Address (enclosing Stamp for reply) to Mr. J. Windsor, Theatre Royal, Preston, Lancashire.—Era, July 1, 1855.

Wanted a Man and his Wife to look after a Horse and Dairy with a religious turn of mind without any incumbrance.

The variety is perhaps as astonishing as the number of advertisements in the Times. Like the trunk of an elephant, no matter seems too minute or too gigantic, too ludicrous or too sad, to be lifted into notoriety by the giant of Printing-house Square. The partition of a thin rule suffices to separate a call for the loan of millions from the sad weak cry of the destitute gentlewoman to be allowed to slave in a nursery “for the sake of a home.” Vehement love sends its voice imploring through the world after a graceless boy, side by side with the announcement of the landing of a cargo of lively turtle, or the card of a bug-killer. The poor lady who advertises for boarders “merely for the sake of society” finds her “want” cheek-by-jowl with some Muggletonian announcement gratuitously calculated to break up society altogether, to the effect that the world will come to an end by the middle of the next month. Or the reader is informed that for twelve postage stamps he may learn “How to obtain a certain fortune,” exactly opposite an offer of a bonus of 500l. to any one who will obtain for the advertiser “a Government situation.” The Times reflects every want, and appeals to every motive which affects our composite society. And why does it do this? Because of its ubiquity: go where we will, there, like the house-fly or the sparrow, we find it. The porter reads it in his beehive-chair, the master in his library; Green, we have no doubt, takes it with him to the clouds in his balloon, and the collier reads it in the depths of the mine; the workman at his bench, the lodger in his two-pair back, the gold-digger in his hole, and the soldier in the trench, pore over its broad pages. Hot from the press, or months old, still it is read. That it is, par excellence, the national paper, and reflects more than any other the life of the people, may be gathered from its circulation. They show in the editor’s room a singular diagram, which indicates by an irregular line the circulation day by day and year by year. On this sheet the gusts of political feeling and the pressure of popular excitement are as minutely indicated as the force and direction of the wind are shown by the self-registering apparatus in Lloyd’s Rooms. Thus we find that in the year 1845 it ran along at a pretty nearly dead level of 23,000 copies daily. In 1846—for one day, the 28th of January, that on which the report of Sir Robert Peel’s statement respecting the Corn Laws appeared—it rose in a towering peak to a height of 51,000, and then fell again to its old number. It began the year 1848 with 29,000, and rose to 43,000 on the 29th of February—the morrow of the French revolution. In 1852 its level at starting was 36,000, and it attained to the highest point it has yet touched on the 19th of November, the day of the Memoir of the Great Duke, when 69,000 copies were sold. In January, 1853, the level had arisen to 40,000; and at the commencement of the present year it stood at 58,000, a circulation which has since increased to 60,000 copies daily! Notwithstanding all the disturbing causes which make the line of its circulation present the appearance of hill and dale, sometimes rising into Alp-like elevations, its ordinary level at the beginning of each year for some time past has constantly gone on advancing; insomuch that within ten years its circulation has more than doubled by 7,000 daily.

This vigorous growth is the true cause of that wonderful determination of advertisements to its pages, which have overflowed into a second paper, or supplement, as it was formerly called. That this success has been fairly won, we have never ourselves doubted; but a fact has come to our knowledge which will pretty clearly prove that this great paper is conducted on principles which are superior to mere money considerations; or rather its operations are so large that it can afford to inflict upon itself pecuniary losses, such as would annihilate any other journal, in order to take a perfectly free course. In the year 1845, when the railway mania was at its height, the Times advertising sheet was overrun with projected lines, and many a guess was made, we remember, at the time as to their probable value; but high as the estimates generally were, they came far short of the truth. We give the cash and credit returns of advertisements of all kinds for nine weeks:—

Sept.6 £2839 14 0
"13 3783 12 0
"20 3935 7 6
"27 4692 7 0
Oct.4 6318 14 0
"11 6543 17 0
"18 6687 4 0
"25 6025 14 6
Nov.1 3230 3 6

During the greater part of the time that the proprietors were reaping this splendid harvest from the infatuation of the people, the heaviest guns were daily brought to bear from the leading columns upon the bubbles which rose up so thickly in the advertising sheet. The effect of their fire may be measured by the falling off of nearly 3,000l. in the returns for a single week. A journal which could afford to sacrifice such a revenue to its independence, certainly deserved some consideration from the Government; but, on the contrary, it appears to have been singled out for annoyance by the act which relates to newspapers. We see certain trees on our lawns whose upshooting branches are by ingenious gardeners trained downwards, and taught to hold themselves in a dependent condition by the imposition of weights upon their extremities. The state gardeners have applied the same treatment to the journal in question, by hanging an extra halfpenny stamp upon every copy of its issue—a proceeding which, in our opinion, is as unfair as it is injudicious: and this they will find in the future, when the crowd of mosquito-like cheap journals called forth by the measure, and supported by the very life-blood of the leading journal, begin to gather strength and to attack Whiggery with their democratic buzz.

We have dwelt chiefly upon the advertising sheet of the Times, because it is the epitome of that in all the other journals. It must be mentioned, however, that some of the morning and weekly papers lay themselves out for class advertisements. Thus the Morning Post monopolizes all those which relate to fashion and high life; and the Morning Advertiser, the paper of the licensed victuallers, aggregates to itself every announcement relating to their craft. Bell’s Life is one mass of advertisements of various sports; the Era is great upon all theatricals; the Athenæum gathers to itself a large proportion of book advertisements. The Illustrated News among the weeklies, like the Times among the dailies, towers by the head above them all. A hebdomadal circulation of 170,000 draws a far more cosmopolitan collection of announcements to its pages than any of its contemporaries can boast. We have said nothing of the advertisements in the provincial journals; but it is gratifying to find that they have more than kept pace with those which have appeared in the metropolitan papers. Their enormous increase is best shown by the returns of the advertisement duty; from which it appears that in 1851 no less than 2,334,593 advertisements were published in the journals of Great Britain and Ireland—a number which has vastly augmented since the tax upon them has been repealed.

It is curious to see the estimate which the different journals place upon themselves as mediums of publicity, by comparing their charges for the same advertisement. Thus the contents of the Quarterly Review for January, 1855, precisely similar as far as length is concerned, was charged for insertion as an advertisement by the different papers as follows:—Times, 4s.; Illustrated News, 1l. 8s.; Morning Chronicle, 5s. 6d.; Morning Post, 6s.; Daily News, 5s. 6d.; Spectator, 7s. 6d.; Morning Herald, 6s.; Punch, 15s.; Observer, 9s. 6d.; English Churchman, 5s. 6d.; Examiner, 3s. 6d.; John Bull, 5s. 6d.; Athenæum, 10s. 6d. Now the Times did not “display” the advertisement as all the others did, it is true, and therefore squeezed it into half the space; but with this difference, its charge was absolutely the lowest in the list, with the single exception of that of the Examiner. How this moderation on the part of the Leading Journal is to be accounted for we know not; but the apparent dearness of the Illustrated News meets a ready solution, and affords us an opportunity of showing how vastly the prime cost of an advertisement, during the present high price of paper especially, is augmented by a great increase of the circulation of the paper in which it appears, and what the advertiser really gets for his money. If we take the advertisement of our contents (Quarterly Review), it will be found to measure about one inch in depth; it is obvious, then, that we must multiply this measure by 170,000, the number of separate copies in which it appeared. Now 170,000 inches yield a strip of printed paper the width of a newspaper column—upwards of two miles and three-quarters long! Thus we have at a glance the real amount of publicity which is procurable in a great journal; and with so remarkable a statement it will be well to close our paper.