and provided by the since_celebrated caterers, Spiers & Pond, who, however, at the era now referred to, were only known as struggling but enterprising reformers of the railway refreshment system at and near the London termini. On entering the building I was at once impressed by the appearance of the gentleman already located in the presidential chair; noticeable anywhere would have been his broad and high forehead, his clean-cut features, his clear penetrating grey eyes, while a certain breeziness of manner, that seemed to diffuse itself throughout the apartment, proclaimed that he was no mere hackneyed habitué of the contiguous regions of damped paper and printing-ink. Accompanying the information with a rapid narrative of his career in the Royal Navy, and subsequently in Edinburgh, James Macdonell whispered to me that our chairman of the evening, then only upon the threshold of a vigorous and comely middle age, was James Hannay, very generally, though inaccurately, identified with the editor of the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' After dinner, on the occasion of proposing the health of the guest of the evening, Hannay, more suo, delivered an admirable oration of about three-quarters of an hour's length, denouncing the "trumpery distinction," as he called it, "drawn by pretentious blockheads between journalism and literature. Both," he said, 66 were affluents or effluents of one and the same mighty stream, and both flowed forth from the same historic fountain-head-namely, the Greek and Latin classics." The speaker then went on to say that "if we knew more of the acta diurna and the prætor's edicts of the Romans, we should doubtless find them very

respectable specimens of morning papers in the days before printing was invented;" while, as for the alleged novelty of special descriptive correspondents, he pointed out that some centuries before the Christian era, a certain Greek gentleman named Xenophon acted in that capacity to ten thousand Greeks at the seat of war, and subsequently published his letters, as also W. H. Russell had done, in a book called 'The Anabasis'; nor was he quite certain that 'the Venusian' himself might not have accepted an engagement to contribute occasional sketches of the campaign during that conflict in which he had borne a part, and which at Philippi ended with such disaster for the country gentlemen of Italy," as to overpower the speaker with emotion by the mere mention of it. Finally, having proved ingeniously that "when he hymned the praise of the Bandusian fount, Horace, with bardic prevision, must have forecast the qualifying influence of a slight admixture of mountain-dew,"" this surprisingly accomplished specimen of the naval littérateur, on the occasion I first beheld him, called for a "quaigh" of "Usquebagh," and the company broke up,-not, however, before the then doyen of the London press, John Oxenford, the accomplished scholar, who was dramatic critic of the Times,' delivered a few terse and blunt remarks in praise of Turner, that were a striking contrast to Hannay's flowing and polished periods, the simple burden of these observations being that "whether Governor Eyre flogged the Jamaica women, or the Jamaica women flogged Governor Eyre, was a matter of small importance compared with the safe return, covered with his tropical laurels, of the even

ing's guest." The other incident just referred to was Hannay's kind request that I might be introduced to him, not because he had any previous knowledge of my name or family, but for no other reason than that he had heard of me as a young Oxford man who had taken a fair degree, and whom he wished to befriend in his literary

career.

James Hannay, having been succeeded in the editorship of the 'Edinburgh Courant,' immediately by Mr F. Espinasse, more lately by Mr J. Scot-Henderson, was at this period established in a roomy old house, a portion of whose exterior suggested the remnant of a feudal castle, in one of the streets between Tavistock and Euston Squares; his pen was, more busily and acceptably than many others of the staff, employed on the 'Pall Mall Gazette,' then under the able editorship of Mr Frederic Greenwood. I am violating no confidence when I say that much later than this, Mr Greenwood, now a very old friend and editor of mine, told me that he never published an article of Hannay's which failed to make its mark immediately and most appreciably with the public. At Hannay's house I was a not infrequent visitor. Mr Greenwood I did not, so far as I remember, ever meet there; but there was a certain number of devoted personal adherents and even henchmen of my host, with whom I did first become acquainted beneath his hospitable roof, all of them active and more or less conspicuous figures in London letters at this epoch, especially J. P. Steele, M.D., a brother Scot of Hannay's, a former contributor to the 'Courant,' but at this time attached to the staff of the Lancet,' not confining his journalistic industry to purely professional themes,

and a well-informed and effective writer on the politics of Germany and France, in the language and literature of both of which he was fairly proficient. Since then Dr Steele, who never lost his love for what he rhetorically called "the spirit of practice," has returned to his old profession as medical man in Rome, while acting regularly or occasionally as correspondent of the 'Daily News' at that capital.

Among the well-known littéra teurs of this period for whom James Hannay kept almost open house, and who in turn at their own abodes did not fail to perform the same hospitable duty towards him, in addition to his special ally and counsellor, the polyglottic J. P. Steele, M.D., were the late Henry Savile Clarke, then one of Messrs Cassell's editors, and a happy writer of occasional verse for innumerable journals, of whom, as his colleague, the scholarlike W. Moy Thomas, I have only the most pleasant and grateful memories ; Mr Francis Espinasse, the biographer of Voltaire, who had been his host's successor in the editorial chair of the 'Courant,' who still labours successfully for the enlightenment of the public; a Mr Andrew Gordon, a grandson, I believe, of the mighty John Wilson, 'Maga's' Christopher North, and possessing, like Hannay himself, certain nautical affinities or relationships; Mr T. E. Kebbel, then, as, I am glad to say, at the present time, an active writer on the Conservative press, with a wide and accurate knowledge of political history; a welcome, but, as resident in Scotland, only a rare visitor in Tavistock Square was the late Mr Patrick Alexander, who then exercised his real genius for parody, by astonishingly powerful caricatures of Carlyle's literary manner.

In the journalistic London of the

present year of grace, it is probable that there are no such institutions as James Hannay's unconventional receptions eight-andtwenty years ago, or as the Friday suppers already mentioned of Tom Hood, in Brompton. The truth is, that the province of Bohemia has no longer a place on the map of socio-literary London. The constantly increasing high pressure under which all journalism is now done, the increasing severity of competition in the journalistic market, have coincided with, and to some extent have themselves produced, an abolition of the old caste limits of journalism as a profession. The regular writers of newspapers are to be found everywhere, are taken from every professional pursuit, and from every social level, — from the "court" regions of Belgravia or Mayfair; from the camp-followers of Woolwich or Aldershot; from the chaste groves of artistic Hampstead, as well as from dignitaries of the Imperial Law Courts, or highly placed officials of Whitehall or Westminster.

Mr Sala has something to say of the departed tavern-life of London; but he does not notice, or, it may be, would blush to mention, one of these metropolitan haunts of the muses' votaries, which rather more than a quarter of a century since enjoyed great popularity, and which may even have been visited by so "august" à presence as that of Mr Sala's. "Stone's," in one of the streets abutting upon the Haymarket, was a distinct survival of the coffee-house system of Steele's or Addison's London, before the days of club-life. Brought into popularity by the notice of the Mayhews, Captain Mayne Reid, the late William Jerrold, and others, this old-fashioned and well-conducted haunt

reminding the northern visitor, on a smaller scale, of that extraordinary emporium of luncheon commodities in Glasgow, known, if memory rightly serves, as Lang'swas at certain hours of the day, to all practical purposes, not less exclusive than a club, and was in effect frequented by much the same gentlemen who, later on, nearer the small hours, would be found in that portion of the central room at Evans's in Covent Garden, reserved, as Mr Green informed his patrons, for private conversation parties, and occupied nightly by the most prominent figures of Fleet Street and Blackfriars. Of Stone's, it is safe to say that in its character of the house of call of a literary coterie it has gone the way of the original Savage Club, revived by name to-day under the guise of a fashionable assembly as the Reunion, the Templar's Club, and a host of other unpretentious abodes of good-fellowship, which were the latter-day successors of Thackeray's homes of harmony. The Garrick Club, indeed, at the era now recalled, was domiciled in its present house, but of it I was not as yet a member. The only other institution of any considerable pretensions to comfort was the Arts Club, then, and for many years afterwards, occupying that most picturesquely constructed and furnished mansion at the corner of Tenterden Street, Hanover Square, where, during the sixties, the handsome, gracious, and amiable presence of the artist, Mr Field Talford, used to diffuse its agreeable influences, and where Charles Dickens, with my still surviving friend Mr Marcus Stone, of the Royal Academy, was a not infrequent apparition. Since these days, literary London has added club to club: there is certainly a Junior

Garrick, there may be a Garrick minimus natu; there are æsthetically furnished haunts of culture, science, letters, or art, in Saville Row and its vicinage. If the great editors of the morning dailies are too busy or too exalted to dine out much, the names of some members of their staff are sure to be seen in the list of the company attending the fashionable banquets of the preceding night; thus it has come about that artists do not wear their velvet coats out of their studios, and that if the journalist, of whatever degree, retains any sympathies with the life depicted by Henri Murger, he divests himself of it as he puts on his dresscoat, and inserts a gardenia in his button-hole. In T. W. Robertson's first play, at whose initial presentation I "assisted," the dropping of Tom Stylus's pipe from his pocket, as he took out his handkerchief, was hailed by an expert audience as a special touch of Bohemian knowledge, showing the playwright's shrewd observation of the actualities of life: the incident, if produced for the first time today, would be hissed as an anachronism, and Tom Stylus himself, instead of borrowing the half-crown to pay the cab to his hostess's mansion in Grosvenor Square, would drive thither in his wellappointed brougham, and, as likely as not, might give the vacant seat in his coupé to a friendly bishop, or his near neighbour the President of the Royal College of Physicians.

Other changes not less strongly defined than these have been consummated in the literary world, well within the last half of that period now exhibited to us by Mr G. A. Sala. It is sometimes, but, as shall presently be shown, incorrectly, said, that the ubiquity of London papers has left no place

for the provincial press: the truth is, that the “ very newest journalism," as it is called, of the capital, is, in its essence, mainly of provincial origin. When this reviewer first knew literary London professionally, 'The Owl,' that herald of the society journals of a subsequent epoch, was probably in existence; but as he had then no acquaintance with its brilliant writers, was not a matter of interest, and was therefore one of ignorance to himself personally. Adequate justice has not yet been done to the wide-reaching and posthumous influence first of Laurence Oliphant, especially through works like 'Piccadilly' or 'Altiora Peto,' and of Kinglake afterwards, upon the best contributors to the periodical press during the last half-century. The delicacy of touch, the exquisitely bred irony, the pregnantly suggestive satire animating every page of 'Eothen,' have inspired much that is least banal in all latter-day descriptive writing, and especially have infused into such graceful work as that of Lady Currie, our present ambassadress at Constantinople— popularly known by her nom de guerre of Violet Fane-the peculiar bitter-sweet flavour that renders her work not less agreeable to the literary, than are olives to the physical, palate; while most of the higher class of narrative and descriptive prose in journals circulating among the cultivated classes distinctly recall the modes of thought and diction first shown to the public in Kinglake's gemlike classic "from the East." terms on which this accomplished stylist found himself with Printing House Square and its denizens varied at different epochs of his long career; but if the best narrative writing in the 'Times,' as elsewhere, were placed in the cru

The

cible of a searching analysis, it would be found that the power exercised by the admirable prose style of the historian of the Crimean War upon contemporary pens was not less marked than the influence of Gibbon or Bolingbroke upon Macaulay, or of the great Whig historian himself upon the polemical methods and language of the leading journal a generation since.

During a considerable portion of the years now passed in review, my connection with the periodical press in some parts of England was only less close than it was with the periodical press in London. The extinct Edinburgh Courant,' founded, oddly enough, by no less a person than Daniel Defoe, had been purchased by a West of England speculator, Charles Wescombe, who had also acquired the London 'Globe': its then editor was Mr J. Scot-Henderson, whose name has been already mentioned here, under whose direction I furnished, to my own profit, not less, I trust, than to the pleasure of my trans-Tweedine patrons, a weekly leading article, as well as a weekly report of London doings. This connection of mine continued, very agreeably to me at least, under more than one dynasty of conductors-the last 'Courant' editor with whom I had dealings being the late James Mure, subsequently her Majesty's Consul in the Balearic Islands. Like his predecessor Hannay, this gentleman had in earlier life been a sailor; but there ended all resemblance between the two. A more kindly, genial, and, at heart, refined journalist than James Mure never crossed the threshold of that famous New Club in Edinburgh, my slight knowledge of which arises only from his hospitality. As a leader-writer on the staff of the

'Standard,' this editor of the 'Courant' had received from Thomas Hamber no imperfect training. His amiable and equable temper and uniformly genial manner may have concealed from some the sagacity and shrewdness that were prime elements in his character. A Westminster boy during one of the best periods in the existence of St Peter's College, James Mure carried away with him as much classical knowledge before he settled down to newspaper work as James Hannay acquired in the midst of such work itself; while the correctness of his taste and the chivalry of his heart were worthy of his descent from the accomplished baronet of Caldwell, the historian of Greek literature, whose work, considering he performed it when as yet Grote had not written and Grote's data were not forthcoming, is a miracle of scholarship and research. Other Conservative newspapers out of London complimented me by requisitioning my services. The "Yorkshire Post,' then under the control of John Ralph, of considerable academic standing, had as its business manager the sagacious Abel Nadin, and as its assistant editor, Mr E. J. Goodman. To these my name had been mentioned favourably, either by James Hannay or by some of those known to me through him, and for some years I doubled my duties to the 'Edinburgh Courant' by work of the same kind, and to the same amount, for the Leeds Conservative organ. The 'Man

chester Courier' was at this time owned by the Messrs Sowler, and edited by the late Mr Francis Hitchman.

Some practical practical experience, therefore, of the provincial press qualifies me to express an opinion as to its influences of late upon the