Curiosities of civilization : reprinted from the "Quarterly" & "Edinburgh" reviews / by Andrew Wynter.
- Wynter, Andrew, 1819-1876.
- Date:
- [between 1860 and 1869?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Curiosities of civilization : reprinted from the "Quarterly" & "Edinburgh" reviews / by Andrew Wynter. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![ADVERTISEMENTS. It is our pur])ose to draw out, as a tliread miglit be drawn from some woven fabric, a continuous line of advertisements from tbe newspaper press of this country, since its establishment to the present time; and, by so doing, to show how distinctly, from its dye, the pattern of the age through which it ran is represented. If we follow up to its source any public insti- tution, fashion, or amusement, which has flourished during a long period of time, we can gain some idea of our national progress and development; but it strikes us that in no manner can we so well obtain at a rapid glance a view of the salient points of generations that have passed, as by consulting those small voices that have cried from age to age from the pages of the pi-ess, declaring the wants, the losses, the amusements, and the money-making eagerness of the people. As we read in the old musty files of papers those naive an- nouncements, the very hum of bygone generations seems to rise to the ear. The chapman exhibits his quaint wares ; the mountebank cajiers again upon his stage ; we have the living portrait of the highwayman flying from justice ; we see the old china 'auctions thronged with ladies of quality with their attendant negro boys, or those by inch of candlelight forming many a Schalken-like picture of light and shade ; or, later still, w-e have Hogartliian sketches of the young bloods who swelled of old along the Pali-Mall. We trace the moving panorama of men and manners up to our own less demonstrative but more B](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20401309_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
