Tur "society papers" as they are called, are commonly regarded as a peculiar and not as a very creditable feature of the present age. The more respectable portion of the British public regard the appearance of these personal and often scandalous journals asa very bad feature of the Victorian epoch, Newspapers, which publish the gossip of Club smoking rooms, do not appeal to the nobler feelings of our nature, The comments on the personal appearance of the leading beauties of the season, and the inuendoes which are connected with delicate and often confused relations, cannot possibly improve the morals of the reader, and they inevitably lower the influence and nity of the upper classes, whose vices and follies are the topic of the ubiquitous reporter. Persoualities are always popular for a moment, but the after regret which all sensible men feel for having indulged in them, should check those who are templed to give a cynical story the permanence of a paragraph. We must not, however, suppose that the newspapers which now retail the scandals of the West end are the peculiar growth of the period. In a recent article we pointed out that the Roman Acta contained very frequent paragraphs spiced with satire, and that in the days of the Cwsars sly hits and sar-castle allusions might be detected in the reports of marriages or the record of testamentary dispositions. We need not go back to ancient Rome to find instances of this kind of personal journalism. If we look at the early volumes of that thoroughly respectable publication The Annual Register, which opens with a retrospect of the first twenty years of the reign of Gedrge TIL, we find in the list of principal occurrences many quaint particulars and side thrusts and notes of manners that are not very unlike the paragraphs in the new class of " weeklies."
For instance, we read under the head of marriages for the year 1781, ay anticipation of the superb Rotbschild-Rosebery nuptials on 2 humbler scale than those lately celebrated and described by professed journalists:—" According to the Jewish rites and customs, Wolf Joseph, Esq., an eminent Jew merchant of George Street, to Miss Hannah Tark, daughter of Isaac Turk, Esq. On this occasion above 400 invitation cards were sent for dinner, and more than 150 carriages were sent to the synagogue."
Then in the deaths:—" At his house at Sevenoaks, in Kent, Henry Fermer, Esq., 2 major of the 89th regiment of foot. He was six feet four inches high, without his shoes." Here is "a commodity of good names." "The Princess of Asturias was brought to bed, at three o'clock in the morning, of 8 Prince, who was soon after baptised by the Cardinal Patriarch. His names are Charles, Dominick, Eusebius, Raphael, Joseph, Anthony, John Nepomucenes, Gabriel, Julien, Vincent Ferrer, Andrew Avelin, Louis, Ferdinand, Angel, Francis Pascal, Joachan, Cayetan, Ignatius, Emanuel, Raimond, January and Francis de Paul." Here we are struck by the formidable number of the names, and also by the audacity with which they are clothed in an English dress. Hero is another carious entry, under date 1762—" July 10th, Lady of Philip Egerton, Esq,, of Oulton Park, Cheshire, of her eighth son and thirteenth child." And in the same list, "Sept. 24th, the Lady of Oliver Cromwell, Esq., of a son and heir, at his house in Nicholas-lane. This child is the only male heir of the Cromwell family, in a lineal descent from the memorable Protector of that name." Under the head of promotions we meet with a note which reads oddly March 26th, His Royal Highness Prince Frederick, Bishop of Osnaburg, captain and colonel of the second troop of horse grenadier guards, vice Lord Amherst." When a wealthy Church dignitary marries a woman of fortune, we sometimes find the note, "it never rains but it pours;" and often in notices of weddings we read of a Miss Betty A or a Miss Molly B, " with £20,000, or £30,000," as the case may These were the remarks that our ancestors amused themselves with.
They would be voted dull and " mild," and anything els that is uncomplimentary, by the journals that have arisen since, and which find a large crowd of readers. The habit of speaking of men by their Christian names, and giving us bints as to occurrences which take place behind the scenes of the great world, are surely, to use a much abused phrase, "bad form." Paragraphs like the following—' Pat not your trast in Princes, dear Lady, they are good natured sometimes, but they do not like ice put down their backs," are hardly worth printing, Indeed, we want a strong voice to protest against the excesses and trivial. ities of the newspapers which profess to record the sayings and doings of the fashionable world, though of course for the suppression of the evil we must not look to legislation but to time, @utports.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.