A BLACK boy, an Indian, about thirteen years old, run away the 8th instant from Putney, with a collar about his neck with this inscription: ‘The Lady Bromfield’s black in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’ Whoever brings him to Sir Edward Bromfield’s at Putney shall have a guinea reward. It seems hardly possible that a poor little wretch like this would have run away--for whither could he run with any hope of securing his freedom?--unless he had been unkindly treated. There is little doubt--though we are, through the medium of the pictures of this and a later time, in the habit of regarding the dark-faced, white-turbaned, and white-toothed slaves as personifications of that happiness which is denied to higher intellects and fairer fortunes--that often they were the victims of intense cruelty, and now and then of that worst of all despotisms, the tyranny of an ill-natured and peevish woman. We now come upon an advertisement, which shows something of the desire that was always felt by residents in the country for the least scintillations of news; and the concoctor of the notice seems fully aware of this desire, as well as possessed of a plan by means of which he may make it a source of profit to himself. It occurs in a copy of the _Flying Post_ of the year 1694:-- IF any Gentleman has a mind to oblige his country friend or correspondent, with an account of Public affairs he may have it for twopence of J. Salusbury at the Rising Sun in Cornhill, on a sheet of fine paper, half of which being blank, he may thereon write his own private business or the material news of the day.