The _Times_ opened the ball on the 15th of November by inserting a paragraph, “Under the Clock”: “[hand]_We are under the necessity of requesting our Correspondents and Advertisers not to be late in their communications, if intended for the next day’s publication; as the extraordinary Sale of THE TIMES, which is decidedly superior to that of every other Morning Paper, compels us to go to press at a very early hour._” The _Morning Post_, November 17th (which number is unfortunately missing in the British Museum file), challenged the statement—to which the _Times_ replied on the 18th: “_This declaration of our Sale, a Morning Paper of yesterday has thought proper to contradict, and boldly claims the superiority. We have only to say on the subject, that, if the Paper will give an attested account of its daily Sale for the last two Months, we will willingly publish it._” And now the strife was waxing hot, for the _Morning Post_ on the 21st of November wrote: “We admit the sale of his Paper may, _for the present_, be many hundreds beyond any other, except the _MORNING POST_, the decided superiority of which, we trust, he will no longer affect to dispute.... We pledge ourselves to PROVE that the regular sale of the _MORNING POST_ is little short of a thousand per day superior to that of his paper.” Of course the _Times_, of the 22nd of November, calls this a preposterous boast, and wishes statistics for the last two months. Thus goaded, the _Morning Post_, of the 24th of November, issued affidavits from its printers and publisher, that its circulation, even at that dead season, was upwards of 4,000 daily, and that during the sitting of Parliament it reached, and exceeded 5,000, the editor remarking: “What is meant by regular Sale, is the Number which is daily served to SUBSCRIBERS.... If those who, by the Low Expedient of selling their Papers by the noisy nuisance of Horn Boys, take into their accounts the extra Papers so sold, it is not for us to follow so unworthy an example; to such means the _MORNING POST_ never has recourse.” The _Times_, November 25th, has the last of this wordy warfare, declaring that its circulation sometimes reached 7,000 or 8,000 a day: and I should not have introduced this episode, had it not have given such a perfect insight into the working of the press of that date, which would have been unobtainable but for this quarrel. The British Museum then stood where now it does, only Montague House, in which its treasures were then enshrined, was totally unfitted for their reception—for instance, a collection of Egyptian antiquities were kept in two sheds in the courtyard. The whole of the antiquities, and rarities, were in sad want of arrangement, and classification, and as many impediments, as possible, were placed in the way of visitors.