about 1,700 advertisements.[1] 54,000 copies of _The Times_ were sold when
the Royal Exchange was opened by the Queen; 44,500 at the close of Rush's
trial. 1828, the circulation of _The Times_ was under 7,000 a day; now its
average circulation is about 42,000 a day, or 12,000,000 annually.[2] The
gross proceeds of _The Times_, in 1828, was about 45,000l. a year: and,
from an article which appeared twelve months ago in its columns, it now
enjoys a gross income equal to that of a flourishing German principality.

We believe we are correct when we assert, that there were sold of the
_Illustrated London News_, with a narrative of the Duke's funeral (a double
number), 400,000 copies. One newsman is said to have taken 1000 quires
double number, or 2000 quires single number: making 27,000 double papers,
or 54,000 single papers (twenty-seven papers being the number to a quire),
and for which he must have paid 1075l.[3] It is a remarkable fact, that
Manchester, with a population of 400,000, has but three newspapers;
Liverpool, with 367,000, eleven; Glasgow, with 390,000, sixteen; Dublin,
with but 200,000, no less than twenty-two. The largest paper ever known was
published some years ago by Brother Jonathan, and called the _Boston
Notion_. The head letters stand two inches high; the sheet measures five
feet ten inches by four feet one inch, being about twenty-four square feet;
it is a double sheet, with ten columns in each page; making in all eighty
columns, containing 1,000,000 letters, and sold for 31/2d. In the good old
times, one of the earliest provincial newspapers in the southern part of
the kingdom was printed by a man named Mogridge, who used to insert the
intelligence from Yorkshire under the head "Foreign News."

It is curious to search a file of old newspapers. It is seldom we have the
opportunity of doing so, because we rarely preserve them in consecutive
order. It is easy to keep them, and would repay the trouble, and their
value would increase as years rolled on. Such reading would be very
interesting, and more so than we can at all imagine. It is a history of
every day, and a record of a people's sayings and doings. It throws us back
on the past, and makes forgotten times live again. Some of the early
volumes of _The Times_ newspaper, for instance, would be a curiosity in
their {335} way. We should read them with special interest, as reflecting
the character of the age in which they appeared, and as belonging to a