6 JANUARY 1866, Page 9

What is the superstition which induces the daily papers of

London to publish on the 31st December a history of the year ?

They are very dreary bits of literature, these histories, usually full of inaccuracies, always bald in style, strings of paragraphs connected by no link except the arbitrary one of time? Did any- body ever read one of them through, or meet anybody who had ? Why, then, spoil everybody's breakfast on New Year's Eve by turning a good newspaper into a bad register without an index, and compelling subscribers either to starve or consume food which gives them a mental nausea ? Philosophical history is often bad enough, but leading-article history is intolerable.