1830.] on Affairs in General 05 



scatters it upon the bars at proper times and in due quantity. It opens 

 and closes its several valves at the proper moments, works its own 

 pumps, turns its own wheels, and is only not alive." 



All this is true ; and yet, as if in shame to " science," as it is called, 

 every particle of all these curious inventions is due to clowns. Watt 

 was a working mechanic in Glasgow, and his discovery of the new 

 condenser was mere accident. Every subsequent improver has been like 

 Watt, a mere mechanic, and every subsequent discovery a mere accident. 

 It would be a pleasant rebuke to University pride, of all prides the most 

 self-sufficient, to enquire how many discoveries have been made within 

 the walls of any English University since the days of Friar Bacon ? All 

 has been the work of the clown, " the lean, unwashed artificer," the 

 mechanic patching the crazy machine, and thus taught its strength and 

 weakness, or the fire feeder trying to relieve himself of a part of his 

 trouble. All has been the work of mere practice, nothing the work of 

 theory ; and until our superb wranglers, and high capped doctors follow 

 the course of the clown, and. take the machine itself into their hands, 

 they will never furnish any thing more practical than some clumsy trans- 

 lation of some foreign algebraist, to this hour the grand achievement of 

 the philosophers of Cambridge, some tenth transmission of Venturoli, 

 or La Grange, or some bungling commentary on Euler. 



" Newspapers in Paris and in London. The total number per diem 

 of the daily journals printed in Paris exceeds 60,000. The number per 

 diem of all the journals printed in the same city during the month of 

 April amounted to 91,982 ! The Opposition daily prints circulate 

 32,929 ; of which number the Constitutional alone sells 16,666 ; the 

 copies of royalist journals amount to 27,866. The daily press of London 

 consists of twelve journals, six morning and six evening, which circulate 

 altogether about 25,000. Paris has a population of 700,000 ; London, 

 of 1,500,000. If the demand for newspapers in the one town were as 

 great as in the other (and if the tax were a penny instead of a groat> 

 there can belittle doubt that it would be greater), the sake per diem of the 

 London daily journals would not be short of 125,000 ; to say nothing of 

 the hundreds of daily papers that would start up in every respectable 

 town in England, which at present are compelled to depend for their 

 earliest intelligence on a journal printed at one, two, or three hundred 

 miles distance." 



This comparison is formidably against the London press in point of 

 figures. But it is a fallacy after all ; for one London paper ought to go 

 for half a dozen French ; it has, in fact, a measureless superiority in in- 

 formation, variety, and interest. The very best French papers are a 

 pitiable compound of wearisome essays on politics, and endless extracts 

 from books that no one but the extractor will ever open. The actual 

 news is generally confined to half a dozen paragraphs, purposely mysti- 

 fied in all the government papers, and as purposely mystified in all the 

 opposition. What human being can read the Moniteur through? or what 

 human being ever ploughs through the dreary diatribes of the Constitu- 

 tionnel ? The question of expense, too, ought to be taken into considera- 

 tion. The expense of a single daily paper in London would pay for half 

 the journals in Paips, editors, annuitants, pensioned ministerial secre- 

 taries and all. 



Nor do we feel more inclined to be of our contemporary's opinion, on 



