NOTES FROM THE DIAUf OF A SUB-EDITOR. 493 



" penny-a-line men" the metropolitan papers have been literally feeding 

 upon themselves the press, collectively, has been unnaturally busy in 

 abusing itself, individually. Day after day, from the 10th up to this 

 present writing (the 19th), politics, domestic and foreign, have given 

 place to crimination and recrimination. The official return of the 

 quantity of stamps issued to each newspaper, commenced the war. All 

 those prints whose numbers are small, malign the stamp-office document 

 as false ; while " The Times," which is, as usual, at the head of the list, 

 contends strenuously for the correctness of the return ; with this small 

 qualification that a trifling million or so of stamps have been used in 

 Printing- House- Square more than the official statement accounts for. 

 We notice this contemptible quarrel, to lament over the degradation of 

 the most powerful organ of public opinion. The language lately 

 indulged in by the "gentlemen of the press," is, occasionally, disgraceful. 

 " The Leading Journal" ably supports its character ; for it takes the 

 lead in this war of vulgarity, and is pre-eminent for its contempt of the 

 common decencies of language. We trust something or other will 

 speedily "turn up," to divert this dirty stream of abuse into some less 

 offensive channel. 



A PUZZLE FOR SURGEONS. The following paragraph, translated from 

 a clever French publication, printed here, called Le Camdtfon, will doubt- 

 less furnish subject-matter to that lively debating society 'yclept the 

 " College of Surgeons," for a month to come. It certainly records a 

 natural phenomenon, to match which, all the museums of all the colleges 

 in Europe would be ransacked in vain : 



" A remarkable phenomenon has been exhibited at the Hospital St. Pierre, at 

 Brussels. A youth about fourteen or fifteen years of age died of typhus, presenting 

 an interior conformation completely opposite to that of an ordinary human being. 

 The heart, stomach, and other organs, which, in a natural state, belong to the left 

 side, are with him placed on the right ! The liver and intestines are also on the 

 wrong side !" 



" HATS OFF !" It appears, from Dr. Hogg's amusing " Visit to Alex- 

 andria, &c./' that hats are held in peculiar abomination in Damascus ; 

 insomuch, that Ibrahim Pashaw is reported to have promised, that 



" Before the end of another year, if it remained in his possession, the English 

 consul, who had been formerly refused admission, should be established in peace 

 and security, and hats no longer be considered a rarity." 



By which it appears, that the gates of Damascus are closed to all even 

 a British consul who are convicted of the " high crime and misde- 

 meanour" of wearing a hat ! We have heard of a poor fellow, so 

 uniformly unlucky as to confidently aver, "that if his friends 

 had bred him a hatter, he verily believed men would have taken to 

 going without heads." A shop in the "warranted waterproof" line 

 within the city and liberties of Damascus would have brought him his 

 usual ill luck, without accusing Dame Fortune of being so extensively 

 splenetic, as to commit universal decapitation. 



M.M. No. 11. 3R 



