STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685 .

385

It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no pro- chap.

vincial newspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and at the-

two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom.

The only press in England north of Trent appears to havebeen at York.* *

It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the The ob-government undertook to furnish political instruction to thepeople. That journal contained a scanty supply of news with-out comment. Another journal, published under the pa-tronage of the court, consisted of comment without news.

This paper, called the Observator, was edited by an old Torypamphleteer named Roger Lestrange. Lestrange was by nomeans deficient in readiness and shrewdness; and his diction,though coarse, and disfigured by a mean and flippant jargonwhich then passed for wit in the green room and the tavern, wasnot without keenness and vigour. But his nature, at onceferocious and ignoble, showed itself in every line that hepenned. When the first Observators appeared there was someexcuse for his acrimony. For the Whigs were then powerful;and he had to contend against numerous adversaries, whoseunscrupulous violence might seem to justify unsparing reta-liation. But in 1685 all opposition had been crushed. A ge-nerous spirit would have disdained to insult a party whichcould not reply, and to aggravate the misery of prisoners, ofexiles, of bereaved families: but from the malice of Lestrangethe grave was no hiding plaee, and the house of mourning nosanctuary. In the last month of the reign of Charles the Se-

judgment with which Sir James, in great masses of the rudest ore inhistory, selected what was valuable, and rejected what was worthless,can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in thesame mine.

* Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing houses in1124 will be found in Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes of the eighteenth cen-tury. There had then been a great increase within a few years in thenumber of presses; and yet there were thirty-four counties in whichthere was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire.

Macaulay, History. 1. 25