THE LOCAL PAPER.

NriTHEN a wise man goes to stay in the country he asks for the local paper. He knows that there, as no- 'where else, he will obtain a knowledge of men and things, or rather of British men and British things. We can easily understand a historian of his own age exclaiming " Let who will read the Parliamentary debates as long as I can get the local paper." The London daily papers, and even the great provincial dailies, are far too full of the dread abstractions of la haute politique to care what is being done by the mere man in the street. It is only when we come to the local paper that we can feel the real pulse of the nation. For the man who knows how to read and where, the heart of the local paper still beats against its side. It is there that we can learn what makes an Englishman happy and keeps him so, what ruins cities or rune up the rates. The London daily paper tells one what a set of highly cultivated gentlemen at large salaries, sitting in luxurious offices in Fleet Street, think about the affairs of nations and the ways of life. The local paper tells us, if not directly yet inferentially, how the ordinary man thinks, moves, speaks, and has his being. In the reports of rural vestries, inquests, meetings of creditors, and cricket or Ancient Order of Dromedaries' dinners, we see the plain English citizen in his habit as he lives,—can " learn his great language and catch his clear accent ; " and if we like, "make him our pattern to live and to die." There is no better way of seeing life steadily and seeing it whole than to read down the columns of "District News." There we hear how, while Peddlington was having a penny-reading with the village Christy Minstrel troop harmoniously disposed between the Vicar and the local Baptist Minister,—the Chairman of the Burial Board pre- siding at the harmonium as accompanist,' Great Hatcham was experiencing a mysterious affair in connection with the late Churchwarden,' and Snodley-on-the-Hill was in the throes of 'a tragic contretemps between two ladies, of whom one now lies in the Cottage Hospital, while the survivor has disappeared in spite of a warrant having been issued at the initiative of P.C. Gnbbine, whose promptness and vigilance during the whole affair has been much commented on.' It wants, indeed, but a very little practice to get the habit of drawing from the local paper a whole series of village and country-town portraits, so exactly, if so unconsciously, are they transferred to its pages by the local reporters.

If any proof were wanted of the fact that the local paper really shows the true England and the true Englishman, it is to be found in the extraordinary resemblance between Shake- speare and any small country journal. The remark may seem strange and difficult to justify, but we speak advisedly. On every page of the local paper we find something which reminds ris of Dogberry and Verges, Justice Shallow, Goodman Dull, Launce, and a host of other hard-headed countrymen. Of course, Dogberry and Dull now wear broadcloth instead of mediaeval gowns or clumsy doublet and hose, but in the local paper they are drawn to the life. Shakespeare, as Mr. Bagehot points out in his delightful essay, knew well, and had the pro- foundest possible sympathy for, the plain man. He did not merely mock him, but rather presented him to our eyes with a laugh, which gives more than half our sympathy to the side of the plain man. It is as if the poet said Yes, we will laugh, for laughter is good, but remember that this same " Goodman Dull" is a far better fellow in reality than all these princelings and poets and fribbles.' Shakespeare knew, in fact, that life was more than literature, more really interesting, as also more permanent and more satisfying. When one reads the report in the local paper of how Mr. Perrywinkle Jones lectured in the Peddlington Town Hall on " The Theory of .zEsthetics," the Mayor in the chair,' and how the Mayor moved the vote of thanks to the lecturer without a speech,' one is irresistibly reminded of the immortal conversation in Love's Labour Lost : "Holofernes. Via, Goodman Dull, thou hast spoken no word all this while.

Did/. Nor understood none either, sir."

There never yet was an inquest fully reported in a local paper which did not contain whole "chunks" of Dogberry. Again, if by chance the squire's speech at a flower-show is reported by an amateur—i.e., well and truly, and not altered and toned down by the professional shorthand writer—we feel ourselves at once

in the presence of Justice Shallow and all his reminiscences. When, again, the local paper gives us a really verbatim report of a speech made by a Radical stump-orator, how strong an echo do we get of the great political argument in Henry VI. Take the following. It is a little simpler and

cruder than what we hear to-day, but otherwise the sentiment and the logic are the same :-

" Geo. I toll thee, Jack Cade the clothier means to dress the Commonwealth, and turn it, and set a new nap on it.

John. So he had need, for 'tis threadbare. Well, I say it was never a merry world in England since gentlemen came up.

Geo. 0 miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in handycrafts- men.

John. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons. Geo. Nay more : the king's council are no good workmen.

John. True ; and yet it is said, Labour in thy vocation ; which is as much as to say, as let the magistrates be labouring men, and

therefore should we be magistrates.

Geo. Thou haat hit it, for there is no better sign of a brave mind than a bard hand."

Take, again, the confused arguments as to men's rights, and as to the proper kind of testimony for proving this or that, which so often crop up in the correspondence columns of the local paper. Shakespeare had them in black and white long before the Claimant set so many good people arguing that whether he was Orton or Tichborne, or whoever he was, he

ought not to be kept out of his rights. Look at the argument between Stafford and Cade in Henry VI. The way in which the old saw and the bricks in the chimney are taken as proofs

breathes the very spirit of the correspondence one often sees in the local paper :—

"Stafford. Ay, sir.

Cade. By her be had two children at one birth.

Staff. That's false.

Cade. Ay, there's the question ; but, I say, 'tis true t

The elder of them, being put to nurse, Was by a beggar-woman stol'n away : And, ignorant of his birth and parentage, Became a bricklayer, when he came to ago ; His son am I; deny it, if you can.

Dick. Nay, too true ; therefore he shall be king. Smith. Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it ; therefore, deny it not."

In addition to showing us men and things as they really are, or seem to be, to the mass of Englishmen, the local paper lets us see what are the subjects which really interest the world at large. There we can see what Smith, Jones, and Brown really like to hear about,—for remember it is the local paper which is thumbed and hoarded and read, and not the London daily with its tedious high politics and mountains of foreign news. Practically, the local news is all Court Circular, though not, of course, the Court Circular of the Queen, but of our true Sovereign, the Democracy. The local paper chronicles his doings in the village and in the town with

perfect accuracy. Bnt after all, though, like Dogberry, the British Democracy can be "as tedious as a King," he is an excellent Sovereign. He is sane and wholesome, if a little muddleheaded, and even when he is most garrulous there is a latent shrewdness in his malapropian talk which is quite de- lightful. In conclusion, we would strongly advise our readers to study specially next week's local paper, for it will contain

the reports of the Easter Vestries,—meetings at which, throughout the country, Dogberry and Verges hold high carnival, and Goodman Dull and Justice Shallow are not merely as tedious as Kings, but as long-winded as Presidents and Premiers. There they may find things even more quaint and amusing than the last two flowers culled by the present writer,—one the headline " Drainage Scheme Looming," and the other the solemn announcement that " the New Burial Ground is in excellent condition,"—an invitation to the grave which is almost too attractive.