204 

 THE PRESS. 



Those slow-going personages who call themselves 

 literary men, because, after cudgelling their brains for 

 one six months, they are enabled to produce a little 

 book upon a less subject during the next six, would be 

 astonished if they were to behold with what amazing 

 rapidity, and yet with what perfect accuracy, this semi- 

 intellectual and semi-mechanical engine — which, after 

 all, has more intellect and more mechanism in it than 

 any other engine with which I am acquainted — does 

 its work ; and yet the method is so systematic, and, to 

 those who have been for some time habituated to it, so 

 simple, that it is not accounted the most honourable, 

 neither is it the best rewarded, department of peri- 

 odical literature. Still, however, it is one of the most 

 arduous ; and as a temporary employment perhaps it 

 is, to those by whom it is now, in the minor papers at 

 least, in a great measure monopolized — the Irish stu- 

 dents at law attending the Inns of Court, the most 

 useful, inasmuch as it gives them great facility in un- 

 derstanding, remembering, and therefore replying to, 

 what is said. 



The way in which it is managed is this : there are 

 connected with the paper some fifteen or twenty report- 

 ers, who are all retained, and occasionally occupied in 

 attending and writing accounts of public meetings, and 

 dinners, and trials, and sporting matches, and all sorts 

 of matters in which people are supposed to take any 

 interest, throughout the whole year. At the com- 

 mencement of the Session of Parliament these are 

 mustered in London : one or two of them are delegated 

 to take charge of the more important cases in the courts 

 of law ; one or two more, who are often either super- 

 annuated or supernumerary, are appointed to look 

 after the peers, report when it pleases their Lordships 

 that there shall be no debate, and take a part, and ask 

 assistance for the remainder, when their said Lordships 

 are visited by the spirit of eloquence : and these two 

 detachments being separated, the remaining and more 



