With some surprise at what seemed to me the singularly whimsical and unbusiness-like features of the enterprise I wrote him earnestly advising him either to abandon it or materially to modify his plan.  I represented to him that such a journal, so conducted, could not in my judgment succeed; but he was obdurate and after a good deal of correspondence I consented to do all the writing if he was willing to do all the losing money.  I submitted a number of names which I thought suitable for the paper, but all were rejected, and he finally wrote that he had decided to call the new journal The Lantern.  This decision elicited from me another energetic protest.  The title was not original, but obviously borrowed from M. Rochefort’s famous journal, La Lanterne.  True, that publication was dead, and its audacious editor deported to New Caledonia with his Communistic following; but the name could hardly be agreeable to Mr. Mortimer’s Imperialist friends, particularly the Empress—­the Emperor was then dead.  To my surprise Mr. Mortimer not only adhered to his resolution but suggested the propriety of my taking M. Rochefort’s late lamented journal as a model for our own.  This I flatly declined to do and carried my point; I was delighted to promise, however, that the new paper should resemble the old in one particular:  it should be irritatingly disrespectful of existing institutions and exalted personages.

On the 18th of May, 1874, there was published at the corner of St. Bride Street and Shoe Lane, E.C., London, the first number of “The Lantern—­Appearing Occasionally.  Illuminated by Faustin.  Price, sixpence.”  It was a twelve-page paper with four pages of superb illustrations in six colors.  I winced when I contemplated its artistic and mechanical excellence, for I knew at what a price that quality had been obtained.  A gold mine would be required to maintain that journal, and that journal could by no means ever be itself a gold mine.  A copy lies before me as I write and noting it critically I cannot help thinking that the illuminated title-page of this pioneer in the field of chromatic journalism is the finest thing of the kind that ever came from a press.

Of the literary contents I am less qualified for judgment, inasmuch as I wrote every line in the paper.  It may perhaps be said without immodesty that the new “candidate for popular favor” was not distinguished by servile flattery of the British character and meek subservience to the British Government, as might perhaps be inferred from the following extract from an article on General Sir Garnet Wolseley, who had just received the thanks of his Sovereign and a munificent reward from Parliament for his successful plundering expedition through Ashantee: