of the streets in the old French war-time,
crying "Great news !" "Glorious news!"
when there were no news at all.

The etymology of the cock mendacious,
is as uncertain as that of the kingdom of
Cockaigne. Is the word derived from the
"cock and pye" of Justice Shallow— a thing
said, but not the more believed in ? Perhaps
cock may have originated in the patterer being
frequently a coquin or rogue, or from the cock
and bull story which Mr. Shandy's novel is
ultimately settled to have been about. Or, does cock
—a lie, a tale of news having no foundation
whatever in fact, but still made public and
persisted in — spring from the famous political
hoax in which Lord Cochrane was said to have
been implicated : the scandalous cock which for
stockjobbing purposes, in the year eighteen
hundred and fourteen, gave out Bonaparte to
have been torn to pieces by Cossacks, and
which had such disastrous consequences for
one of the bravest officers of the British navy ?

This last theory, although sufficiently
vrai-semblable, is militated against by the
indubitable existence of these Chanticleers
long anterior to Lord Cochrane's time. Their
antiquity is highly respectable. Butler, who
has something to say about almost every
subject within the compass of human
knowledge, has a wondrous appreciation of them
in substance, if not in name. Listen to what
he says in Hudibras; apropos of Fame:—

There is a tall, long-sided dame,
(But wondrous light) ycleped Fame,
That like a thin cameleon boards
Herself on air, and eats her words;
Upon her shoulders wings she wears
Like hanging sleeves, lin'd through with ears,
And eyes, and tongues, as poets list,
Made good by deep mythologist.
With these she through the welkin flies,
And sometimes carries truth, oft lies;
With letters hung, like Eastern pigeons,
And Mercuries of furthest regions;
Diurnals writ for regulation
Of lying, to inform the nation,
And by their public use to bring down
The rate of whetstones in the kingdom.
About her neck a packet mail,
Fraught with advice, some fresh, some stale;
Of men that walk'd when they were dead,
And cows of monsters brought to bed;
Of hailstones big as pullet's eggs,
And puppies whelp'd with twice two legs;
A blazing star seen in the west
By six or seven men at least.

This quotation brings me to a topic which
I have been meditating upon from the
commencement of this article, and without
which it would be singularly incomplete: I
mean newspaper Chanticleers. In snug little
corners of that British Press, of which we
are all so justly proud and jealous, eccentric
gallinaceous figments nestle, crow, and clap
their wings exceedingly. They are periodical
in their appearance. Long debates, interesting
news from abroad, great exhibitions,
religious uproars, violent controversies as to
whether Biffin calling Miffin a rascal meant
therein anything to the prejudice of Wiffin;
who, as a rascal, would be of course and for
ever compromised in the opinion of both
Chiffin and Piffin : these will occasionally
drive Bright Chanticleer out of the columns
of the London newspaper, and compel him
to betake himself to those of the provincial
journal. He will crow harmlessly till the
metropolitan public begin to be satiated with
the realities of authentic news ; till the
Episcopalians and Dissenters, magnanimously
forgetting their former differences, combine
heart and hand to fall foul of the Bhuddists ;
till Biffin assures Miffin that he never
considered him a rascal at all, but rather as
something nearly approximating to an angel.
Then, and especially in the piping times of
peace and profound tranquillity, doth Chanticleer
move modestly London-ward again.

Let me see if I cannot enumerate a few
favourite newspaper chanticleers. I will not
insult your understanding by allusion to the
enormous gooseberries, singular freaks of
nature, showers of frogs, cats found in
gas-pipes, discoveries of Roman remains, and
human skeletons; which are the oldest, weakest,
flimsiest known. They have passed into jokes
long ago; and newspapers with even a shadow
of modesty are ashamed to give insertion to
them now. But there are others more insidious,
less derisively scouted. There is the French
war-steamer which hovers about the coast of
Lincolnshire, somewhere between Saltfleet
and Great Grimsby; the officers of which are
continually making soundings, or are landing
to take sketches of the coast and adjacent
scenery; all with an evident view to an
approaching invasion, and to the infinite
dismay of that great grandfather of lies,
the oldest inhabitant; the plunging into
newspaper correspondence of our esteemed
townsman, Mr. Flubbers, who remembers
the invasion panic of eighteen hundred and
four, and suggests that now is the time for
government to purchase the secret of the
Flubbers' explosive sabre and the Flubbers'
asphyxiating (long range) syringe ; and the
display of one hundred per cent extra
vigilance by our active and experienced
commander of the coast-guard, Lieutenant
Lopside. Dear me ! How many times that
French war-steamer has turned up. Off St.
Michael's Mount in Cornwall ; off the Orknies
and Shetland islands ; off Mull and Bute and
Arran ; off Galway, Brighton, Torquay, and
Beechey Head. She has always been ready, at
a newspaper pinch, off Dover. The daily
increasing intimacy and cordiality of our
relations with France, though, have brought this
belligerous vessel into some little disfavour ;
and for it there have begun to be frequently
substituted such anecdotes as— " There is now
in the possession of Mr. Spong of this town a
double-barrelled pistol of antique workmanship,
presented to his ancestor Captain Hugh
Spong by Marshal Turenne, during the