cury who can proclaim their wants, not only with impunity but with effect. His person is sacred, and he can say what he likes and write what he likes without fear of arrest or domiciliary visits from the police.
An important person is “our own correspondent” if he has the tact to use his position and opportunities well; if he has the judgment to lay their true price upon the various pieces of information he gathers; if he knows how to discharge impartially the duties entrusted to him. On very extraordinary occasions, however, “our special” is despatched to aid “Our Own.” Like the staff of plenipotentiaries in the diplomatic world, this corps de reserve is seldom drawn upon. A royal visit of any moment, the trial trip of a war-ship constructed on a new principle, any grand and exciting event about to take place at home or abroad, would warrant the despatch of a “special,” and like Lord Clyde or Sir Charles Napier, they are ready to set out at an hour’s notice. But the occasion which tests their powers of intelligence and endurance most is the breaking out of a war. The difficulties, not to say the dangers, they have to encounter would daunt a less bold and enterprising race of civilians. They face equally with the army the perils of the campaign; they run the risk of being shot or taken prisoners; they have to rough it like their belted comrades; they are familiar with hunger and thirst, fatigue, and exhaustion, and often whilst the weary private sleeps by the side of his rifle, “Our Special” is writing the description of a battle just fought, after having been scouring the field the whole day watching the movements of the various divisions, and eagerly listening to the accounts of those who had been engaged, in order that he might make his narrative more complete and graphic by introducing personal as well as general incidents of the struggle. Thus amid the smoke and confusion, the blood and groans of the scene of carnage, he sits down to write, perhaps on the head of a broken drum, his hurried despatches. The narratives of “our special” at the Crimean campaign, in the Italian war, and during the terrible rebellion in India, will remain a monument to their cool intrepidity, no less than their great erudition and masterly descriptive powers. At the present moment in the woods and wilds of Poland, and with the armies of the North and South in America, is to be found “our special correspondent.” His is no tranquil labour; he has to write, and does write, in the teeth of obloquy and real peril, and were it not that the ægis of British sovereignty is thrown over him, his very life would be frequently endangered.
Returning, however, from this long flight, let us once more enter the rooms of the sub-editor and his chief. It is 10 p.m. The latter is still where we left him in the morning; but how differently engaged. He is poring over long thin strips—mere ribbons of printed matter, and mercilessly does he drive his pen in amongst these serried columns of words. For every expression in these columns he is responsible. They contain the opinions of the “Daily Argus,” and are supposed to represent the opinions of the most powerful section of the political world outside. Again are they read, corrected, and re-corrected. Not a single epithet is allowed to remain which is likely to compromise the views of the paper; anything that savours of a libel is rigorously struck out; the exuberant humour of each writer is chastened down to comport better with the sober taste of the public. When these alterations and improvements have been achieved, and the style and substance of each leader have passed the ordeal of an unflinching criticism, the “proofs” are sent up to the compositors. Even then the editorial labours are not concluded; ten to one but he takes to nibbling his pen once more and subjects the “revises” to the same surgical operations which the proofs have already undergone.
The sub-editor, no less than his chief, has before him an herculean toil. He has that mass of matter which we have seen pouring into him from every point of the compass to arrange for the hands of the printer. But he has still to be on his guard. At the last moment a lengthy telegram arrives from America, or Poland; or an Overland Mail unexpectedly comes in; or a statesman dies suddenly, and his biography—which has been lying for months, perhaps for years, in a drawer of the escritoire, waiting, as it were, the death of the great man—must be used that night. Or perhaps the debates in the Lords and Commons have run long, or a dreadful murder has been just committed, or a terrible fire has broken out, and the claims of all these for insertion have to be attended to. By two or three o’clock in the morning, however, he has pretty well terminated his labours for the day, or rather the morning. Having had one or more explanations with the head printer, and given his last instructions, he goes home yawning to bed shortly before other men rise for their ordinary duties.
A WORD ON HERNE’S OAK.
As public attention has been very recently directed towards this celebrated tree, the old trunk of which has lately been blown down, a short account of it may not be uninteresting.
In giving this account, the first thing is to prove that the tree in question was the real Herne’s Oak of Shakespeare. In my “Gleanings in Natural History,” published in the year 1834, I endeavoured to do this; but, in consequence of what I had alleged as to the identity of the tree, I was attacked in various publications on this subject, and amongst others, by the “Quarterly Review,” in a notice on Loudon’s “Arboretum.” In consequence of this, I defended my previous opinion in the best manner I was able, in a letter inserted in the “Times” newspaper, a few extracts from which I now propose giving. The attack on me in the “Quarterly” was as follows:
Among his anecdotes of celebrated English Oaks, we were surprised to find Mr. Loudon adopting an apocryphal story about Herne’s Oak, given in the lively pages of Mr. Jesse’s “Gleanings.” That gentleman, if he had taken any trouble, might have ascertained that the tree in question was cut down one morning, by order of King George III., when in a state of great, but
