The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-17 00:00:00

MISERIES OF A NEWSPAPER

EDITOR.

- - - -
What a life is that of a newspaper editor! How
numerous, how varied, how onerous his duties! He
must have under his eyes all events, of all different
kinds, that havp, passed, that are passing, and that are
expected to pass, in every quarter of the globe. He
must have his intention concentrated, at one and the
same time, on the weather, on the crops, on agricul-
ture, on markets, accidents, offences, crimes, ship-
wrecks, railways, births, deaths, marriages, courts of
law, police-offices, the state of the Church, and the
state of the Stocks, the proceedings of politicians and
the proceedings of? the swell mob, the blowing up of
steam- boats and the blowing down of chimneys.
There is nothing, in short, too great to come
under his notice, or too small to elude his
grasp. Regularly, and day by day, is he
under the necessity of ferreting out and chronicling,
for the benefit (?) of his fellow-beings, all and sundry
the transactions of this lower world, from the fall of
a leaf to the fall of a kingdom, from the lopping of a
limb to a full, true, and particular account of the last
bloody murder. But, not only is this unfortunate in-
dividual supposed to see everything, but likewise to
know everything, and to be able to do everything.
He is understood to be well infornied upon, and able

to answer all sorts of questions upon all sorts of
subjects—on law, on political economy, on his-
tory, on statistics, on arithmetic, on algebra, on
mathematics, on geology, on theology, on my-
thology, on chronology, on chronohotonthology.
By the public at large he is regarded as a sort of
" standing counsel " in all cases of difficulty. If a man
wants to know the date of any historical event, what
does he do ? He writes to the editor. Has he any
doubt about the authenticity of any particular piece
of civil, religious, or philanthropic intelligence, what
does he do ? He writes to the editor. Does he want

x) know how Mr. So-and-So, the Parliament man,
voted on such and such a question, when it was, why
it was, and under what circumstances it was that he
so voted, what does he do ? Why, he writes to the
editor as a matter of course. To whom else would
he, under any circumstances, ever so much as dream
of making application ? We have said," thatthis:un-
fortunate personage is supposed to see everything, to
know everything, and to be able to do everything. But
there is yet another call upon him,"and that, perhaps,
of a harder kind than all the three put together.
Like the man that carried the donkey, he is under the
necessity of pleasing every body. We put:it to' our
intelligent and dearly-beloved Caledonian cousins
whether it does not consist with their knowledge that
almost every man, without exception, who takes up a
newspaper expects that paper to be written solely and
exclusively for himself, It is to be his paper and his
alone. He expects to findin it everything which he
wants. He is displeased if it contains anything else,
or of a different character than what he requires.
The ancient maiden lady, who complains that there
are in the newspapers such dull thing 3 as grain mar-
kets, cattle-shows, and cures for the caterpillar,
never once thinks that the editor may have among
his subscribers some few hundreds of six-feet
farmers, to whom such information may be of the
most material consequence ; nor does the farmer, who
finds fault with the gossip that he sees about the
great vulgar and the small ever consider that to the an-
tiquated mademoiselle these are the oniy tit-bits of
the affair. The public-house reader, who finds fault
with the love stories, and the poetry, and the other
little sentimentalities in a newspaper, remembers not,
that to a large class of juveniles of both sexes, from
15 to 25, such things are almost the only ones about
which they may care a straw : nor does it ever come
into the mind of the lovelorn maidens or the smart
young gentlemen who turn up their noses at the vul-
garity and commonplace 'or the:police intelligence,
that, without such things, to the public-house reader a
newspaper would be a body without a soul. The father
of a family, who eomplains of the scandal and tittle-tat-
tle, and manyt•ther little oddsand ends that occasionally
be brought Wore the public, forgets that such things
form the staple of the grirn old bachelors ; nor do the
sinful fraternity last mentioned, who find fault with
the moral paragraphs, and the notices of sermons, and
the reports of religious societies which occasionally
appear on the broad-sheet, call to their recollection
that, in the eyes of the many, such things are the very
gems of a journal. In short, the reader of a news-
paper, through some unaccountable fatality, for the
time forgets that there is, in reruns nature, any other
being than himself. He is an exclusive, a monopolist,
alone in his glory, the only living, sentient, existent
being on the face of this fair and newspaper reading
world. Reader ! have you yet fixed upon a profes-
sion ? If not, never once think of becoming an
editor. Beg—take the pack—keep lodger—take up
a school—set up a mangle—take in washing. For
humanity's sake, an especially for your own, do any-
thing rather than become a newspaper editor.—
Glasgow National.

DEATH BY DROWNING AT LANESBOROUGH.—On
Saturday morning last, about nine o'clock, five men em-
ployed by Messrs. Sykes and Brookfield, contractors for
the Shannon improvements, were returning to their work
after breakfast, in a small boat; some tricks were played
between the persons on shore and those in the boat;
there was a stone thrown by a man named Kelly, when
all the persons in the boat ran to one side, and she upset;
three that could swim reached the shore, and two, one
named liatigan, and the other, named Murphy, both
young men, were drowned. When the news reached
the police barracks, Constable Ramsay, and Sub- a
Con-
stable Brereton, after much difficulty, procured b,
but being delayed in procuring oars in sufficient time,
they had reached within a couple of perches of the
drowning persons, when the stream carried them away,
Nett
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and the unfortunate men sunk to rise no more. Too much
praise cannot be given to the police for their active,
although unfortunately unsuccessful, efforts to save
m. Onbeing
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there was a coroner's inquest, when the
verdict of " Accidental death by jury returned a
Journal. ,rowning,"_L ore

DURHAM SCHOLARSHIP.—RaIph Lindsay, Esq.,
Solicitor, of London, and a native of Durham, is about
to found a scholarship in the university of the latter city,
of the annual value of 401. It will be tenable for three
years by boys, who must have been two years at Dur-
ham,--Tyne Mercury,