Where’s Eliza? Who was the man in the iron mask? Who was Junius? Whose were the bones discovered last year in a carpet-bag under Waterloo-bridge? You cannot tell. Neither can I tell you who is our London Correspondent. Yet he exists. I find traces of him in the most Boeotian districts of England.

“Caledonia, stern and wild,
Fit nurse for a poetic child,”

knows him. In “Tara’s halls” he has superseded the harp, and is a presence and a power. Before newspapers were, when Addison was writing the “Spectator,” and Dick Steele “Tatlers” innumerable, and De Foe his Review and all sorts of romances, in Grub-street there was an immense deal of activity in the way of letter writing. Country gentlemen wanted news, and were willing to pay for it. When there was a frost or when it was wet, when the nights were long or amusements few, when the squire was laid up with the gout or when my lady had the vapours, it was pleasant to read who ate cheesecakes and syllabubs at Spring Gardens, who drank coffee at Button’s or chocolate at the Cocoa Tree, what was the gossip of the October or Kit Kat clubs, what had become of Mrs. Bracegirdle, and how Mrs. Oldfield triumphed on the stage. Nor did the letter-writer stop here. In those days courtiers had two faces. There was one King de facto, and another de jure divino. There was a Court at St. Germains as well as at St. James’s. There were Jacobites as well as Hanoverians. There were plots and intrigues—Popish and Protestant—and in the dark days before Christmas, in old country houses, letters full of all the rumours thus created were welcomed. But the age made progress. Newspapers were established in all the leading towns of the country, and the need of the letter-writer vanished, but only for a while. In his desire to cater for the public, and to outbid his competitors, the country newspaper revived the London correspondent, but on an extended scale. Now scarce a country newspaper exists that does not avail itself of his services.

But from the general let me descend to the particular. I take up the “Little Pedlington Gazette,” and I find our London Correspondent dates from --- Club, St. James’s-square. Of course, in a free country, a man may date his letters where he likes; but I’ll be bound to say the letter is written in a cheap coffee-house in Chancery-lane, and all its contents are culled from that day’s papers. From the letter, however, I am led to suppose that the writer is a member of the House of Commons—that he has the run of the clubs—that royal personages are not unfamiliar with him—and that his intimacy with Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli is only equalled by his friendship with Palmerston and Russell. Our London Correspondent has very wonderful eyes, and I am sure his ears must be longer than those of any other animal extant. I have tried the Strangers’ Gallery in the House of Commons, and the Speaker’s, and the Reporters’, and in all I have the utmost difficulty in distinguishing emotions which an animated debate must excite in the disputants. The Parliamentary fashion is for a minister, when attacked, to sit with his hat so pulled down over his eyes that you can scarce see a feature. Lord John always sits in this way, so does Lord Palmerston. Our London Correspondent can see what no one else can, and there is not a wince of the galled jade but what is visible to his eyes. He sees Palmerston winking to Sir George Grey, and hears what Cornewall Lewis whispers to Lowe. Lord John does not chuckle quietly to himself, nor Disraeli whisper a sarcasm, nor Walpole meditate a joke, but he hears it. He possesses a rare and blessed gift of ubiquity. At the very time that he is watching these exalted personages in the House, he is chatting confidentially with Hayter in the lobby, or looking in at the Opera, or gossiping behind the scenes with Wright and Paul Bedford, or having a chop at the Garrick with Thackeray, or shining at Lady Plantagenet’s soirÉe “as a bright particular star.” I wonder the dear creature’s head is not quite turned with the attentions he receives from the nobility, with whom he is as intimate as I with Smiths and Browns. Occasionally I meet with a few London Correspondents imbibing together their frugal half-and-half. It does me good to hear them. It reminds me of Elia’s Captain Jackson’s bacchanalian orgies, where “wine we had none, nor, except on very rare occasions, spirits; but the sensation of wine was there.” Says one to another, “Oh, how did you get on last night?” “Pretty well,” is the reply, “considering there were none but lords there.” Walking in a low neighbourhood, I meet one. I ask after his health. “Devilish seedy,” says he; “up too late last night at Lady ---,” naming one of the proudest members of the proudest aristocracies in the world. Yet are they too uncultivated, and hairy, and outrÉ, to pass with credit in Belgravia. Their literary efforts are not remarkable for polish. They affect a graphic style, and are not sparing in the use of slang. They eschew the classics, and evince but a very superficial knowledge of literature, save that of the current year. They are chiefly strong in politics, and for the actors on that stage have that contempt which familiarity is said to breed, but which, as in the present case, sometimes flourishes without it. They view the busy scene as the gods of Epicurus the follies of mankind. This man is a fool—that a tool. As a rule, officials are run down, and some illustrious-obscure—perhaps the borough representative, if he is on good terms with the paper—is suspiciously and inordinately puffed up. I often wish our London Correspondent would address the House. What a figure he would make on some matter of business, the details of which it is impossible to make interesting! The chances are that he is a Scotchman or an Irishman; that his impudence is merely confined to paper; that he does not shine either at the Temple Forum or Codgers’ Hall. There would be a burst of laughter when he rose. They ought to be more genial critics. I was once in the lobby when our London Correspondent of a paper published in a large manufacturing town came up to me. I had not seen him for some years. After the usual inquiries, said he, “What a capital cutting that was in the --- of your book!” “You are mistaken,” said I; “the book was by so and so.” Our friend, very crest-fallen, immediately rushed off without bidding us goodbye. Once upon a time one of them produced a great sensation. Our readers will remember, when Lord John Russell dismissed Lord Palmerston, what a cry was raised about German influences by a certain morning print which seems to exist merely for the sake of disgusting intelligent people with a righteous cause. A German paper was referred to. Well, the gentleman to whom I have alluded was the correspondent of that paper, and one day, in the absence of anything of importance, he had manufactured the article very innocently out of the extraordinary paragraphs in which the morning print aforesaid rejoices, little dreaming, that in Parliament and out his letter would be quoted as evidence of a deeply-laid conspiracy to weaken the power of Lord Palmerston and undermine European liberty.

But I have not yet said who our London Correspondent is. The better class of them I think are Parliamentary reporters. There was a paper published in London kept alive merely by its Paris Correspondent. No other paper had such a correspondent, or abounded in such extraordinary tales and scandal. Yet the correspondent’s plan was very simple. Every new tale and drama which came out in Paris was worked up and sent to London as a reality, that was all. In a less degree our London Correspondent does the same, and in quiet country towns there is great wonder and lifting up of hands, especially if, as was once the case, the wrong letter is sent, and the Tory paper abounds with sneers at Lord Derby and the squirearchy, a contretemps which is avoided if the plan of one London Correspondent be adopted, who supplies thirteen different papers with the same letter at five shillings each—a plan, however, not sanctioned by respectable papers, who pay a good price and get often a good article, and for whose letters, if a little too highly coloured and seasoned, the public taste is more to blame than the newspaper proprietor, or his painstaking London Correspondent. I believe the Mr. Russell, of the Times, was the London Correspondent of one of the Irish papers, and such papers as the Liverpool Albion, Cambridge Independent, and a few others I could name, evidently have for London Correspondents literary men of superior position and respectability.