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 a calling in London, as it is now among the natives of India. The newswriter rambled from coffee-room to coffee - room, collecting reports, squeezed himself into the Sessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an interesting trial, nay, perhaps obtained admission to the gallery ofWhitehall, and noticed how the King and Duke looked. In this way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to enlighten some country town or some bench of rustic magistrates.” 10

In Edinburgh news-letters were prepared by writers hired by

groups of country magnates to send them weekly intelligence of the capital, “ just as the coffee -houses of the city undertook to provide news-letters from the southern metropolis, which were

read immediately on the arrival of the mails. These letters passed from hand to hand in the country districts and circulated among the houses of the gentry. Their lives were extended and their usefulness increased by judicious copying. They ceased only when newspapers had obtained such a hold upon the community as made them no longer necessary.” 11

As early as 1652 the town council of Glasgow had a regular correspondent in Edinburgh and the service was kept for nearly fifty years; other cities had similar correspondents in the northern capital.12

In its "paper criers" or "caddies” Scotland made connection with the newsmongers of Paris. "We sometimes wonder,” says Robert Chambers, “ how our ancestors did without newspapers. We do not reflect on the living vehicles of news which then

10 T. B. Macaulay, History of England, I, chap. III. 11 W. J. Couper, The Edinburgh Periodical Press, I , 71– 72. 12 Couper states that a minute of the town council of Glasgow, September 2, 1681, authorized the payment to the Provost of " ten marks which he gave Donald McKay for half a barrel of herring which was promised him for sending the news-letter and gazettes extraordinary quhilk half barrell

of herring is ordained to be given yeerly for that end." Ib., p . 73, Note.