling up
every crack and crevice, and becoming, in many
reduplicated forms, the actual substance from
which the journal is printed, and which, to that
end, is sent to the machine-room, whither I
followed it.