The Sun.
London, England, 1850-08-23 00:00:00

AUG UST 1850.

LITERATURE.
THE FOURTH ESTATE. 2 Vols. By F.
Knight Hone.
Fortunately for himself the compiler of these two
volumes has disarmed criticism by at once acknow-
ledging them to be mere " contributions towards a
history of newspapers." Otherwise he must infals
libly have incurred the blame of all impartial re-
viewers, supposing him to have arrogated to himself
the title of an historian of journalists. Any such
pretension, as we have intimated, is waived by Mr.
Hunt with a grace and modesty befitting the delicate
office upon which he has adventured. As " contri-
butions towards a history of newspapers," therefore,
his volumes will prove not altogether unacceptable,
though at the same time it must be confessed that
their deficiency of information, in a thousand parti-
culars, must render them, in many instances, and in
the highest degree, unsatisfactory. The opening
sentence of the narrative, if such it can be termed
with any degree of accuracy, though picturesque and
striking in itself, seems in its tone to be a vast
deal too pretentious considering the baldness
of many of the subsequent passages. It runs thus :
"When the reign of James the First was drawing
to a close ; when Ben Jonson was poet laureate, and
the personal friends of Shalisperel were lamenting
his then recent death; when Cromwell was trading
as a brewer in Huntingdon ; when Milton was a
youth of sixteen, just trying his pen at Latin verse,
and Hampden a quiet country gentleman in Buck-
inghamshire, London was first solicited to patronize
its first newspaper." After so very dignified and
sonorous an introduction it is impossible to peruse the
very confused and fragmentary details into which the-
work not long afterwards degenerates without expe-
riencing very considerable disappointment. A ram-
bling superfluity of quotations from Ben Jonson's
" Staple of News," a casual reference to the acta
diurna, an incidental allusionito the Venetian Gazettes,
and an inadequate account of the newsletters and
newswriters preceding the rise of journalism,
bring the reader rather abruptly to the establishment
of the first newspaper, the Weekly Nerves, the earliest
number of which was printed on the 23d of May,
1622. After this we are introduced at intervals in
succession to Sir Richard Knightley, to Sir Lionel
Craufield, and to Sir Roger L'Estrange. We read
some insufficient remarks on the origin of the Censor-
ship, and have our attention directed but for a
moment to the Star Chamber persecutions. Having
glanced at the press as it was under the Common-
wealth and subsequently to the Restoration, Mr.
Hunt pauses when be arrives at the period of the
revolution, and thereupon ensues a somewhat more
orderly and coherent arrangement of the narrative,
which, nevertheless, in spite of all contrivance in the
way of sequence and symmetry, still remains flawed
by many unnecessary omissions. A century of news-
papers conducts us from 1688 to 1788, from the
Orange Intelligencer to:the Times. During this period
references are intermittingly made to Tutchin, Defoe, t
and Judge :Jefferies, to Pope and Bolingbroke, to
Swift, Steele, and Addison, to Fielding,Foote,Burke,
Johnson, Smollett, ,Wilkes, Churchill, Junius, and
Chatterton. Afterwards, while following the pro
gress of journalism, from 1788 to 1800, we find
mingled among those of the professional members of
the press the names of Paine, Crabbe, Erskine, and
Sheridan. The second volume contains a general
survey of the press of the present century, followed
by separate chapters on the London Daily Papers, on
the Evening Papers, on Reporting and Reporters, and
on the Mechanism of a Morning Journal. For the
amusement of our provincial readers, and maybe
of some alio of our readers in the metropolis, we
transcribe from Mr. Hunt's work on " The Fourth
Estate" the following graphic and accurate descrip-
tion :

exten, o the speeches he has been listening to. If the de-
bate is prolonged, by the time his first notes have been
prepared he must be ready to ge into the House egain,
and it sometimes happens that a third turn is taken on
the same night. When the speakers are good, or the
debate important, this combined labour of so many pens
completes a formidable mass of copy.'
" I3y nine o'clock the editor, the sub-editor, the foreign
editor are all busy; the editor with his leaders, the
foreign editor with his German and French, and the
sub editor with the mass of multifarious things that now
load his table. The law reports being on matters of fact,
and usually prepared by barristers, give little trouble;
but with this exception, scarcely a line comes to the
sub-editor which does not require preparation at his
hands. Meetings reported to please speakers instead of
the public, railway and commercial s:atements full of
long tabular accounts to be summarised and made read-
able; letters from indignant ' constant readers,' in which
libels lurk in the midst of long statements ef wrongs
endured, or reforms demanded; reports of police courts,
of inquests, of disasters, all w ritten on lii,nsfpaper, and
requiring great qu'ckness of eye and mind to decipher
at all; paper; from all quarters of the kingdom; state.
tee: to of mat kets. e f shipping, of bit the, deaths, and all
other conceivable and inconceivable things, demand et-
tendon and prepara:ion for the printers, who by this
tia.e are ready far the six hours' rapid and skilful labour
that shall convert this mass of contributions of all sizes,
characters, and qualities into a shapely morning paper.
With the help or an assistant or Leo, the load rapidly
diminishes, and by midnight !here is a tolerably clear
table, prel aratery to the arrival of the late railway dis-
patches. These received, anew labour has often to be
commenced. Although the troublesome search through
tifq county papers has afforded a great quantity of locul
news, the hue dispatches otter bring up much more; the
Irish and Scotch advices come to hand, and with this
addition of home news very often comes a file of papers
from America; from the West Indies; from Brazil; from
France, Germany, or Hamburgh. An hour or two clears
off all these new accumulations, and then the proof
sheets having been attended to, and the place and ar-
rangement of the articles being decided upon; —the num-
ber of leaders, and the number of advertisements set-
tled, the columns calculated, and the decision made as
to what shall appear, and what stand over, the editorial
work of one day is done. By half-past four the paper is
at press, and news-boys and morning mails distribute
the papers to all parts of the country to meet their' con-
stant readers' at breakfast tables, in counting-houses, and
at country fire-aides.
" Just as the wet newspaper, fresh from the news. boy,
is being opened at the eight o'clock breakfast table of
the early-rising city merchant, the Dublin correspondent
is again handing his dispatch on board the steamer at
Kingston fur to.morrow's journal—and so the twenty-
four hours of a newspaper life are up."
As we have more than once intimated, in our pre-
viotis observations, it is fortunate for the author of
theie volumes that he repudiated, on :his; very title-
page, all intention of assuming to be the annalist of
journalism. His labours, as here collected together in
these volumes, are little better than loose notes,
gathered from a variety of miscellaneous sources
for the benefit of some future historian. For inasmuch
as he has attempted to pioneer the way for his des
tined successor Mr. Knight Hunt must be com-
mended : and, considering the novelty of his subject
and the scattered nature of the materials, it is assu-
redly anything but surprising that numerous parti-
culars of importance have bsen all but, and some-
times entirely, overlooked. These blemishes upon the
work under consideration are solely attributable, to
our thinking, to the embarrassing amplitude of theme
so large as journalism, and not to any depreciation of
the value of completeness on the part of the com-
piler. The motto selected by him for the title-page
is of itself a sufficient evidence that he has formed
a highi estimate of the importance of the Fourth
Estate, being nothing less than that brilliant sentence
of M. de Tocqueville—" What is it that drops the
same thought into ten thousand minds at the same
moment ?—the newspaper." Perhaps the most feli-
citous remark in the book here submitted to our
criticism is where the author says that a daily news-
paper is " a great mental camera which throws a
picture of the whole world upon a single sheet." With
that admirable epigram upon the literary microcosm
—a newspaper—we bring our commeats on the
" Fourth Estate" to a conclusion.

A MONUMENT TO LORD ASHLEY.
(From Punch.)
Yesterday will long be remembered in the annals of
the libro dor° of the Beadle of Exeter•ball. There never
has been such a meeting in the memory of the oldest
Sabbatarian ; and it was confidently prophesied that
Time may stand upon tiptoe to watch the advent of such
another and never behold it.

It is the peculiar felicity of a grand idea to
beget anumb-r of smaller notions, bearing some
resemblance to the original thought. Alike, but
very different. Thus, it was no sooner determined
to erect a monument to the b-nevolent genius of a great
statesman: of a man who, whilst he patronised the cheap
loaf, did not loftily eschew the patronage of art and
letters—than a monument was determined for his late
Royal Ilighness the Duke of Cambridge; a monument,
as it now appears, put off until next season, in consider-
ation of the calls upon Parliament, by grouse and the
German spas. In the meantime, the architects of
England have until February next mature their de-
signs for a monument to departed royalty, whose peculiar
goodness it was—boldly avouched Lord Grosvenor—to
have subscribed every minute of time, and every farthing
of money, towards the necessities of human nature. To
eternise such a fame (when duly proved, as no doubt it
will be when the shooting season tnds), will tax to the
highest the creative genius of England's sculptural
worthies. In a while, and progressing at the rate we
have travelled for the past month, monuments will start
into stony existence rapidly as mushrooms.
Lord Ashley is to have a monument; and his Lord-
ship deserves one. It was this deep conviction of his
merits—a conviction throbbing at the hearts of his ad-
mirers—that yesterday filled Exeter-hall with the elect
of the wicked city of London, gathered together to pay
homage to the bold and subtle genius of that " pious
and excellent nobleman," as the Times (leeringly called
him, who " stole a march upon Parliament" on the day
of the Derby, to shut up the Sunday Post-office; and,
with the dexterity of a professor of the persecuted art
of pea-and-thimble, worked a work of zealous holiness.
The chair) was taken by Mr. DE NEWOATE, who
called upon every really pious man with a heart in his
breast and a shilling in his pocket to come forward with
his sixpence. They would build such a monument to
the good intentions of the Noble and Pious Lord, that
an admiring posterity should go down upon its knees to
it. Their opponents had flung it in their teeth that a
certain place, to which at that meeting it was not neces-
sary for him more particularly to allude, was paved with
good intentions; be, however, came not there to dwell
upon the enlargement of that pavement, but to propose a
' monument to good intentions. Lord Ashley had been
defeated—(Groans)—wickedly defeated by a mammon-
loving Government; but his Lordship's intentions re-
mained the same: he would' not only have gone the
whole bog, but have compelled every man, woman,
and child t,) wear a Sunday inner garment of its
bristles.—(Cheers )
Mr. SLEEILLOCES rose to move a resolution. For his
own part, he wished to express to the noble, the heroic,
but defeated Lord, the pious admiration of his disciples
in the most significant and touching material—of course
he meant gold. The iniquitous Sunday letter-delivery
had been stopped. A sinner under sentence of death
had been reprieved; but—the mail-bag remaining at the
Pust-office—the.evil.doer was, for the day, kept in igno-
rance of the mercy ; and thereupon had his thoughts
directed as they ought to be; whereas, had the sinful
post run upon that day, the malefactor would have been
rejoicing. Mr. Sleeklocks thought that a handsome
gold ink-stand in the shape of a death's head should be
presented to Lord Aebley in commemora'ion of his
triumph=a triumph to be renewed next session—
(Cheers)—over the carnal authorities of St. Martin's-
le- Grand.
Mr. PHCSPHOR thought a lucifer- box, delicately
chased with the armorial bearings of his Lordship,
would—to use the express words of the speaker—" find
an echo in the heart of every genuine Sabbatarian."
Here ensued a long and desultory conversation, which
it is needless to report. We shall therefore omit all
details, coming at since to the determination of the meet-
ing. which was, namely—
To erect, immediately opposite to the Post,-office, an
obelisk to the memory of Lord Ashley's fleeting tri-
umph, made of the very best and most enduring black
sealing-wax.

DEATH OF MR. LET, CLERK OF THB HOUSE or
COMMONS.— In our obituary of yesterday we recorded the
death of Mr. John Hen 7 Ley, clerk of the House of Com-
mons, the duties of which office he has executed for the
lengthened period of 29 years. Mr. Ley's connexion with
the House of Commons dates from the 2d of July, 1801,
when the House resolved that, in consuieration of the in-
crease cf the public business, "the clerk of this House be per-
mitted to appoint an additional clerk to assist at the table."
Mr. Hatsell offered this appointment to the subject of this
notice, in consequence of the valuable services of his uncle,
Mr. Ley, who was at that time acting as deputy-clerk of the
House. Mr. J. H. Ley performed the duties of second
clerk-assistant until 1814, when, upon the death of his
uncle, the deputy-clerk, and the promotion of Mr. Dyson to
that office, he succeeded to the office of clerk-assistant, the
duties of which he performed until the death of Mr. Hatsell,
and the expiry of his patent in 1821. Mr. Ley then received
the appointment of the Patent-office as Under-Clerk of the
Parliaments, to attend upon the House of Commons, or, as
the office is usually designated, the Clerk of the House of
Commons. Altogether Mr. Ley has served the House of
Commons without intermission for a period of 49 years.
During the recess Mr. Ley generally resided on his estate
of Trehill, in the parish of Reun, in Devonshire, where he
was much respected. He married on the 23d of October,
1809, Lady Frances Dorothy Hay, the second daughter of
George, seventh Marquis of Tweedile, by whom he leaves
one surviving daughter and five sons. Mr. Ley was a bencher
of the Middle Temple, and a magistrate of the county of
Devon.

DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ACA-
111EMY.—The much-esteemed President of the Royal Aca-
demy, Sir Martin Archer Shee, F.R.S., died on the 19th
instant, at Brighton, after a long and severe illness, at the
venerable age of 80 years. Ile was second son of Martin
Shee, Esq., of Dublin, by the eldest daughter and co-heir of
Francis Archer, Esq., of the same city, and was grand-
nephew to the late Sir George Shee, first baronet of Dur more.
Ile married in 1796 the eldest daughter of James Power,
Esq., of Youghal, county of Cork, was elected an associate of
the Royal Academy in 1798, a Royal Academician in 1800,
and was chosen to fill the president's chair on the death of
Sir Thomas Lawrence is 1830, on which election he received
the honour of knighthood. He was an honorary member of
the Royal Hibernian Academy, and of the academies of New
York, Charleston, and Philadelphia ; was author of " RIOt me
on Art," " The Commemoration of Reynolds," " Alasco," s
tragedy, &c.
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