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^*^K,l THE MANUSCRIPT GAZETT^'^C"* 



WE have here to deal with an editor <e placed far amid the melan- 

 choly main ;" the very Juan Fernandez of the broad-sheet ; the one 

 literary porcupine of the Island of Ascension. We had as soon hoped 

 for literary circulation in a sentry-box ; and yet here we have a digest 

 of home politics and colonial movements, arrivals, accidents, and 

 angry slander. If the two wooden men of St. Dunstan's had, ex- 

 clusively, for their individual instruction, written a newspaper de- 

 tailing to each other what each must have witnessed, the courtesy 

 would scarcely have been more refined than that anxious spirit of 

 communion shown in The Ascension Gazette, of which we are the fortu- 

 nate holders of one copy and a half. The Gazette must not be con- 

 founded with our double Times, for albeit its contents are far more 

 interesting, they are not so voluminous. The Ascension Gazette is 

 written as a touching " notice to subscribers," informs the judicious 

 few by " one pen," in a plain clerkly hand, on a sheet of imposing 

 foolscap : herein there is no obligation to John Gutenberg ; the prin- 

 ter depletes not the Eden of Ascension with his ink ; there is not a 

 single devil in the island ; pica is unknown ; yea, only vague reports 

 have been heard of cannon ; Mr. Figgins, type-founder, would be 

 burned as a Doctor Faustus. We know not the extent of the circu- 

 lation of (< The Ascension Gazette," but as its penmanship depends 

 upon one set of five fingers, we trust it is very limited ; in fact, % our 

 benevolent hopes herein are flattered by the following advertise- 

 ment : 



" FOUND. A Knife ; the owner may have it by giving a description, and 

 paying the expenses, on applying at the office." 



That " A Knife" missed, should be a matter of general interest to 

 the whole population of the Island of Ascension, is a proof that the 

 Anti-Malthusian principles are evidently not at work in that happy 

 colony : to turn up the eyes of a community at " A knife," is to 

 make a whole people endure the anxiety of Damocles. 



The date of the Gazette from which we take the following extracts, 

 is Saturday, December 23, 1826. There is. in the subjoined extracts 

 a touching melancholy, a desolateness that goes to the heart : 



" On Tuesday the 5th instant, one of those joyous and welcome interrup- 

 tions of our insular and monotonous repose, took place on the arrival of His 

 Majesty's ship, North Star, Captain Arabin, from the Coast of Africa, to 

 victual : she was first seen from the Mountain-house, at 2 o'clock, and about 

 four, anchored in the Bay." 



But the canker blight of politics falls even among the amaranthine 

 bowers of the Island of Ascension ; on this cone of mud and sand 

 stories, like clawed harpies, of " the elections" perch and clamour. 

 Take the following : which, when we consider what has passed since 

 " Saturday, December 23, 1826," is doubly curious : 



" Mr. Cobbett and Mr. Hunt, we are happy to find were not returned : 



they are too . The City of London are not nice in what they do ; we 



should just as soon have expected, if the Hero of Blacking, or the Knight of the 

 Gridiron, had been returned, that it was for the City, as any other place ; what 



