DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

with briefly giving the history of a family to whose exertions we mainly owe the high standard of the newspaper writing of the day, as well as the per- fection of the methods by which the press has become cheap and popular. This is the family of Mr. John Walter, the present proprietor of the Times. We have to retrace our steps to 1738, when the first John Walter was born in Newcastle. The son of a coal-merchant, he turned his attention to marine insurance and made a considerable fortune, but which he lost owing to the capture of a fleet of merchantmen he had insured. He then came to London at the age of forty-six, and having in- terested, himself in an improved method of printing invented by one Matthew Johnson, took, in 1784, the well-known premises in Printing House Square, and in the following year started the Times. The first number was of folio size, containing four pages, half of them being occupied with advertisements. The foreign intelligence in the first issue fills only half a column, whilst the London news is confined to ten short paragraphs. It may be amusing to compare some of these with the para- graphs of the present day. One states that ‘the illness of Lord Salisbury is a public evil;’ another, headed ‘The Cuckoo,’ is made up of personal gossip similar to what we now