THE USE OF ADVERTISEMENTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XX, Issue 1111, 4 July 1863, Page 2

THE USE OF ADVERTISEMENTS.

Mrs. Partington thought she was quoting Shakespeare when she exclaimed, " Sweet are the uses of advertisements! " It so happens that Shakespeare never said so, but he said a great many tilings not so true. The uses of advertisements are indeed sweet and manifold. Advertising lias now become a regular business, almost as essential to social happiness and prosperity as the penny post. If a man has lost or found anything; if he wants to dispose of a dog or secure a wife; if he wants to borrow or to lend; to offer or to get a situation; to let his house or to sell his wares—he advertises. To a yast number of people the perusal of these advertisements, whether in the way of business or pleasure, is an essential feature of every-day life. Indeed, it is an open question whether some people's entire acquaintance with English literature is not confined to the advertising columns of their newspapers.

There are one or two curious features of this department of business which are worth noting. It is curious, for instance, to look through the earliest newspaper advertisements that appeared in this country, and to find amongst them the primitive types of almost all the classes of advertisements that now appear. Looking back to the time of the Commonwealth, when such advertisements appear to have been first used, we find advertised, " Gospel Marrow," and "A Few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a Damned Soul," with other lively and characteristic effusions of that Puritanical age. These occasional advertisements have gradually developed into those long lists of new publications that are now advertised in the newspapers almost every day. Our lists for the direction of travellers, by sea, railway, or coach, find their earliest forerunners in such intimations as the following, which appeared in 1658:—"From London to York in four days, xls.," &c., &c. The business cards that now crowd so many columns of all advertising papers, look back for their progenitors to such announcements as the following, Avhich appeared in the 'Mercurius Politicus' of Sept. 30, 1658:—"That Excellent and by all Physitians approved China Drink called by the Chineans Tcha, by other nations Tay alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness Head CopheeHouse, in Sweeting's Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London." This, according to Wynter, in his " Curiosities of Civilization," is the earliest advertisement extant of this now favourite and universally used beverage. Human credulity and superstition seem to have been as much made of in " the good old times" as in our own—so far, at least, as facilities were afforded. We find advertised, for example— " Small Baggs to hang about children's necks, which are excellent both for the prevention and cure of the Rickets, and to ease children in breeding of teeth, are prepared by Mr. Edmund Buckworth, and constantly to be had at Philip Clark's, Keeper of the Library in the Fleet, and nowhere else, at ss. a bagge." If we have no talismans or amulets advertised now-a-days, we have patent medicines, the numberless virtues of which seem quite as great a tax upon human credulity. But there are ways of making our wants and our

good intentions known to a discerning and patronising public, which have not been forshadowed by the J old " diurnals." Erostratus, the Ephesian artificer, burnt the temple of Diana in order to make his name famous; and George Francis Train, the hero of the " tramways," inaugurated his American system of locomotion by a sumptuous dinner party, and a flourish of " speaking trumpets " afterwards. Mr. Train's example appears to have been the most catching, although it failed to secure the object of the enterprising contractor. It was, moreover, in perfect accordance with English habits and usages, and it killed two birds with one stone. It conciliated the favor of a great number of notabilities, and it spread the name and fame of Train and his tramways over the length and breadth of the land. But, apart from this altogether, we are a public-dinner-loving generation. We ventilate our loyalty, love, generosity, charity, and good-fellowship in after-dinner orations, and we toast each other in reciprocal bumpers of rosy wine or foreign and British spirits, to the infinite gratification of all parties concerned.—Glasgow Daily Herald, April 8.