the most important leading articles-those which give the paper its political complexion and character. Loosely attached or unattached writers may furnish articles from time to time, but the body of workers on whom reliance is placed is small one. The assistant-editors are, indeed, the most valuable men employed on the journal; and, on account of the rare combination of faculties required in them, by no means easy to find. They must be able to write at a moment's notice, and under conditions which exclude all extrinsic aid on any subject that may require treatment; and they do so not only with sense, but with ease, spirit, and a wonderful wealth of illustration. Culture, which is so indispensable for such work, is by no means an adequate qualification for it. The accomplished journalist lives in and for his time, drawing in its ideas, hopes, and solicitudes as constantly and as unconsciously as his breath, and transforming them by reflection almost as spontaneous. He is never wholly surprised, because he has considered beforehand the possibilities of every situation; no fact is for him altogether new, but every event occurs as a development, and finds a place prepared for it in a wellordered mind.

Of the assistant-editors one attends nightly the sittings of the House of Commons, and writes his articles from personal observation during the proceedings. In the lulls that occur in very debate he passes in and out, converses with members in the lobby or elsewhere, and returns as the interest of the proceedings revives. It is necessary for him not only to know what is said, but to be able to enter with full intelligence into all the unforeseen turns which the debate takes in a long sitting.

Of the editor it is not necessary to say more than that he is the soul of the paper. The resources placed at his disposal are immense, and it is for him to turn them to the best possible account. He may be a first-rate writer and yet seldom be able to get time to pen an article; but he must inform the journal by his spirit, actuate it by his power, and control it by his authority. It is essential that he should understand two thingshis time, and the public to which he has to explain its aspects and events. If he knows only the first, his paper will be neglected as pedantic and dull; if he cares only for the second, he will be a charlatan. If, understanding the character of his countrymen and able to sympathise with it on the whole, even when its virtues are exaggerated into defects, he serves it with intelligence and fidelity, he has a vocation which is second to none in usefulness and honour.

We now pass from the personal organisation of the journal to follow very rapidly the operations of a working day. The first person to feel the touch of the office will be the extra-parliamentary reporter, who will receive his instructions, if not by the first post, by ten o'clock, or in their absence will be entitled to treat the day as his own. During the first part of the day the editorial rooms, so bright and lively in the small hours of the morning, are vacant and silent. The business manager and the cashier are, however, in their

offices, and all day long parcels and letters are being delivered, and material is accumulating to be operated on in the evening. By twelve or one o'clock the editor will be ready for work, and will receive from his secretary such of the letters addressed to him as may require his personal attention, a number large enough to make considerable demands on his time, although a small percentage of the whole. Besides these he will receive parliamentary papers and other public documents, and all kinds of compositions submitted for his acceptance. His first concern will be to take, so to speak, the measure of the day, or rather of the next day, as determined by that, for it is of the first consequence to a newspaper that its conductors and the world should be thinking about the same things. By three o'clock the editor will be due at the office, there to meet those of his leader-writers for whom it may then be possible to provide topics, generally of a light and optional character, without waiting until the evening. This done, it will be for him to make as much use as possible of the time remaining before nightwork begins. All the hours he can get he will employ in strengthening his grasp of the inner movements of political life.

In these days the editor of a first-class newspaper is not an ingenious speculator on events known at second hand, but is in the full current of public life. The best men of either party profess their desire to be useful to him, and no small part of his skill is shown in keeping up the most extensive relations with leading men without compromising the independence of his journal. He does not, however, depend on the friendliness of any one for the knowledge sufficient for his guidance. Political information, carly and sound, he must have, and from the opposed camps, and accordingly he takes care to have it. Forty years ago editors may have pretended to more knowledge than they possessed; now they occasionally find it convenient to dissemble the very certainties on which they proceed.

To return to the office. Soon after six in the evening the sub-editors arrive, and begin to work upon the piles of manuscript and printed matter which await them there. The printer is pressing them for "copy," for his hands are waiting; but they must proceed cautiously, or they will choke space which will be sorely wanted later on. Now the reporters in Parliament and out of doors begin to send up their first manuscripts; and if these and those reports as to which there is no option do not suffice to keep the printers going, a column or two of literary reviews may be given to them, since these last, if found in excess when the paper is made up, can be held over. By ten the Editor and his assistants will be at their posts, and now a serious consultation is held, for the topics of the principal leaders must be decided on without delay.

Such

a choice has been deferred until the latest possible moment for good reasons. Had it been made before all the data which foreign and domestic telegrams, private notes from "Whips," confidential intimations from political friends, and the explorations of trusted social agents could yield had been realised, it might be liable to reversal

66

when all the arrangements based on it were in operation. As it is, the late delivery of a Bluebook, the publication of an Extraordinary Gazette," or a telegram announcing that a favourite regiment has lost heavily in South Africa, will upset the operations of the editor's room just when such disturbance is most inconvenient. Sometimes those operations must commence before all the material necessary for them is in hand. An eminent statesman is speaking at Edinburgh, Liverpool, or Manchester, and in London his speech is being delivered by the telegraph-boys by instalments. In such a case the leader-writer will be busy on the earlier part of the speech while the orator is constructing his later

sentences.

By a quarter-past ten o'clock the leader-writers will have addressed themselves to their tasks, and before they have nearly finished their articles the earlier paragraphs will have been handed to them in proof for correction. By about eleven the chief printer makes his appearance in the editor's room with his "statement," a schedule of the titles and length in columns of the articles he has received, showing the foreseen result that the paper is overcrowded. Proofs are now coming down very fast, and must be dealt with rapidly and returned. By half-past twelve the fourth page, that which is at the reader's left-hand when he opens the paper out, must be closed up, locked in its iron frame, and

sent into the foundry to be stereotyped. There it is laid upon a hollow plate of iron through which the flame of a furnace is passing, to be washed, brushed, and dried. A sheet of strong papier-maché, well moistened, is now laid over the page of type, and beaten into its surface until it has taken its exact impression, and stiffening rapidly with the heat, is ready to serve as a matrix. The paper mould is then placed in a frame and molten type-metal poured over it, and thus a page which can be printed from is cast. Each of the eight pages of type, as it is made up, is thus treated. The process increases the immediate cost of printing, but the number of copies thrown. off every morning from the machines is so large that if stereotype plates were not used, a costly set, or "fount," of type would be defaced every few months. The fifth page is the second to be sent to the foundry, and the inner pages are kept open longest. By about two the last paragraph is dropped into the last open column, and such as it has been made, with its merits and defects, the morning's paper must go before the world.

Such in their broad features are the methods by which the newspaper is made. If the reader can approve of the product let him at times bestow a thought on those who toil and watch while he sleeps. If its shortcomings, or even its positive faults, more impress him, let him remember that such as the public is, so in the long run will its newspapers be.

W

HATEVER the future may have in store for us, the reign of Queen Victoria will stand forth in the annals of the Law as a period of change. Fruitful of new law, it has been no less fruitful of new arrangements for the followers of the law.

Extinguishing the old Prerogative Court, and driving the Admiralty lawyers to Westminster, it has created the brand new "Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Court." Abolishing Doctors' Commons, it discharged the proctors with handsome pensions for past misbehaviour, dispersed the advocates, carted the wills to Somerset House, allowed the civilians to sell the site of their old college in Knightrider Street, and pulled down the Chamber of Justice, in which Charles Dickens in his boyhood was a reporter for the press, and Sir Herbert Jenner Fust (clear of brain, though crippled with gout) used to deliver good judgments, when two stalwart footmen had conveyed him from his bath-chair to the judgment-seat. It has called into existence a system of education for barristers no less efficient and suited to the requirements of the times than the system that prevailed when Coke was a stripling and Francis Bacon was doubtful whether he should ever do much at the bar. It has given us County Courts, where the merchants and tradesmen of our provincial towns get good justice and cheap justice without travelling a mile from their places of business. It has placed stipendiary magistrates in most of our great towns. After standing over the grave of the Serjeants, it put their Inn up to public auction. It has relieved simple folk of their ancient enemies by converting "those pestilent attorneys" into solicitors of the Supreme Court of Judicature. It has modified and harmonised the Equity Courts and the Courts of Common Law into Divisions of the same Supreme Court. Bringing the judges and barristers and solicitors of supreme quality and the solicitors' clerks of no quality at all, with all their wigs and bags and wise faces, from Westminster to the verge of what still remains "the City," the Victorian age has planted them in the New Law Courts, which are at length open for public view and use; whilst judges who hoped to raise their voices in the new Palace of Justice are silent for ever, and the architect who designed and raised and almost finished the stately pile is resting in his grave, hard by "the Hall" which the lawyers, after wrangling in it for more than six centuries, have quitted-at last and for ever.

To say that all this has been done in the reign of the sovereign who may still be hoped to rule over us for another quarter of a century, is to create an impression that the lawyers are the readiest, not to say the most passionate, reformers

of the current time. Yet there are grounds for the opinion that innovation is, perhaps, more distasteful to the followers of the law than to any other class of men, having abundant and substantial reasons for contentment with the existing order of things. Indeed, it is amusing to reflect with how little favour these changes have been regarded by the general body of the profession, whose chiefs were chiefly influential in bringing them to pass. To remember how sagacious and strong-headed lawyers decried the first proposals for most of the salutary changes, and even questioned the convenience of having the New Courts so close to Chancery Lane, is to suspect that the strenuous study of the law is no effectual preservative against perversity of thought and speech.

The improvements of a great and growing city are necessarily attended with incidents that are regarded by every sympathetic and liberal mind as changes for the worse rather than as changes for the better. Whilst builders in the outskirts make hideous havoc with brave trees and picturesque lanes, builders in the central quarters play no less rudely with the historic associations that are unspeakably precious to persons who, living more in the past than the present, value the ancient city of their birth or habitual residence less for what it is in its brightest and most fashionable districts than for what it was in its dingiest and most dilapidated quarters. It caused Charles Lamb something of regretful annoyance to see the lawyers move from their narrow courts under William Rufus's roof to the larger chambers built for their accommodation outside the Hall. He would have felt heavier and keener trouble at foreseeing the near future, when Doctors' Commons would lose its doctors and proctors and whiteaproned touters, its musty will office and tranquil college and quaintly fitted court-house. would have shuddered and groaned to know how soon the Templars would cease to go daily, by boat or coach, by the river or the Strand, to and fro Westminster Hall. And there are men amongst us, with enough of Elia's fondness for old fashions and practices, to experience considerable discomfort at the disturbance and disappearance of old associations, that will result from the removal of the Courts of Law. From the certain date (1215 A.D.) when the Common Pleas was fixed in its certain corner just within the north entrance of Westminster Hall, the uncertain time of the same century when the Chancellor's marble chair and table were first placed on the higher level at the other end of the vast chamber, and the much later time (temp. Edward 111) when the Court of King's Bench established itself by the side of the chancellor's place of audience, the greatness and

He

66

the glory of the law have been so intimately associated with the grandeur and fortunes of the Hall, that it has been and still is difficult to meditate on the one without thinking of the other. To recall any one of our historic lawyers is to remember the scene of his chief triumphs. For ages "Westminster" and "the Hall" have been synonymous for the "legal profession" and the "lawyer's career." The student "bred to the law" has been a student "taking notes at Westminster." Instead of saying that a barrister found employment and fees, and grew in favour with attorneys, it has been the fashion of biographers to speak of him as rising at Westminster." When the rising man has risen, he is described in the biographies as powerful at Westminster," or "leading in the Hall." Good judges have done "the Hall honour," corrupt ones have been the "scandal of Westminster." Serjeants of ill repute were "lightly regarded in the Hall." To fail at the bar was to be "unknown at Westminster." To mount to the highest places of the law was "to achieve eminence in Westminster Hall." Even yesterday this use of "Westminster" and "the Hall" was current in talk and literature about the counsel practising there. Such references to Westminster will now drop from the books and gossip of lawyers. Barristers will wrangle in the New Courts as they have wrangled in the buildings that will soon fall before the pickaxes of destructive workmen; but Westminster will hear nothing of their wordy wars. Already the younger readers of one of Charles Dickens's stories require editorial explanation of the passages relating to Doctors' Commons. Three hundred years hence the multitude will know even less of the Law Courts of Westminster Hall than antiquaries of the present day know of the serjeants-at-law who in Chaucer's London used to stand at their pillars in "St. Paul's parvis," and sell legal opinions to passersby as openly as any orange-girls of the Victorian town sell oranges in the public ways.

From the days of Elizabeth to the time of Anne cousins from the country visiting their cousins in London during law terms were taken as a matter of course to see the judges in Westminster Hall, and watch the humours of the motley throng that gathered about each of the three courts, and the humours of the gayer and noisier crowd that moved to and fro, with hum and hubbub, much saucy banter, and many a loudly uttered jest, between the north door, where the Common Pleas had its "certain place" in the north-west angle of the Hall, to the steps mounting to the higher level, where the Lord Chancellor, presiding over his court in the south-west angle, and the Chief Justice, presiding over his court in the south-east angle, commanded a perfect view of as brisk and animating a scene as could have been found under the cover of a single roof in the whole world. Open to view from every point of the Hall's area, the courts were separated from the body of the building by no other fence than the low hoardings that would have been no effective barrier against a mob making an ugly rush on the seats of justice. The long walls to right and left were profusely decorated with martial banners;

and when the rustic sightseer lost his purse in the Hall, the theft was usually perpetrated at a moment when in the delight of banner-gazing he had dismissed all thought for the safety of his pockets. The eastern wall was a bazaar of shops-milliners' stalls, with a few book-stalls amongst them— where smart seamstresses offered turnovers and ruffles, lawn-bands and laced falls, to young barristers, who were not easily satisfied about the fashion and price of the wares submitted to their inspection. Tracts and volumes, precious to the black-letter lawyers of later generations, could be bought at the book-stalls, but a brisker trade was done in fresh copies of the new play, the newest poem, and the latest satire on human folly. If he turned faint from the heat of the densely crowded hall, the country cousin would get the needful glass, and pick up some amusing acquaintances at any of the three taprooms that, under names no less piquant than profane, carried on a lively business in strong drinks at convenient corners of the bazaar; or he could shoulder his way through the merry crowd of gallants and rufflers, Templars and country squires, yeomen and cut-purses, gallants and court ladies, porters and louts, back to Palace Yard, where he could smoke a pipe and drink a pottle of Madeira or a pint of Rhenish wine at the Old Exchequer Coffee-House.

The noise of the Hall was not seldom heightened by quarrels, that passed from high words to strong blows, or (when the disputants were gentlemen of quality) to significant tappings on sword-hilts, and sometimes-to the dishonour, or may be to the honour, of the bar-it must be recorded that the gentlemen of the long robe found the tongue no sufficient instrument for expressing their fiercer emotions. For there were times when the two ends of the Hall differed so vehemently on points of law and professional etiquette that the barristers of the Court of King's Bench were on the very worst of speaking terms with the serjeants of the Common Pleas. There were also times when, in the keen competition for fees, so necessary to judges living bravely on comically insufficient salaries, the chiefs of the rival Courts of Common Law had recourse to curiously sharp practices against one another. One of these occasions of judicial strife occurred in Charles the Second's time, when by a crafty addition of three little words to his writ of "latitat" the Chief Justice of the King's Bench tricked the Common Pleas of almost all civil actions, to the lively anger of Chief Justice North, who, to save himself and his serjeants from starvation, made a still craftier addition of two little words to his writ of "clausum fregit." There were also times when the barristers of a court put their learned heads together in mutiny against their supreme judge, as on the occasion of the famous Dumb Day "strike" of the serjeants against the tyranny of the same Chief Justice, who had previously done them such signal service by his ingenious manipulation of his "clausum fregits." And when bar contended with bar, or judge with judge, or counsellors-inleague with their Chief Justice in this equally piquant and indecorous fashion, the life of "the Hall" was unusually animating-alike to the