Out of my own earliest Newspaper reading, I can remember the name _Vetus_, as a kind of editorial hacklog on which able-editors were wont to chop straw now and then.

Nay the Letters were collected and reprinted; both this first series, of 1812, and then a second of next year: two very thin, very dim-colored cheap octavos; stray copies of which still exist, and may one day become distillable into a drop of History (should such be wanted of our poor "Scavenger Age" in time coming), though the reading of them has long ceased in this generation.[4] The first series, we perceive, had even gone to a second edition.

The tone, wherever one timidly glances into this extinct cockpit, is trenchant and emphatic: the name of _Vetus_, strenuously fighting there, had become considerable in the talking political world; and, no doubt, was especially of mark, as that of a writer who might otherwise be important, with the proprietors of the _Times_.

The connection continued: widened and deepened itself,--in a slow tentative manner; passing naturally from voluntary into remunerated: and indeed proving more and more to be the true ultimate arena, and battle-field and seed-field, for the exuberant impetuosities and faculties of this man.
What the _Letters of Vetus_ treated of I do not know; doubtless they ran upon Napoleon, Catholic Emancipation, true methods of national defence, of effective foreign Anti-gallicism, and of domestic ditto; which formed the staple of editorial speculation at that time.

I have heard in general that Captain Sterling, then and afterwards, advocated "the Marquis of Wellesley's policy;" but that also, what it was, I have forgotten, and the world has been willing to forget.