Thus in the phrase, he is an honest man, but a great enthusiast, the word but is an adverbial conjunction.

in Antiquity, a servant who attended the rich in returning from supper, to give them notice of any obstacles in the way, which might cause them to stumble.

ADVERTISEMENT, in a general sense, denotes any information given to individuals or the public. In a commercial sense it refers to intimations of the sale of articles, and to other matters connected with trade, inserted in the newspapers.

To advertise advantageously requires both experience and judgment; without a knowledge of the character and circulation of the public journals, much expenditure may be wasted, by either advertising in papers that have a very limited circulation, or are generally read by persons to whom the intimation is inappropriate. The expense of advertising falls very heavily on particular commodities, especially, and very deservedly, on quack medicines, on some of which it has been said that if the vender has the courage to continue advertising to the extent of L20,000, he will make his fortune by the worthless drug.

Advertising is also a very heavy burden on books, as it is absolutely necessary that notice of new publications should be circulated if they are to be sold; on small low priced books the expense is particularly heavy, one advertisement of a book which sells at two shillings costing as much as one of a work that sells at two guineas. From this, and their generally ephemeral character, it may be said that ninety-nine pamphlets out of a hundred are published at a loss.

The advertising of the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, during its publication, cost above L3000.

It is the profit derived from advertisements which supports the large number of newspapers (533) published in the United Kingdom. While some of these drag out a sickly existence, others of them yield a princely revenue from this source; the lowest price for an advertisement in a London daily newspaper being 5s. (for servants wanting places 4s.)

The Times, whose daily circulation reaches nearly 40,000, had, on 1st February 1853 (which was a fair average number), 1086 advertisements, of which 125 were from servants wanting places, and 185 from masters wanting servants.

The duty upon advertisements is one of those which has been branded as a tax upon knowledge. It is certainly very unequal and oppressive, being the same upon that of the sale of an estate worth L100,000, and that of a servant wanting a place; the same upon an advertisement of a sixpenny pamphlet and of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Previous to 1833 the duty was, on each advertisement, 3s. 6d. in Great Britain, and 2s. 6d. in Ireland; in which year it was reduced to 1s. 6d. in Great Britain, and 1s. in Ireland. In 1832, the last year of the high duty, the total number of newspaper advertisements in the United Kingdom was 921,943; viz. 787,649 in England, 108,914 in Scotland, and 125,380 in Ireland; the amount of duty paid in that year was L172,570. In 1841 the number of advertisements had increased to 1,778,957; viz. 1,386,625 for England, 188,189 for Scotland, and 204,143 for Ireland; and the total duty paid amounted to L128,318. The amount of duty in 1851 had risen to L175,094, 108,804 being for England, L142,965, 3s. 6d.; Scotland, L19,940, 11s.; Ireland, L12,788,16s. 2d.

It is now proposed to reduce the duty to 6d. for each advertisement; but it would be better that this obstacle to the circulation of information of much importance to the community were entirely removed. See Newspapers.