EXTRACTS FROM THE COMIC HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 155, 23 January 1847, Page 4

EXTRACTS FROM THE COMIC HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

The best materials for getting at the early history of a. country are its coins, its architecture, and its manners. The Britons, however, had not yet converted the Britannia metal — for which their valour always made them conspicuous — into coins, while their architecture, to judge from the Druidical remains, was of the wicket style, consisting of two or three stones stuck upright in the earth, with another stone laid at the top of them; after the fashion with which alllovers of the game of cricket are of course familiar. As this is the only architectural assistance we are likely to obtain, we decline entering upon the subject through such a gate ; or, to use an expression analogous to the pastime to which we have referred, we refuse to take our innings at such a wicket. We need hardly add, that in looking to the manners of our ancestors for enlightenment, we look utterly in vain, for there is no Druidical Chesterfield to afford us any information upon the etiquette of that distant period. There is every reason to believe that our forefathers lived in an exceedingly rude state ; and it is therefore perhaps as well that their manners — or rather their want of manners — should be buried in oblivion.

Derivation of Britannia. — The name of our country — Britannia — has also been the subject of ingenious speculation among the antiquarians. To sum up all their conjectures into one of our own, we think they have succeeded in dissolving the word Britannia into Brit, or Brick, and tan, which would seem to imply that the natives always behayed like bricks in tanning their enemies. The suggestion that the syllable tan, means tin, and that Britannia is synonymous with tin land, appears to be rather a modern notion, for it is only in later ages that Britannia has become emphatically the land of tin, or the country for making money. The first inhabitants of the island lived by pasture, and not by trade. They as yet knew

nothing of the till, but supported themselves by tillage. Their dress was picturesque rather than elegant. A book of truly British fashions would be a great curiosity in the present day, and we regret that we have no Petit Courier dcs Druides, or Celtic Belle Assemblies to furnish .figurines of the costume of the period. -Skins, however, were much worn, for morning as well as for evening dress.; and it is probable that even at that early age ingenuity may have been exercised to suggest new patterns for cow cloaks and other varieties of the then prevailing articles of the wardrobe. The Saxons. — In obedience to cu^om, the etymologists have been busy with the word Saxon, which they have derived from seam, a sword, and we are left to draw the inference that the Saxons were very sharp blades a presumption that is fully sustained by their fierce nod warlike .character. Their chief weapons were a battleaxe and a hammer, in the use of which they were so adroit that they could always hit the right nail on the head, when occasion required. Their shipping had been formerly exceedingly crazy, and indeed the crews must have been crazy to have trusted themselves in such fragile vessels. The bottoms of the boats were of very light timber, and the sides consisted of wicker, so that the fleet must have combined the strength of the washing-tub with the elegant lightness.af the clothes' basket. Like their neighbours the wise men of Gotham, or Gotha, who went to sea in a bowl, the Saxons had not scrupled to commit themselves to the mercy of the waves, in these unsubstantial cockle-shells. The boatbuilders, however, took soon rapid strides, and improved their craft by mechanical cunning.

Advice to the Philanthropists. — What if some dozen of Societies, now ready to tear each other in pieces from sheer excess of Christian zeal, were to lump their activity and intentions into a great Metropolitan Social Improvement Union, to go on step by step with the Metropolitan Buildings' Improvement Commissioners 1 The latter pull down the hovels of the poor to build up houses for the respectable ; why should not the proposed Society set to work to build up comfortable dwellings for the wretched who are thus displaced ? What if, abandoning for a while their exclusive faith in tracts, they were to throw theii energies into baths and wash-houses, and prepare the human vessel for receiving the purified contents they wish to pour into it ? The zealous for Christian education might combine to supersede those present unsatisfactory schoolmasters, the prison and the gallows. Saffron Hill and the Rookery lie nearer home than Caffraria and the Marquesas Islands. The missionaries to the savage and heathen districts of London would not have iar to travel, and, short of cannibalism, would meet with every variety of evil habit to amend, and every degree of ignorance to enlighten. They would have abundance of discouragement, and enough of disappointment to satisfy the zeal of a St. Vincent, St. Paul, or a Henry Martyn. If not roasted at the stake, they would be roasted in slang, and the progress of their labours would be calculable by something more trustworthy than missionary letters, and marked by more cheering results than Masbeboo's giving up his -taste for gold, or Rauparaha's solemnly putting away eleven of his twelve wives. We throw out these hints to the May-meetings in the best spirit of co-operation, and remain, their brother in all good works, though they won't own him so, Punch.

British Periodical Literature. — The most remarkable characteristic of the press of this country is its periodical literature. Looking back to the first half century of printing, we see Guttenberg and his successors slowly producing a few costly books, for which they had great difficulty in finding purchasers. We think that it might be asserted, without exaggeration, that the periodical works issued in Great Britain during one year comprise more sheets than all the books printed in Europe from the period of Guttenberg's discovery to the year 1500. The number of weekly periodical works (not newspapers') issued in London on Saturday, May 4, 1844, was about sixty. Of these the weekly sale of * Chambers's Journal,' the * Penny Magazine,' the ' Saturday Magazine,' the * Mirror,' the * Mechanics' Magazine,' the * Athenaeum,' the * Literary Gazette,' the * Lancet,' the ' Church of England Magazine, 1 * Punch,' and of several others of the more important, amounts to little less than 500,000 copies, or about fifteen millions annually. The greater number of these are devoted to the supply of persons who have only a very small sum to expend weekly upon their home reading. They are not adapted to the principle of association in book-clubs. They are taken home, read, laid aside, perhaps destroyed and sometimes, we trust, preserved and bound. With few exceptions, they are inocuous. The love of excitement is perhaps

too much cultivated, but, on the whole, we have no hesitation in affirming that they have superseded much that was positively injurious in the cheaper literature. Of the weekly publications, independent of the sale of many of them in monthly parts, we may fairly estimate that the annual returns are little short of £100,000. Themonthly issue of periodical literature from London is unequalled by any similar commercial operation in Europe. 227 monthly periodical work 3 were sent out on the last day of May, 1844, to every corner of the United Kingdom, from Paternoster How. There are also 38 periodical works published quarterly : making a total of 265. A bookseller, who has been many years conversant with the industry of the great literary hive of London on Magazine-day, has favoured us with the following computations, which we have every reason to believe perfectly accurate :—: — The periodical works sold on the last day of the month amount to 500,000 copies. The amount of cash expended in the purchase of these 500,000 copies is £25,000. The parcels dispatched into the country, of which very few remain over the day, are 2000. The -annual returns of periodical works, according to our estimate, amount to £300,000. Mr* M'Culloch estimates them at £264,000. The number of newspapers published in the United Kingdom, in the year 1843, the returns of which can be obtained with the greatest accuracy through the Stamp Office, was 447. The stamps consumed by them in that year were 60,592,001. Their proportions are as follows,: — 1843. 79 London newspapers. . 31,692,092 212 English provincial . . 17,058,056 8 Welsh 339,500 '.69 Scotch 5,027,589 19 Irish 6,474,764 447 60,592,001

The average price of these papers is, as near as may be, fivepence ; -so that the sum annually expended in newspapers is about £1,250,000. The quantity of paper required for the annual supply of these newspapers is 121,184 reams, some of which paper is of an enormous size. In a petition to the pope in 1471, from Sweynheim and Pannartz, printers at Rome, they bitterly complain of the want of demand for their books, their stock amounting to 12,000 volumes.; and they say, " You will admire how and where we could procure a sufficient quantity of paper, or even rags, for such a number of volumes." About 1200 reams of paper would have produced all the poor printers' stock. Such are the changes of four centuries.

The literary returns of the United Kingdom, in 1743, were unquestionably little more than £100,000 per annum. What has multiplied them twenty-fold ? Is it the contraction or the widening of the market — the exclusion or the diffusion of knowledge ? The whole course of our literature has been that of a gradual and certain spread from the few to the many — from a luxury to a necessary — as much so as the spread of the cotton or the silk trade* Henry VIII. paid 12s. a yard for a silk gown for Anne Boleyn — a sum equal to five guineas a yard of our day. Upon whom do the silk-mercers now rely — upon the few Anne Boleyns, or the thousands who can buy a silk gown at half-a-crown a yard ? The Printing Machine has done for the commerce of literature what the mule and the Jacquard loom have done for the commerce of silk. It has made literature accessible to all. — Knight's Lift of Caxton.

ew books and reprints .... Weekly publications not new - £435,600 papers [onthly publications 100,000 300,000 ewspapers 1,250,000 £2,085,600

We recapitulate these estimated annual returns of the commerce of the press z —