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as in the daily journals there was ampler space and an almost indefinite range of subjects. Nowadays everything must be up to date, for like the Athenians the reading public care for little but to tell or to hear some new thing. What with wars and rumors of wars, the growth of the Empire, the discoveries of science and the importance attached to many imperial and social questions which were formerly practically ignored, it must be admitted there is seldom any lack of novelties. Very possibly the change is for the better, but it neither pays nor pleases the literary man of business. I, moi qui

vous parle, as Thackeray would say, have written a series of articles on illustrious French literati, Dumas, Balzac, Victor Hugo, &c., on famous old contributors to the magazine and never cramped myself. What editor of the day would admit those brilliant and sparkling essays? Then we were content to hide our personality under a bushel, and the leading editors held fast by the anonymous. No men avocated it more strenuously than John Blackwood, Henry Reeve, and Dr. William Smith of the "Quarterly." Certainly it gave the critic and writer a freer hand, for though the judge may be condemned when the guilty is acquitted, as the motto of the "Edinburgh" has it, it is an ungracious task to come down on the shortcomings of a friend or acquaintance when you must sign your name. Then the fashion came in with the new monthlies of attaching names to most of the articles and advertising themselves by pressing men of celebrity into the service. It was all very well up to a certain point, had those gentlemen always bartered the best of their brains for the money, but I recollect Henry Reeve giving his views on the subject and he should have known something about it. He said the editors of the new school paid fancy prices for famous

names, reducing the average of the remuneration to the anonymous, and that so far as intrinsic worth went, they had often most inadequate value for their money. "Look at this," he said, picking up a Review on the table, "here is an article by," and he named one of the greatest of statesmen"which I would not accept for the 'Edinburgh' on any terms." Then the Quarterlies, like the old monthlies, gave themselves over more than now to contemporary literature and were lighter and perhaps not less informing reading. Now the innumerable dailies, weeklies and monthlies have been treading hard on their heels; each has anticipated the other on the books and topics of the hour, and things are stale or half-forgotten when the latest of the periodicals come to treat of them. Then, as when Southey was the "Quarterly's" main support, single books were sent out in parcels to country contributors, and were the subjects of separate notices. Now the articles for the most part are more abstruse, of more enduring value, but inclining to the ponderous, and there are fewer and less profitable opportunities for affiliated professionals.

It might be fancied that with the marvellous increase of the monthlies, the writers of fiction, short stories and light essays have a better chance. As a matter of fact it is quite the reverse, for the crush of contributors has increased out of all proportion. The best established of the magazines may, as they advertise, give conscientious consideration to everything submitted to them; if so, it is greatly to the credit of the editors. I am given to understand by some of those overtaxed gentlemen that packets come in by the dozen every day. Accepted articles and excellent ones may be held over for a year or more, unless the writer has found a peg of the hour to hang them on. With serials, as in the House of

Commons, the block is in full swing. Writers of reputation who have "caught on" have engagements for years in advance. The days of the past are ideal by comparison. When James Payn was editing the "Cornhill," I recollect his telling me that he was often asked by his confrères if he could pass them over an attractive novel. By way of personal reminiscence I may add that I floated my maiden masterpiece in a notable magazine when only two parts were written. What novice could make such a boast now? As regards the delicate but profoundly interesting question of remuneration, I cannot say much from personal knowledge. I do know that some of the older magazines pay as they used to do. But I have heard it hinted that some of recent birth, which have not been floated by millionaires and munificently advertised, remorselessly sweat aspirants who have the honors of the entrée, while other strugglers seldom pay at all, and for the best possible reasons. Much of what I have written is by one of a vanishing clique, and avowedly inspired by selfish regrets. In some respects the public is undoubtedly the gainer by the new system of searching about for sensations. Any quantity of rubbish may be passed through the press, but the aggregate of unsuspected talent which is unearthed in the quest for the novel or sensational is a revelation, like the stores of private art treasures which were revealed by the first Manchester expedition. It is amazing, for example, how kindly cultured soldiers can take to the pen, and how vividly globe-trotting sportsmen can paint scenery and the scenes they have figured in, from the ice-floes of the Arctic to the sands of the Sahara or Soudan. Many of the military articles on the South African war were beyond praise; choke-full of science like the writings of Jomini, eloquent with soldierly knowledge and martial in

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spiration like Napier, we see enacted before our eyes the scenes they dash in with the brush of a Neuville or BerneBellecour. So the wandering sportsman who has been bagging lions by the brace in tropical Somaliland or spearing the walrus off the glaciers of Greenland can hold us breathless when telling of his hardships or hair-breadth escapes, and if he takes an occasional pull at the long bow, that is his own or his editor's lookout. We who only see parades at home, or, feeling the stress of advancing age, confine our shooting attentions to the grouse or the pheasant are not in it with those men. When the blare of the trumpet is sounding to arms, and when every idle Briton of means and spirit is a Marco Polo, our most brilliant lucubrations are returned with thanks or shelved indefinitely by our dearest editorial friends, and we must resign ourselves to reading what others write, reflecting ruefully on the depleted balance at the banker's.

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No one has more cause to lament changes than "Our Own Correspondent." The accredited agent of an influential London journal had a berth that was envied by attachés of legation. He had as little work, more leisure and less responsibility, and was held in wholesome dread by ambassadors and ministers, ungifted with strong wills and master minds. correspondent, whether English or foreign, had a pleasant time of it in such gay capitals as Paris or Vienna, and in cities like Turin, Rome or Athens he was paid to do the dolce far niente voluptuously, with the zest of some added interest in a more or less sensuous clime. In the cycle of revolution things had changed since Crabb Robinson, a pioneer from Printing House Square, had been bucketed from post to pillar between Cadiz and Hamburg, in the days of Berlin decrees and Orders in Council, when Napoleon was autocrat. Mowbray Morris had made

a tour to organize a service and very efficiently it had been done, though the new duties were by no means exacting. The correspondent of to-day sits like his manager or editor between telegraph and telephone, the electric wire in incessant connection with his brain nerves. If he gives himself the briefest leave of absence, it is taken at his peril. An emperor may be assassinated in his absence or a Hôtel de Ville blown up with dynamite. No doubt a competent aide-de-camp will telegraph the bare fact, but his competitors, supplementing rumor with fancy, have been wiring all manner of sensational details. These will be modified of course in subsequent despatches, all of which make excellent "copy," but he has lost credit with his employers which he may never regain. Unless he is devoured with the self-sacrificing zeal which Talleyrand detested, the special wire is his bête noire. As it is engaged, it may as well be employed and notably from a centre like Vienna which is the European sounding-board, but where news of real consequence comes only in spasms. Like the daughters of the horseleech the wire is always craving. In sheer desperation he transmits the momentous intelligence that a Macedonian gensd'arme has got a bullet in his shoulder, or that a venerable matron in the Balkans has blessed her husband with triplets. Yet he suspects that the public would have been well content to wait had either piece of intelligence been delayed for a week.

Thirty or forty years ago I have heard correspondents grumble, though they took both pride and pleasure in their work because they were expected to forward three or four letters in the week. It was merely their façon de grogner. Their well-paid connection with the press scarcely interfered with their other occupations. To take some typical examples. General Eber, the "Times" correspondent at Vienna, was

a member of the Hungarian Parliament and beyond his active attendance at debates in Buda, paid frequent visits to his country constitutents. Evening after evening I have taken the overcrowded tramcar with him, to dine under the shade of the trees at Schönbrunn or some other of the popular restaurants in the enchanting environs of the Kaiserstadt. If care accompanied him on the outing, it had no connection with his journalistic engagements. Abel at Berlin was one of the most accomplished linguists in Europe, and his paper could have found no more efficient representative. When you walked into his room of a morning the floor was strewed with news sheets in all the tongues of the Orient, and he had skimmed or dipped in each. From Tobolsk to Petersburg, from Helsingfors to Windsor, no tremor of the nationalities escaped him, though he gave himself time to think and digest. Yet his correspondence never seriously interfered with his life-work as an enthusiastic philologist and Egyptologist. 'Again there was Butt at Constantinople, practising then in the Courts at Pera, and afterwards a judge of the Admiralty Court in London. Many a jolly voyage I have made with him to Buyukdere on the Bosphorus, or to dinner at Therapia, the summer resort of the legations. And many a rubber we have played of an evening at the Embassy in Pera, where he picked up much matter for the press from such partners as Lord Strangford or Alison, afterwards our Minister at Teheran, both deeply versed in Eastern politics. Paris, under the Second Empire, was a Paradise for the correspondent. Unlike Berlin or Vienna, there he was a persona grata, or at least a man to be considered at the Quai d'Orsay and welcomed in political circles. Yet there, as elsewhere, he could take things easily and the residences of the correspondents were sig

nificant. Hardman of the "Times," for long put up at the Bedford Hotel, a quiet family house, Rue de la Madeleine near the Elysée: Bowes, a veteran on the staff of the "Standard," had at one time his apartment actually beyond the Arc de Triomphe. Bingham who was in daily communication with the "Pall Mall" looked down the Champs Elysées from his balconies in the Rue de Tilsit, the receptacles, by the way, of sundry shells from the beleaguring batteries during the sieges. He would stroll eastwards in course of the afternoon, drop in at the Cercle to hear what was going on, skim the journals and have some chat with his French friends, and be found seated at the hour of absinthe, which he never tasted, at the Café Cardinal, where he kept a portfolio and borrowed an inkbottle. The correspondents of journals which backed the Imperial policy had warm welcome at the Tuileries and in courtly circles. Felix Whitehurst, whose lively and gossipy letters were the delight of readers of the "Daily Telegraph," was the family friend of the head of the Imperial House. On one occasion two young American beauties said to him at an al fresco fête, "How we should love to be presented to the Emperor!" "Nothing easier," was the ready answer, and after a word apart, the coveted presentation came off in due form. The war and the Commune dynamited that elysium, and thenceforth everything was changed. There was increasing ferment in the Government offices in Paris: Parliament was sitting on explosives at Versailles and no correspondent could be in two places at once. Oliphant quartered in the Champs Elysées was working a pair of horses to death, while de Blowitz, then on his promotion, playing jackal at Versailles to the lion, was taking off each gesture of the excited orators and stenographing the speeches on an incomparable memory.

The mention of Whitehurst reminds me of his confrère Sala, who probably did more than any man to make the future of the "Telegraph" under the proprietary who had bought a derelict for a bagatelle. Sala was the ideal roving correspondent; a born cosmopolitan with a considerable gift of tongues, his memory was as well stocked with miscellaneous matter as the commonplace notebooks he indefatigably filed or any dry goods store in the America from which his most notable letters were written. Objectionable mannerisms notwithstanding, he often suggests the fanciful but fairly well informed exuberance of Dumas in the "Impressions de Voyage." He could write about anything, from canvasback ducks and terrapin turtle to the chances for the Presidential chair, but he was at his best when discoursing upon nothing. He luxuriated in the best hotels-like Dumas he was a gourmet-he laid his plans as it pleased him, and intent on effort reeled off "copy" by the column, to be transmuted into sovereigns. There seems to be no space now, and indeed little demand from readers, for that easy rambling style of letters with little purpose and less of a backbone, yet richly embroidered with nothing in particular. was both agreeable and lucrative work. Expenses paid and with the journal at your back to introduce you anywhere, and to take the snub if you were rebuffed, if not actually a chartered libertine at least you were commissioned with a wide discretion. You might have the luck to come across a statesman in confidential mood at Kissingen or Bad Gastein which was good for your paper, or make friends with a magnate who offered sport of some sort, which was good for yourself. At any rate you knew you were out foraging in the dead season and the big gooseberries and the sea-serpent had not a chance with your contributions.

That

Nowadays we are in a more purposelike age: like Mr. Gradgrind what we want is facts. En revanche, when there is a suspicion of "anything being up," the special correspondents are sent forth in shoals, and no self-respecting organ, whether metropolitan or provincial, is without its emissary. With reputations either to maintain or to make, with the tremor of the telegraph. wires working them into chronic fever, they are convulsively snatching at rumors or scrambling for scraps of news, like the carp crowding to the bread tossed from the Kursaal bridge at Wiesbaden. Russia in revolution was overrun the other day, and all you could say with confidence of the messages was that they would pretty certainly be contradicted next morning. The gentlemen engaged were not to blame: they knew that the public wanted sensation which it was their business to supply. So anony mous old diplomats and chiefs of secret societies were buttonholed and pressed into the service. Russians of all ranks and shades of opinion would seem to have been loquacious, but the Japanese took a short method with their visitors, even when they came from allied or friendly powers and simply put the muzzle on.

The war correspondent is notably the victim of the cycles. He was, he is, but it seems likely that he may cease to be. The father of the guild is happily still to the fore, and he can look back on very many changes. Sir William Russell's long experience of wars has bred a horror of them, though, as he once told Mr. Gladstone in answer to a question, there is one thing more deplorable and that is a dishonorable peace. From the selfish point of view the first of the war correspondents might have rejoiced like Job's war horse in scenting the battle from afar; it gave them the opportunities which brought fame and fortune. The in

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fluence which gave them free passes to the front and ensured civility everywhere was founded on fear as much as favor: commanders and their staffs might regard them as nuisances, but they lived in dread of the London letter which was transferred and scattered broadcast by the provincial press. The ideal correspondent was a good fellow, patient in tribulation, overflowing with fun and replete with anecdote, a welcome guest at mess or bivouac. deeper he dipped his pen in vinegar, so long as he stuck to facts, the better he was liked, for in their degree captains and subalterns love to grumble at their superiors as much as do the rank and file. Even when modest, as he usually was in touching on his personal experiences, he became a personality and was the object of general attentions. He was a novel type, who courted the hazards of war, with no hope of promotion or decoration. Once and many a time in discharge of their duty those men had well earned the Victoria Cross which was never to come their way. After all, they had the honor and glory which was as good. They did wonderful work and their feats won them fame at home, as they were discussed and envied over many a camp fire. The journal that had been fortunate in retaining them owed them a great debt of gratitude. Archibald Forbes, for instance, picked up almost at random in Bouverie Street and appropriated at once by that very capable manager Sir J. Robinson, revived the failing fortunes of the "Daily News" of the day. The memorable message from Metz, which he carried himself on a jaded horse over heavy roads to a Luxembourg postoffice, was an example of his promptitude and of his professional pluck. He got the start of his rivals by the native shrewdness which assured him that a floating rumor was firm fact. Another memorable feat in the records of the

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