256 THE BATH ROAD 



cases owiDg to American dollars ; but that is not the 

 doiDg of the newspapers, one way or the other. 

 As I have just remarked, that was a Tory prophecy, 

 and though my Toryism is, I trust, of the most 

 mediseval and crusted kind, and wholly beyond 

 cavil, it may frankly be admitted liere that the Party 

 never has shone in j^rophecy. Nor, for that matter, 

 has any party. The only seers are the leader- 

 writers, and they never see beyond their noses. 



So Principalities and Powers and Titles are at least 

 as powerful as ever they were, and — cynical fact — 

 certain newspaper proprietors have been raised to the 

 House of Peers ; a thing, we may be sure, that Lord 

 Mansfield never contemplated. 



Many other things, however, have happened in the 

 meanwhile. Agitation does not pay so well as it did. 

 The newspapers which were to do such dreadful 

 things have greatly increased in number, if not in 

 power, and the contents of them have changed 

 radically ; other times, other manners, as a glance 

 at even the advertisements of that date will prove. 



XLIV 



The advertisement columns of a paper just over a 

 century old often afford amusement to those who 

 come upon them. The manners and customs of those 

 times and these are so different that the very quaint- 

 ness of our forefathers' attitude of mind brins^s a smile 

 upon our faces, although those eighteenth-century 

 forbears of ours were really very serious people indeed. 



