NOTES AND EVENTS OF THE MONTH. 321 



by the endanger men t of such lights, had nearly involved the Pro- 

 testant world in obscurity, Vas only w r fined five shillings for being 

 drunk ! This needs no comment. 



REFORM OF THE BILLINGSGATES. We are always grateful to 

 that modest genius which is content with the satisfaction of having 

 administered to the intellectual wants of its friends and neighbours, 

 and has no desire beyond an equitable admeasurement of one penny 

 a line for a mass of interesting communications. These possessors of 

 modest merit are great prowlers at police-offices, and from such 

 rich and varied sources of information are sure to gather " food for 

 the mind," as well as worldly intelligence, acceptable to those that 

 hunger and thirst after knowledge. The following information will 

 be read with pleasure by those to whom the regions alluded to have 

 been hitherto* unexplored, in consequence of, it seems, the vague 

 and unauthenticated rumours of vulgarity which have belied that 

 interesting locality. 



" Mr. Hobler said he had been given to understand that there never was a 

 more calumniated place as to manners than Billingsgate, and that it was very 

 right the public should be informed of that fact ; as ladies still felt some 

 objection to visit it for domestic purchases." 



We are happy to coincide with the chivalrous chief clerk of the 

 city in the propriety of making a stand for the honour of Billings- 

 gate ; although we fear it will be some time before the prejudice 

 against the manners of its people, almost proverbial, will subside. 

 We may be allowed to suggest that if a deputation of the best edu- 

 cated and most refined fish-fags we mean no disrespect by using 

 the term by which those respectable females are commonly recog- 

 nized were to wait upon the lady-patronesses of Almacks, they 

 would doubtless work such a revolution in favour of the aspersed fish- 

 market that coronets would be as plentiful as perriwinkles from 

 Thames Street to Tower Hill. 



NEWSPAPER CIRCULATIONS are infinitely more efficacious and 

 extensive than formerly. And they are a more important instru- 

 ment than generally is imagined. They are a part of the reading 

 of all, they are the whole of the reading of the far greater number. 

 There are upwards of thirty of them in the city of Paris. The 

 language diffuses them more widely than the English, though the 

 English too are much read. The writers of these papers are, for 

 the most part, unknown ; but they are like a battery in which the 

 stroke of any one ball produces no great effect, but the amount of 

 continual repetition is decisive. Let us, moreover, only suffer any 

 person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelve- 

 month, and he will become our rival and superior. 



Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books 

 recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon 

 form the character of the age. Uncertain indeed is the efficacy, 



