The new conditions under which the newspaper exists, and the new methods introduced by its conductors, were foreordained, though not foreseen, when Mr. Forster’s Education Bill became law, and the School Board education was offered to the youth of merry England. Paterfamilias bought his newspaper in the dark ages before Forster. The generations that developed under Forster’s Act demanded newspapers of their own, but they were not prepared to pay a penny for them. And, lo! the halfpenny Press arose at his bidding—the bidding of the Board School boy and the bicycle boy—and remaineth with us even unto this day. Clearly, the halfpenny paper could only afford half the space to what is known as “original matter” that was accorded by its penny rival. Parliamentary and law reports were made taboo. The “snippet” habit was inoculated on to the vile body of the daily Press from virus obtained from the “Bits” papers. And so eager was the bicycle boy to swallow his tabloided doses of news that he never discovered the inroads gradually made by the advertiser on the spaces originally devoted to reading matter. Nay, so contented was he with the latest method of presenting the news of the day, that he did not even mind when further encroachments were made on his news columns, and a daily portion of the broadsheet was filched for the presentation of a solid chunk of fifth-rate fiction. In his present temper the bicycle boy appears ready to stand almost _anything_! Meanwhile, and in face of this determined and successful competition on the part of the halfpenny papers, what has been the policy of the penny news-sheets? They have gone on enlarging their borders, increasing their bulk, and adding to their weight—adding to their weight, I mean, in the literal, and not in the figurative, acceptation of that phrase. The Parliamentary and law reports are more formidable in their length and particularity than ever. Book-reviewing is carried on to an extent hitherto only demanded in a literary weekly; essays on engineering, gardening, motoring, fishing, have regular days devoted to them. The advertisers are no longer satisfied with a modicum of space. The mural poster has been transferred to the pages of the penny morning paper. Oxbridge’s full pages have become an expected item in the day’s entertainment, and Coco’s illustrations of his physical perfections have become an integral feature of our daily portion. The result is that the penny paper has grown to an unwieldy bulk, awkward to handle, impossible to turn over in a train or in the open, and containing, in proportion to the small ha’pennyworth of what one does want, an intolerable deal of what one does not, and is never likely to, want.