"A TUMPER i"
"In the balcony which o'erhangs the stage, I've seen one wench two 'prentices engage: This half a-crown doth in his fingers hold, That just lets peep a little bit of gold. " Miss the half guinea wisely dotb,..purloin, And scorns the bigger and the baser coin."—Tom Trtu Mn.
Somn French philosophers contended that Mont Blanc had in- creased, was increasing, and would increase to such a degree, that in progress of time this globe would become a mere appendage to it. We should like to know what conclusion these sages would have drawn from the growth of modern newspapers. The world will surely soon become too small for them. Already they swallow up its affairs in a broad page, and editors must, at no very distant day, weep for other worlds to write about. The time was when the Times was about the Size of the present Courier, and then ac- counted a Brobdignag paper; the Chronicle was yet smaller; and both were for the most part printed in the large type. As journals had not then a volume to say, it was necessary to be brief, piquant, and pointed. The epigram of that period did the office of the "leader,;' of our day. But now how are things changed! 'What a sight it is to see a modern man, W.os neolv; itc‘s engaged in a wrestle with the proportions of a double Herald, and vain strug- gling to compel its expanse to some manipulable form ! Unless he be first file in the Grenadier Horse Guards, it is not in the compass of his arms to unfold the sheet ; and with mighty toil, and the sweat of his brow, he bundles the crisp, crackling, and reluctant paper into a size manageable to the hand, and not too alax1Ping to the eye. When, however, he has arrived at the foot of his thus contrived bounds, recommences the agony of discovering the con- tinuation, arid Making as many more folds as the Pythian serpent. There are individuals who go leisurely through this immense task, Which would have put Hercules at his wits end ; and who, after having aehieved it within the twenty-four hours, and read from the date to the high-water at London Bridge, quietly observe that "there is not an acre of news in the paper." Others, however, are obliged to content themselves with a few roods ; and we know a professional gentleman who says he never allows himself more than a perch of leading article, and a few paces of chit-chat.
But the evil is a growing one, and we shall soon read news- papers as Gulliver read books in the Brobdignag library, with the aid of a ladder to pass from the top of the page to the bottom. During the last week, many quidnuncs lost themselves in the Catholic ''debate, and were benighted and nearly starved to death before they threaded the maze and arrived at the adjournment. These expanses, indeed, when obscured by mists of words, are highly dangerous to that valuable class of society the " constant readers."
In about a year from this day, considering the progress of im- provement, we calculate on seeing a mass of paper of about the size of the .Statutes at Large laid on the breakfast-table.
Already one of our contemporaries (the Atlas) counts his recom- mendations in SQUARE FEET. Alas ! there was a time when the hands in a newspaper were deemed the main point, but now it is the feet. We used to pique ourselves on the right line, but all that is changed; and now they trade on the square. The concentrated point is rejected, and superseded by the infinite series. "We are It giantess," complacently quothGlumdalea ; and here is the pro- spectus of our vast quondam Queen's pretension of proportions. Having promised to double itself on the 22nd of March, our ex- pansive contemporary says,
" Considered in a literary point of view, this gigantic sheet will be parti- cularly -worthy of attention, (nit will contain the greatest mass of matter that has ever issued from the press in the newspaper form; while, as an extraordinary mechanical production, it will considerably exceed any publication recorded in the annals of printing. The machines through which the impression must be accomplished are commensurate to the de- sign, being the largest in the world ; and the sheet will be of greater dimen- sions than the process of' printing has yet been applied to. Scientific men will preserve it as a curiosity ; it will he four times the size of any con- temporary journal, and will present a surface of nearly
FORT'E' SQUARM =MT, folded up into thirty tsvem quarto-sized pages, containing ninety-six co- lumns of news—political, miscellaneous, literary, and 'S'cientitic. The mere amount of matter thus embraced will equal the contents of THREE ORDINARY OCTAVO VOLUMES."
Alaek, ! what an age of steam, cylinders, and vapour, is
this ! Time was when men were the boast of literary journals ; but now they pride themselves on their machines, and trust to them for making a great impression on the public. " That the sheet will be of greater dimensions than the pi ecess of printing has yet been applied to," may be true ; but for the process of sleeping, we conceive that expanse of sheet has always been in use. litIRKE asserts that size is a cause of the sublime; and another critic, no less than Tatty Lumphin, would, according to his rules of taste, prefer our " vast queen" to all rivals. When llastings praises cousin Con,—who may represent, on this occasion, our modest SPECTATOR, Tony objects,—" Bandbox! She's all a made lip thing man.—Ali, could you but see Bet Bouncer of these parts, you might then talk of beauty. Ecod! she has two eyes as black as sloes, and cheeks as broad and red us a pulpit cushion. SHE 'WOULD MAKE TWO OF SHE !"
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