s of most note were
_The Weekly Journal_, Mist's _Weekly Journal_, the _London Journal_,
_The Free Briton_, and the _Weekly Gazetteer_. Mist was especially a
stout opponent of the Government, and was consequently always in
trouble. In 1724 there were printed nineteen first-class journals, of
which three were daily, ten tri-weekly--three of them 'half-penny
_Posts_'--and six weekly. News was abundant, and the old plan of leaving
blank spaces or filling up with passages of Scripture--an editor
actually reproduced from week to week the first two books of the
Pentateuch--was now abandoned. In 1726 appeared the _Public
Advertiser_, afterward called the _London Daily Advertiser_, which
deserves to be remembered as having been the medium through which the
letters of Junius were originally given to the world. In the same year,
too, was started _The Craftsman_, one of the ablest political papers
which London had yet seen, and of which Bolingbroke was joint editor. It
was immediately successful, and its circulation soon reached ten or
twelve thousand. In 1731 a great novelty came out, the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, or _Monthly Intelligencer_, under the proprietorship of
Edward Cave, the printer. The title page contained a woodcut of St.
John's Gate, Clerkenwell, which had been in olden times the entrance
gateway to the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, but was then the
abiding place of Cave's printing press, and upon either side of the
engraving was a list of the titles of metropolitan and provincial
newspapers. The contents, as announced on the same title page, were: 1.
Essays, controversial, humorous and satirical, religious, moral, and
political, collected chiefly from the public papers; 2. Select pieces of
poetry; 3. A succinct account of the most remarkable transactions and
events, foreign and domestic; 4. Marriages and deaths, promotions and
bankruptcies; 5. The prices of goods and stocks, and bills of mortality;
6. A register of barks; 7. Observations on gardening. The prospectus
states:

'Our present undertaking, in the first place, is to give monthly a
view of all the pieces of wit, humor, or intelligence daily offered
to the public in the newspapers, which of late are so multiplied as
to render it impossible, unless a man makes it his business, to
consult them all; and in the next place, we shall join therewith
some other matters of use or amusement that will be communicated to
us. Upon