DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

( 28 ) Of course the Chinese boast of having published the first known newspaper. Whether they did so or not is a matter of little importance, as they never improved on their original conception. I believe that I am correct in stating that the native news- paper press in China at this moment is confined to an official. gazette, of which every article has to be submitted to the supervision of no less a personage than the Emperor of China. In ancient Rome a kind of newspaper was posted in the public baths which was called the Acta Diurna, or Daily Events. It was merely an official gazette containing the record of the most conspicuous trans- actions and events of the day. A Latin author named Petronius, who lived about the year 60, published in a famous novel an epitome of the Acta Diurna, which gives us a fair notion of what the gazette must have been. This is a translation :— ‘On the 26th July thirty boys and forty girls were born on the estate of Trimalchis at Cuma. At the same time a slave was put to death for uttering disrespectful words against his master. On the same day a fire broke out in Pompey’s Gardens, which began at night in the steward’s room.’ We have to take a leap over many centuries to arrive at the publication of the first newspaper. We flatter ourselves that the credit of this belongs to England. Until a very recent date it was