be extracted from itself alone. It is subsidiary
to an eating-house and tavern. It is not on that
account the worse conducted, and no one who
visits it is made to feel that he is bound to
supply body and mind together. The dignity
and independence of the entrance penny are in
no degree impaired. It admits to a perusal of
all the daily morning and evening papers
properly arranged on stands, and to the file
of back numbers both of them and of the
leading weekly journals for the last six
months. The weekly papers are on stands in a
second room, a story higher. There is also a
very good representation of the provincial
press. There are scarcely any foreign papers,
and the quarterly reviews and monthly magazines
may indeed be kept, but they must be
asked for especially. The rooms are very well
conducted, and we have always found them
crowded on the first fioor with readers of the
day's news; respectable, determined, active
quidnuncs, bent upon ascertaining how the
world wags in the least possible time, and being
off again about their daily business. These
liberally established News Rooms are, in fact,
a variation upon the ordinary dining-room, in
which a moderate supply of newspapers is
provided for the satisfaction of the diners.
In those you dined and had the
opportunity of looking at the papers; in these
you look at the papers, and, if you please,
can dine.

I am not quite sure whether the second
Penny News Room was not the one established
in Holborn or Oxford Street by a teacher of
languages, who has always a class in course
of being formed on very cheap terms; and
who has also a penny-a-volume library of
cheaply printed French novels and other
works. The chamber used is the front room
on the first floor, unusually domestic in its
proportions and in furniture. It is carpeted,
and, in winter, there was always a good
fire burning in an open parlour grate, under
the cover of a domestic mantel-piece. The
penny taker sits at a small table near the
door. There is a low table in the middle
of the room, and there are about a dozen,
more or less, cane-bottomed chairs sprinkled
about. The French books occupy a series
of shelves on one wall: and, as a gentle
hint to the news-readers that they are not
to help themselves to these books, a cordon
is drawn across the room, isolating a little
sanctum sanctorum, in which the philologist
and his staff rule over the penny-a-volume
library. The table is supplied with a number
of daily newspapers, and a selection of weekly
journals. There are also one or two French
newspapers; of monthlies and quarterlies the
supply is scanty and uncertain. About this
room there are rarely so many as a dozen
quiet persons quietly seated, quietly reading.
They are evidently not City men. They are in
no hurry. They are only interested in Russia
and Turkey, and in the Cab Question, like
ordinary news-readers, and not in the Capel
Court or Lombard Street sense. They prefer
that News Room to more prosperous establishments
(one of which stands nearly opposite),
although it contains fewer papers, because it
contains also fewer men. They simply wish
to look over the day's news in peace; to
read about the world in a snug nook
withdrawn from all its bustle. The philologist
exactly caters for their wants.

There is another quiet, but somewhat more
business-like News establishment in the
Strand apparently under the auspices, of a
photographer, whose frame is hung out at
the door. It occupies two rooms on the
first-floor and includes not only the Penny News
Room, but other desirable accommodations
for the public. A letter may be written
there, pen and ink, paper and envelope being
furnished for a penny. Letters may be
addressed there and are taken and delivered
to the enquirer at the charge of a halfpenny:
for some such charge use may be made of
a washing-room.

That the public is really disposed to support
a Penny News Room when a man is found
who throws his mind into its management,
has been proved, in the case of an establishment
in Oxford Street, which appeared to
be under the management of a stationer
in a small way of business; or some one who
had superadded stationery to his news trade.
I entered his shop door, and found the
proprietor boxed up in a little place measuring
four feet by three, more or less. Out of that
four feet by three shop a sort of wicket gate
gives admission to the News Room—a place
scarcely equal in size to the rooms of the
photographer or the philologist: and yet
much more abundantly supplied. How so
much paper and print could be spread open
in such a space was a marvel. There were
six morning newspapers (two copies of the
Times), three evening papers, thirty-two
weekly journals and newspapers, about
the same number of country newspapers,
twelve Irish and Scotch papers, twelve
foreign newspapers, and sixteen monthly and
quarterly publications. Every number of all
of these was supplied on the day of publication;
and there was such an embarrassment
of riches that one was nearly smothered in
paper. The readers sat or stood or screwed
themselves up as they might; they knocked
each other's heads, and trod on each other's
toes, and jolted each other's elbows, from
sheer want of space; and, when the gas was
lighted and the room filled with evening
readers, (there was always an escape of gas
flavouring the air,) oh, the temperature!
There was a degree of discipline—probably
connected in some degree with that paucity
of space—quite rigorous. The daily papers
were framed up against the wall, the weeklies
and provincials were placed on two tables,
the Irish and Scotch were poked into a little
corner, the pamphlets and miscellanies were
placed in portfolios, while the monthlies and