Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE BECKFORD LIBRARY. / 509
and catalogued as the Fonthill Library, collected with infinite
taste and expense during a period of forty years. I do not speak
upon slight authority, for my friend Hermann, one of the pro-
prietors of the ' Intelligencer,' who was at that time in Wiltshire,
inspected the books, and described the great part of them as the
vilest trash that ever were sold at an auction mart.
The influential journalist, .
with the twenty news-
papers which he had it in his power to turn into
unconscious mediums of advertisement, and his own
special journal on which he expected to establish his
fortunes, seems to have come to little with advancing
years. Instead of realising a large sum by the
transfer to other hands of the 'Leeds Intelligencer,'
he would appear to have had the worst of the bargain
with a " smart " competitor, and to have returned to
town little the better for his exile. The last letter
I find addressed to him by Mr Blackwood is full of
thanks for the " splendid accompaniment" of a recent
letter, the " magnificent presents," which would appear
to have been copies of the Annuals which were the
favourite productions of the period, filled with contributions
from all the most famous names, and
illustrated with the most wonderful of engravings
on steel, and all the triumphs of typography,— yet,
perhaps, more surely destined to the contempt of
oblivion than almost any production of the press.
Mr Blackwood regrets that he can make no return
for these sumptuous articles. " All I can do is to
show them and speak of them to my friends in the
way they merit to be spoken of, as the finest specimens
which have ever appeared." They were too late to
be noticed in an article in the month's issue, but he
hopes there will be " something good in next number."