AN EVENING WITH NEWSPAPERS. 337 
AN EVENING WITH NEWSPAPERS. 
ABSTRACT OF MR. REYNOLDS FOX’S PAPER. 
(Read February 11th, 1875.) 
Tue contrast between the first and last quarter of this century is in 
nowise so much illustrated as by the Newspaper Press of the two 
periods. ‘Take, for instance, a 7imes of to-day and a Times of 
sixty or seventy years ago—the one with its two large double 
sheets, its sixteen pages, its ninety-six columns, its three thousand 
advertisements ; the other, a single folio sheet, with its sixteen 
columns, and seventy or eighty advertisements. The former, 
printed by steam at the rate of 11,000 to 12,000 per hour; of the 
latter, not more than 450 per hour turned out by.the hand-presses. 
Previous to 1622 there was no regular printed newspaper. Even 
during the Elizabethan era—that time of lofty intellect and deeds 
of high bravery—the nearest approach to a newspaper was the 
printed bulletins of news which Lord Burleigh despatched to 
different parts of the country respecting the preparations for and 
incidents connected with the Spanish Armada. Rome, however, 
had her written news journals, called Acta diurna, containing little 
gossiping pieces of intelligence, such as, mutatis mutandis, are 
common nowadays. Julius Cesar was a friend to public journal- 
ism. Not so Augustus Cesar, or most of his successors. There 
are no traces of newspapers in the history of Greece. In the six- 
teenth century, at Venice, there was published and sold for a 
gazetta a news journal bearing the name of the coin paid for it— 
written, but not printed. 
The first printed newspaper in England was published in 1622, 
by Nathaniel Butter, and entitled, Weekly News from Italy, Ger- 
many, &c. The first newspapers appear to have been very tame 
and shorn in their character, not possessing the interest and liveli- 
ness of detail which would characterise the more personal chatty 
news letters. The first trade advertisement in an English paper 
