13 FEBRUARY 1830, Page 8

• NEWSPAPER MYSTERIES.

Fr is especially unfortunate that scruples of delicacy come Upon news- papers on such occasions as to render them of the very worst effect on the public mind. • "It is whispered that some extraordinary disclosures are about to take place respecting a certain Baronet residing not many miles from Grosvenor Square, and a lady who graces the Regent's Park with her presence." Upon this mysterious allusion, the character of every baronet living within range of Grosvenor Square goes through the investigation of probabilities, and all the ladies of the Regent's Park pass in review order tuiar suspicion. Thus, that two persons may escape exposure for two or three days, a hundred reputations are subjected to a rum- maging of the most unpleasant kind and damaging tendency. It is so —!" "I should not in the least wonder if it prove Mrs. B."

• _Lady Z. is certainly a flirt, and I have seen her with Sir Theophilus A." And so proceeds the hap-hazard detraction. Occasionally the mystery takes a more serious turn of annoyance ; of which we have here an immediate example— "MELANCHOLY EVENT IN HIGH LIFE.

"It is with extreme sorrow that we announce the death of a very amiable nobleman, Lord —, who, in a fit of delirium last night, put a period to his existence at his house, in the neighbourhood of Hanover Square. His Lord- ship had for some days, we understand, suffered great distress of mind on account of a recent occurrence, of a delicate nature, in his family, and to which we can only thus slightly allude." What is the effect of this suppression of the name, which was certain to appear the next day, but for twenty-four hours to affect with anxiety and alarm all persons in the town and the country wholi4dnoble friends residing in the neighbourhood of Hanover Square ? Nay, the foreign mails might carry such an intimation abroad, where the explanation might follow tardily afterwards by later ships, and affection or friend- ship be thus kept in the cruelest suspense. if the allusion is distinct enough to be understood, there can be no use in withholding the name; and if it be not sufficiently distinct, vague apprehensions are excited by the mystery. But in such cases the allusions will never be universally comprehended, and the mock- delicacy has no other effect than that of causing an amount of tempo- rary uneasiness which might be avoided.