Wentworth and his wife were at breakfast, as I have said. London had been disturbed by rumours as to the claim to the titles and estates of the deceased Baronet. Newspapers were not so full of twaddle as they are now; that spawn of the press, the newspaper interviewer, had not as yet sprung into existence. But still then, as now, there was a great deal of unmeaning gossip that did manage to find its way into the columns of the weekly and daily journals. It has ever been so. Apparently, it seems as if it ever will be so. The fashion originated in the servants’ hall. ‘A chambermaid to a lady of my acquaintance,’ writes Dean Swift, ‘when talking with one of her fellow-servants, said: “I hear it is all over London already that I am going to leave my lady.”’ In this respect she resembled the footman who, being newly married, desired his comrade to tell him freely ‘what the town really thought of it.’ From the servants’ hall the habit spread to Grub Street, and thence to the West-End, to become the leading feature in journals only written for men, or gentlemen, or ladies, as circumstances required. We laugh at the old divine who wrote a threepenny pamphlet against France, and who, being in the country, hearing of a French privateer hovering along the coast, fled to town and told his friends that they need not wonder at his haste, which he accounted for from the fact that the King of France, having got intelligence of his whereabouts, had sent a privateer on purpose to carry him away. How ridiculous was good Dr. Gee, Prebendary of Westminster, who wrote a small paper against Popery! Being ordered to travel on the Continent for his health, he disguised his person and assumed another name, as he fancied he would be murdered, or put into the Inquisition. But are we less ridiculous, or rather has not that ridiculous exaggeration of the personal, which is the foundation of newspaper twaddle, become more of a nuisance than ever?