Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/76

6 NOTES BY THE WAY. being ultimately given up, from lost circulation and impaired influence. Sir Richard Steele's words, quoted by your correspondent, I think confirm this impression. With regard to the designation "Addison's Spectator," I did not use the term in the sense of ownership, but simply employed the usual style by which it is now known. Addison wrote the first number, which appeared March 1, 1711; Sir Richard Steele the last, Dec. 6, 1712.

While I am writing let me mention a curious newspaper issued in London more than forty years ago. The proprietor of a projected evening paper, being desirous of making the public acquainted with its size and form and price, adopted, in order to avoid the cost of the fourpenny impressed stamp, the expedient of fining his specimen number with made-up leaders, made-up news, made-up intelligence and made-up occurrences. Of this dummy newspaper a considerable number of copies were issued. This fourpenny stamp did not of itself, at one period, afford postal privileges; it was necessary that every "cover" in which a newspaper was enclosed should be franked. The cover with which I am most familiar bore the frank "Earl Grey." This system of franking was discontinued about the year 1828. I do not know the date of its commencement. The permissive impressed stamp upon newspapers was abolished the 1st of October, 1870. .

A NOTE FOB MR. RIMMEL.

In the year 1712 advertisements for Addison and Steele's Spectator were taken in by "Charles Lillie, Perfumer, at the corner of Beauford Buildings in the Strand." Mr. Rimmel's predecessor, 160 years ago, therefore, took in advertisements; his modern successor, however, as is well known, sends them out. .

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SUNDAY NEWSPAPERS.

The change of day of publication in repeated instances, from the Sunday to the Saturday, of the then long-established Sunday papers, was made about fifty years ago, and was consequent upon the alteration of the day for the issue of The London Gazette, the Sunday papers giving the list of bankrupts from the Gazette. The change was made by Government, at the instance of the newsvendors, for the purpose of saving Sunday labour. The Observer, established in 1791, is the only paper published now exclusively on Sunday. .