“So it was,” replied the advertising agent: “but the name of Charles Dickens was rather damnatory than useful to a newspaper-speculation. Every one must admit that _Boz_ is a great novelist--a very great novelist indeed--the Fielding of his age; but he is totally incapable of writing for a newspaper. The proprietors of the _News_ made a tremendous splash with his name; but they only created a quagmire for themselves to flounder in. When their paper was first coming out, every body thought it was to do wonders. The _Times_ was to lose half its subscribers; and the _Chronicle_ was to be ruined altogether. But, alas! never did so labouring a mountain produce such a contemptible mouse; and people began to fancy that the wags engaged on _Punch_ had started the _Daily News_ as a grand parody on the newspaper press. The leaders were rubbish--the criticisms of new works, mere nonsense--the dramatic reviews, utter balderdash. It however seems that in the lowest depths there is a deeper still even with the bathos of journalists; for when the _News_ tumbled down (which it soon did) to a two-penny halfpenny print, the rubbish, the nonsense, and the balderdash became more astounding still. There is a young man named Bilk who does the ‘_moral department_’ of the paper; and he is the most grovelling ass that ever was created. He undertakes to review a whole batch of cheap publications in a lump; but what he calls _reviewing_ is nothing else than _abusing_ the works with an insolence so cool, and a rashness so indiscriminate that he must be as consummate a coxcomb as he is an unprincipled ruffian. The _News_ affects a moral tone, and entrusts its conscience to this half-buffoon--half-barbarian, in the hope that the lucubrations of the ungrammatical scribe may acquire for it the reputation of a serious, sober, and sedate journal. The despicable being to whom I allude is the son of the proprietor of the _Assinœum_--a paper which Bulwer mauled and exposed so terribly in one of his admirable novels many years ago. The articles in the _Assinœum_ may be termed TWADDLE UPON STILTS----” “You are really very inveterate in your denunciations of these prints,” observed Mr. Styles, who having an hour to spare, did not experience any impatience in listening to the agent’s remarks.