other operatic airs. But, thank God, all that is changed, and the generation which was then growing hoary in the gloomy ways of infidelity, has nearly passed away. Poor Manzoni had been carried away like others by the baneful spirit of the age, but happily it was not difficult to revive in him better feelings. I did not attempt to usurp an office which did not belong to me, but I rejoiced that the few words I ventured to speak produced, by a merciful grace, a happy impression. He promised me that he would take ample advantage of the chaplain's visit that evening, and that he would employ the few hours which remained to him in a suitable manner. He had nothing, he said, to tell me, but to entreat that I would give his last fond love to the one friend whom I knew, on my return to France-to tell her all, and to try to excuse his misfortunes. He finally begged that I would not come to witness the scene of the morrow -he made no allusion to the object of his unhappy flight to the mountains, nor did I ever hear whether he had succeeded in finding the beautiful Arab girl by whom his affections had been captivated-and thus we parted for ever in this life.

I resided at that time at the place called the Swedish Garden, little more than a mile outside the walls of Algiers, on the road to Delli Ibrahim. The way thither lay by the Fort de l'Empereur, which commanded the Casbah, or Palace of the Dey, at the highest point of the city, and which was, in its turn commanded by still higher land within cannon-shot, to the south and west. The place where I was stopping was, indeed, the site of some of the batteries planted by the French invading army, in 1830, against the said Fort de l'Empereur, the capture of which immediately secured the city to the conquerors. This place, which owes its name to the circumstance of being the property of the Swedish consulate, is beautifully situated, on one of the most elevated points of the sea-coast ridge of high land, which is generally called Sahal, but sometimes bears the name of Mount Boujareah, especially at that part where it rises still higher, near its western extremity. The view is magnificent, extending very far seaward, on the one side, and embracing the entire panorama of the Little Atlas, with the intervening plains of the Mitidja, on the other. The city, indeed, is concealed from the eye by the brow of the eminence; but the entire semicircular bay is visible, from Algiers to Cape Matifou, with the white breakers which perpetually line that coast, and the sand-hills, which extend considerably inward from the shore, and the camp of Mustafa, and still farther on the village of Koubah, and beyond it the low banks of the Haratch, and the Maison Carrée in the distance.

Often have I looked upon that gorgeous scene from the grating of an eastern window, when roused by can

non-shot at the dawn of day; and listened to the military band which played in the camp, far below, while the first glories of a bright southern morning were bursting from behind the craggy summits of Mount Atlas. And it was just such a morning which followed my last interview with Achille Manzoni. The loud booming of a cannon echoed, as usual, through the bills: then followed the beat of drum and shrill note of trumpet sounding the reveille; the camp was soon alive, and with palpitating heart I listened to its movements, for nothing was yet visible there but the white walls of the huts which covered many an acre of surface. In the mean time a white fog lay upon the Mitidja like a sea; the haze in the gorges of the mountains began to assume a delicate tone of ultra-marine, mingling imperceptibly with the warmer purple and carmine tints of the summits, above which floated in the pure, sultry atmosphere a few slender streaks of cloud, which were first vermilion, then of a bright yellow tinge, and then of molten gold.

While the gorgeous face of nature, so full of calm, majestic beauty, was undergoing these changes, the movement in the camp of Mustafa was becoming more and more active; columns of troops were to be seen passing and repassing; squares were formed, and the rattle of drums was incessant. I could not understand the military pantomime which was passing on the sands, far below me; but my heart sickened at the prepara. tions, a chill went through my veins, my knees trembled, and my teeth chattered as if from cold. At length all seemed for a moment silent and at rest-the drums had ceased; I thought I could perceive some small, indefinite objects close to the sand-hills, where one side of the vast, hollow square of military was left open down to the sea. Could these be the two condemned men, awaiting the signal for the firing parties to send them into eternity? I prayed with all the fervour I could command. I prayed, indeed, all that morning for my unhappy friend and his companion in misfortune. Hush! again the roll of a drum! and again silence! Two small clouds of white smoke burst in the midst of the hollow square, then a horrible pause of five or six seconds before two sharp sounds reached my ear, almost together-but, before these sounds arrived, the souls of Achille Manzoni and his wretched comrade were before their Eternal Judge and Maker!

Thus man's work in this affair was finished. I left Africa soon after, and I confess that this melancholy episode, and the sad duty which still remained of disclosing to Madalena Manzoni the fate of her unhappy brother, were among the most painful circumstances which I encountered in my wanderings. Others, if permitted, I may hereafter recount to the gentle reader.

M. H.

A MORNING NEWSPAPER.

BY J. M. M., T.C.D.

Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur.

THERE is no description of literature so universally read as that furnished through the medium of newspapers, and yet, strange to say, but very little is known by the unreasoning public of the complicated modus operandi, by means of which the materials are obtained and shaped both for their information and amusement: and of the amount of talent and labour requisite to keep up a supply adequate to the increasin; demand in this age of rapid progress. Ceaseless activity pervades every department each hour of the twenty-four, an enormously expensive staff, consisting of editors, reporters, readers, compositors, machinists, messengers, et hoc genus omne, are engaged in never-ending toil. Whilst the more fortunate reader is enjoying undisturbed repose, or dreaming, perchance, of the events of the day just closed, the wires of the telegraph-that marvel of modern inventionsare brought into requisition, and during the sittings of Parliament, for example, a constant stream of words is borne on the subtle fluid from the " greatest assembly in the world" to the hands of compositors in the remotest parts of the United Kingdom, to be by them "set up" for the paper of the following morning; scarcely has the speaker resumed his seat before his eloquence, which must first filter through the sifting process of transcription, is permanently recorded for perusal at the breakfast table. This is a costly item in the expenditure of the establishment, and leads to the employment of a vast number of persons who must possess education and intelligence for the accurate discharge of their duties. London, it is almost needless to assert, is the great centre from which emanates original editorial articles, and those who have experience of the press cannot fail to be struck with the fact-not creditable to Ireland-that the remarkably able "leaders" which appear in the Times, Herald, Morning Post, Daily News, and Saturday Review, some of Irish authorship, are frequently reproduced in this country in a diluted form, and far from improved by the ingredients added thereto. Some Irish papers are, of course, free from this charge of wholesale plagiarism, and are written with spirit and independence. With the solitary exception of the "Times," the London papers show an extremely intimate knowledge of Irish affairs. To please a certain shallow class of narrowminded Englishmen, there is often an unbecoming severity of tone adopted in dealing with what are called the faults and peculiarities of Irishmen, and this is the more apparent in its columns which are disfigured by unmeaning prejudice and malignant sarcasm whenever this well-abused country is the subject of comment. Still even the most patriotic Hibernian must admire the ability of the writing, which is further enhanced by the absence of cliqueism, a defect very visible nearer home. The successful journalist must be gifted with tact and aptitude, and should also undergo steady training to qualify for the profession. It is a fatal mistake to sup

pose that he can be had ready made. Pedants with no well-defined vocation, and barristers whose legal lore has been suffered to lie dormant and unappreciated by indiscriminating solicitors sometimes attempt an "article," and usually fail ignominiously. Their place is probably filled by an unsuccessful schoolmaster, or a fossil grinder, who has spent the best years of his life and exhausted his energies in the dreary torture of "cramming" for University term and honour examinations-men who being, generally speaking, unacquainted with the ways of the world, are betrayed at times into ludicrous blunders. Vexed by the depressing effects of disappointment in their new career, they try to write smartly, and hopelessly mar their contributions by unjustifiable personalities and blunted irony, the miserable substitutes for reason and common sense. They,

in short, model their essays after the fashion of our Transatlantic brethren, who are so prone to indulge in coarse invective, and impotent threats against individuals as well as public bodies. The compilation of a daily newspaper is an essential-possibly, all things considered the most essential element in its production. It is, nevertheless, an undertaking which the impromptu editor of the calibre just described affects to despise, on the ground that it is too mechanical for the man of genius, whose province it is to wield the pen, forgetful, peradventure, that there can be no more contemptible occupation than that of writing under the withering influence of proprietorial dictation, in order to pander to the whims and court the fleeting popularity of a party. People, however, of more expansive understandings, with wisdom to reflect and courage to arrive at their own conclusions, are aware that in selecting for a newspaper there is a wide field for the exercise of literary taste and judgment. To cater for innumerable varieties of minds day after day, and succeed in bringing out a paper which will prove interesting, and, at the same time, instructive, is not so easy as some imagine. Simple as this is thought to be, it involves vast trouble, anxiety, and watchfulness, if only to avoid. the reprinting of stale news. To wade through files of journals from all parts of the habitable globe, and cull scraps from each, is not a trifling routine; and it would, indeed, be irksome to a degree were it not for the remarkable and stirring incidents which are momentarily brought to light. An editor, if a keen observer, has opportunities which few enjoy of forming enlarged and clear views of human nature in all its manifold phases. He has under his notice, as it were, an epitome of the current proceedings of the world. All its horrors, trials, temptations, pleasures, and utter hollowness pass in review before him. (6 Man," it is said, "is the measure of all things;" and truly the range of an editor's intellectual powers is deemed to be illimitable. He is looked upon as a person of prodigious versatility, and, therefore, expected to enlighten mankind on every conceivable topic which may arise in the minds of his numerous interrogators; he is, in fact, treated as a living encyclopædia, from whom every description of information can be extracted at will. Familiarity with the leading

characteristics of public men is certainly indispensable to anyone who desires to take a correct survey of every political question which comes to the surface. A glance at certain organs would suffice to convince any candid reader that the prevalent habit of mixing up religion with nearly every question discussed is one of the chief banes which has ever tended to impede the advance of Ireland, and the effect of this vicious custom is to propagate everlasting discord, and sow undying enmity between children of the same soil.

As soon as the editor of a metropolitan daily paper has made his choice of news, in which he had been engaged for several hours, he is waited upon by the foreman of the compositors' department, a functionary without whom the paper would never spring into being. Having previously concluded his calcluations, he announces the quantity of space open, and on getting the necessary modicum of matter, retires gorged to his office, in order to digest it, and immediately commences the puzzling operation of preparing for the morning publication. The large metal table at which he stands. whilst performing this task resembles a chess-board on which an animated game is being played, and is in a state of bewildering confusion. Copy is strewn indiscriminately over every part of it; reports of railway and crinoline accidents, meetings, murders, suicides, shipwrecks, battles, banquets, trials, abductions, breach of promise cases, robberies, assaults, popular lectures, musical criticism, reviews of books, meteorological and market returns, letters of indignant citizens, births, deaths and marriages, are heaped together in one common ruin, forming an indescribable chaos. Were an uninitiated stranger to enter, when the foreman is distributing diminutive fragments of manuscript to the all-absorbing compositors, he would entertain serious doubts as to the possibility of their being moulded within a few hours into a paper, wonderfully free even from errors of punctuation. The foreman referred to is a strict disciplinarian. Silence is rigorously enjoined in the ranks over which he presides. Though his duties are exceedingly onerous, still he has an unaccountable desire to meddle with every other branch of the concern, impressed with the delusion that nothing can go right which he does not overhaul, It is, however, but fair to say, that his sharp eyes occasionally detect serious omissions, and instances of neglect, which are inseparable from newspaper labour; but which, if allowed to escape notice, would sorely test the reader's patience. He has, of course, a high estimate of his mental qualities, and covets the privilege of altering a Times' article or the Queen's speech. In his judgment the latter is a very inferior composition, and with the utmost difficulty he restrains himself from adding two or three touches, so that it may be more in accordance with his ideas of literary elegance. He abounds in obsolete precedents, which are quoted whenever he wants to check what he regards as the ruinous innovations of this restless period of the nineteenth century. Despite these little excusable weaknesses, he is a wonderful man.

At

work night and day, he seems never to seek sleep, and

yet looks as brisk and fresh at noon as if he had taken the "round of the clock." To revert for an instant, before concluding this imperfect sketch, to the reporters, who have many claims to consideration and gratitude, it may not be amiss to inform the fault-finding portion of the community-a legion so ready to bestow advice, that valueless commodity when applied to matters of which they are wholly innocent-of the trying ordeal which these members of the "fourth estate" have to undergo. A metropolitan morning paper, which does not appropriate largely the news supplied by its contemporaries, has at least eight reporters. These gentlemen are mixed up in all sorts of agreeable and disagreeable events, and speedily learn to put the proper estimate on men and manners. Their minds are kept on the stretch and over-wrought for hours during the day, but their hardest work begins after midnight. The ink of their reports is still wet whilst they are being printed for circulation. The egotistical and floundering demagogue is their unrelenting enemy. A man who is proof against the plainest hints that he is tiring out his hearers, and expending uncultivated oratory to no purpose, year after year will expose his unsympathising friends to the infliction of long speeches, which the reporter is compelled to prune and reduce, so as to bring them within the pale of grammatical construction. Then there is the muddy man, whose thoughts are enveloped in an impenetrable mass of inappropriate diction. They have to be interpreted for him, and shorn of empty rubbish. He is likewise unreasonable and unthankful for what is done to enable him to pass muster. Unhappily in Ireland there is, in season and out of season, and notwithstanding the fickle character of our climate, superabundant crops of wild eloquence, in which the tares greatly preponderate. The motto Res non verba is reversed Vox et præterea nihil is indelibly stamped on the brow of the majority of our public speakers. They never think that rather more than two hours are spent in transcribing from notes a speech that would be delivered in from twenty minutes to half an hour. Nearly every person connected with newspapers in these degenerate days of reckless competition, is more or less, subject to occasional petty annoyances, which would suffice to sour the happy disposition of Mark Tapley, who was blessed with the unenviable knack of being jolly under the most depressing circumstances, or disturb the equanimity of Job. A reporter especially, is liable to be transformed into a modern Timon, and often tempted to use the "spade." He finds it impossible to please those with whom he comes into professional contact. Indifferent as he is to the religion, politics, or country of the persons with whom he has to deal, be acts towards all with the utmost impartiality. bigotted partizan or unfair "recording angel" is now seldom to be met with-he is indeed fortunately a rara avis in terris. Yet he is ever in danger of giving unintentional offence, if he should exercise a discretion in separating the grain from the chaff, which in spite of the severest analysis, will sometimes inundate his notes, as he discovers to his horror when the small hours ap

A

proach. Hosts of men are silly enough to think that their effusions should be preserved with as much care, for an admiring posterity, as the soul-stirring eloquence of the orator of ancient Greece. They cannot or will not see why any distinction should be made between Lord Brougham and a green grocer. In their opinion the same stenographic justice should be done to both. But what broad sheet would be tolerated, if the sifting process were to be abolished? If self-styled orators would only keep in view the following aliter reading of the celebrated lines of the Scotch poet:

1 "O wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as reporters see us,"

what benefits would accrue to mankind from a judicious silence? How much less talking for talk sake? What a relief to judges and jurors from the painful necessity of listening for hours together to mere word-spinning? What a saving to the pockets of unfortunate litigants, who are obliged to sit out a protracted trial, conscious that every word spoken in their cause represents so many sterling gold coin of the realm. A concentration of ideas would likewise have the effect of keeping welldisposed congregations awake during the sermon, and might, perhaps, prevent young ladies from knitting at meetings and popular lectures, and attend to what is addressed to them from the platform, either for their instruction or to enlist their sympathies in behalf of the societies they profess to support. With an acquired penetration a reporter can tell in an instant whether a speech has been committed to memory or spoken extempore, and should he venture to ask for the manuscript, which, he feels assured, is cunningly concealed in the gentleman's pocket, the latter smiles at being suspected of such industry, and declares that he had been "quite unexpectedly called on to speak, and was not in the habit of studying his subject." The reporter, of course, does not believe one word of this, and renews his application for the litera scripta. The gentleman cannot withstand the offer of being made to appear at full length in print. He cheerfully promises an effort to transfer his thoughts to paper; and having hastily gone away for that purpose, returns in about forty minutes with a speech which could not have been written by the expertest of penmen in less than from three to four hours!! And what specimens of caligraphy are sometimes handed to him for publicationthey might be aptly compared to a sheet of white paper, which had been hurriedly traversed by a couple of vigorous spiders, previously steeped in blacking. If the Platonic theory, that pleasure is invariably preceded by pain, hold good, what a happy Elysium is in store for the pillars of the public press.

Our present esteemed Viceroy is a finished and classical orator. His beautifully-balanced sentences fall harmoniously on the ear, the matter is just as good as the style, and his speeches are reported con amore, and read with pleasure and advantage. In spite of the unkindly taunts directed against him under the cloak of anonymous writing, he is deservedly popular.

His scholarship is undoubted: his amiability of disposition, courteous demeanour, and genuine desire for the national prosperity and well-being of the country, are assuredly not lost on the impressible, generous, quickwitted, but impulsive people over whom he rules as the representative of a beloved Queen.

Then who does not listen with delight to the more impetuous eloquence of our distinguished countryman, the Right Honorable James Whiteside? Whether in the law courts, the theatre where he won his first laurels, or in the British senate, he no sooner rises than numbers flock together to hear his brilliant addresses, copiously intermixed with flashes of wit and incomparable sarcasm, his great forte. He, too, has had one or two severe critics who have endeavoured to dim the lustre of his fame, but, as in the case of the Earl of Carlisle, the shafts aimed with such damaging intent, have had their venom extracted by the unerring vox populi, and fell harmlessly on the contemplated victims. The Lord Justice of Appeal, the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, the Master of the Rolls, Chief Justice Monahan, Baron Fitzgerald, Mr. Justice Christian, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, the present eloquent and kind-hearted Mr. O'Hagan, her Majesty's Attorney-General for Ireland, and the Solicitor-General, Mr. Lawson, are also to be included among the ornaments of the Irish Bench and Bar, of which Ireland is so justly proud, and whose character for learning was sustained in bygone times by Curran, Plunket, the Pennefathers, O'Connell, Shiel, O'Loghlen, Burton, Smith, and Joy. Some barristers and clergymen have glaring faults in speaking, which injure the cause of those for whom they respectively plead; the former use unnecessary repetitions, and thereby weaken the effect of the argument, and both are too long-winded. The reports which deluge the papers at anniversary religious meetings corroborate those remarks with regard to the latter. Were patriots and ministers of every persuasion to confine themselves to their legitimate calling, and be content to preach peace and good-will towards men, Ireland would progress with still more gigantic strides than those which for the past decade have astonished her best wishers, and continue to puzzle her pretended friends. She is gradually discovering that self-reliance is the only lever by which she can raise herself. In spite of ages of misrule and the hundred obstacles which were thrown in her thorny paths, her sons have ever held a foremost rauk in every post assigned to them. The army recruited in the Emerald Isle a Wellington, a Gough, and others who led her brave soldiers triumphantly under every clime, and against foes worthy of their steel. The Lawrences were admittedly the saviours of India. And conspicuous amongst the governors of that extensive and densely populous country was the brother of the "Iron Duke," the Marquis of Wellesley, whose name shines forth in the history of India. adorned by the philosophic prophetic wisdom of Burke. self-elected censor, the Times,

The senate has been eloquence and almost Our not over-partial, devoted, not many