say:

After

"What could you expect of such a people? the cruel humiliations of their late war and the Commune, it looked as if the French had awoke to a sense of the cat's paw part they had been made to play by other nations, and their serious writers inveighed in bitter terms against the foreigners who had always goaded them on to ridiculous or perilous adventures at home and abroad, and then left them in the lurch. 66 Foreigners," they said, "were delighted to see us liberate the Italians, but they gave us no help, and would have given us none if our generous folly had drawn down on us, as it very nearly did, a coalition of all Germany. It pleased them again to see us try to civilize Mexico, and found there an empire which should check the United States; but they left us to manage this, as also the settlement of the Roman question; single-handed; just as they would have had us, singlehanded, go forth to free the Poles, defend the Danes, and save Saxony and Hanover from being swallowed up. As to home matters, foreigners seem to regard our country as an insensible body politic on which the most venturesome experiments can be practised as in corpore vili; and demagogues like Gambetta, Louis Blanc, and Delescluze are enthusiastically applauded by the very men who are loudest in denouncing the Radicals of their own lands. We have been pricked on, in short, to act as the Quixotes and clowns of Europe; and if now and then we appeared to lead other nations, we did so only like those unlucky sappers who walk in the van of armies. It is not the sappers who have settled the line of march; those who did that are behind, but the sappers are sent in front to clear the way and run the risks of ambush."

This is the substance of what Frenchmen wrote in the first hours that followed defeat; but their fit of perspicacity was short-lived. Now that thirty months have elapsed, they have resumed their old habit of laughing at themselves and at others, of blustering, quarrelling, cutting capers, and shouting; and Europe surveys them with the same wondering curiosity as before, setting them down for a people who are decidedly incorrigible, and who, victorious or beaten, will continue to amuse, frighten, and scandalize other nations to the end of the chapter. This being so, it may please the reader to be introduced familiarly to the score or so of journalists who sway French people, such as they are, and make up what is popularly called "the great voice of the French Press.' The present writer speaks of them from personal knowledge, and will endeavor to sketch them, as far as may be, in their natural colors.

II.

A name that is often quoted in London papers is that of M. John Lemoinne, who writes for the Journal des Débats. There are plenty of English essayists as clever as M. Lemoinne, whose names are not known to the public, and never will be; but to see a Frenchman write sound sense without rhapsody appears so strange a thing on this side of the Channel that whenever M. Lemoinne puts his hand to a long leader we hear of it from Lerwick to Land's End. Perhaps it ought to gratify us that M. Lemoinne was brought up in England, owed his first successes to a thorough knowledge of English literature, and speaks our language with a musical purity not often found even amongst us natives. He is now fifty-eight, and is a thoughtful, undemonstrative man, who wears a white neckcloth, and has passed his manhood in wondering why France should not adapt herself to British institutions. About two years ago he let himself be converted to Re publicanism, much as a man is converted to swallowing a black-draught; but he readily seized on the Fusion as a pretext for changing sides again, and when the Count de Chambord's letter of renunciation was made public there was not an unhappier face in Paris than M. Lemoinne's.

In his solemn way, M. Lemoinne has two bugbears: 1st, the British newspaper which writes up M. Gambetta in one column and sneers down Sir Charles Dilke in the next; and 2d, the British politician of the Palmerston school, who asserts that Frenchmen are not fit for liberty, and can

only be managed by a government like the Second Empire. Full two thirds of the leaders M. Lemoinne has ever penned are protests against the latter proposition; and during the Empire, M. Lemoinne was backed up by a most distinguished phalanx of Anglophilists, such as MM. St. Marc Girardin, Eugéne Forcade, Prévost Paradol, and Édouard Hervé, the last of whom alone survives.

Of these gentlemen it may truly be said that they knew the British Constitution as well as if it were an invention of their own. When Mr. Bright thundered against this or that "superannuated contrivance;" when Mr. Beale's good friends pulled up the Park railings, when Mr. Stuart Mill lent his countenance to woman suffrage or crotchety agrarian schemes, and when Mr. Disraeli dished the Whigs in the ingenious fashion we remember, M. Lemoinne and his co-thinkers all uttered piercing cries as if they were being personally molested. For all that they made few proselytes outside the ranks of educated Frenchmen. Parisians approved their articles because the Débats and other papers in which their effusions were published were much disliked by the Emperor; and being disagreeable to the reigning potentate has always been a powerful element in French politics. But average Parisians were sceptical as to the panaceal properties of the British Constitution for distempers of the body politic; and after the fall of Napoleon III. the Anglophilists were carried onwards by the tide of events, or left high and dry miles behind it.

--

M. Hervé, who is editor of the Journal de Paris and an amiable, scholarly writer, much terrified by the unwashed face of democracy M. Hervé still does battle for Westminster customs in his journal, which is the organ of the Orleans family; but M. Lemoinne can scarcely be said to have any opinion, except that everything and everybody are going wrong. A short while since, he declared ruefully that Reason had ceased to have a voice in public matters, and he is in just such a frame of mind as may cause us to hear any morning that he has retired from militant journalism. The readers of the Revue des Deux Mondes would not complain of this, for they might get a new series of literary essays like the "Life of Brummel," English Electoral Habits," and "Caroline of Brunswick," which first drew public notice on M. Lemoinne some thirty years ago; but journalists at once learned, able, and temperate are everywhere so scarce that one must hope M. Lemoinne will be content to take the world as he finds it, nor be disgusted because he cannot lift it out of its wayward grooves.

M. Lemoinne is not decorated, nor has he ever sought a post under Government, though he could long ago have had his pick of good places for the asking. The reason of this abstinence is that M. Lemoinne looks upon journalism as being itself a profession, the baton in which is a character for independence and truth, which character M. Lmoinne has got. A prefectship would be no promotion, and indeed it might put him in grievous straits; for if M. Lemoinne were appointed prefect, he would not fail to commence ruling on British principles. With Hallam for his daily guide, Blackstone for his philosopher and friend, he would measure the length of his prerogatives by those of a Lord-Lieutenant; whereat the Ministry of the Interior, perceiving that he neither imprisoned anybody, nor sup pressed newspapers, nor had recourse to the military to disperse meetings of orderly citizens assembled to discuss politics, would conclude that he had none of the qualifications necessary to a French official, and dismiss him with ignominy.

To speak of M. Louis Veuillot in the same breath with temperate journalism seems a strong measure, but the shock may be broken by coupling with M. Veuillot's name that of M. Ernest Rénan, M. Lemoinne's colleague on the Débats. Now, M. Rénan is the champion of free-thought, and M. Veuillot the beadle of Catholic orthodoxy; yet by a freak of fate these two gentlemen, who stand at the opposite poles of journalism, happen to be the two most skilful and pungent writers of their own language. The most courtly and classical among French writers is Count de Rémusat; the most academical in purism M. Guizot or M.

Barthélémy St. Hilaire; the sweetest and softest, M. Octave Feuillet; and the most Parisian, M. Edmond About: but for extent of vocabulary, and for a complete mastery of all the resources of the French tongue, there are no two such penmen as MM. Rénan and Veuillot; and if only M. Rénan shared M. Veuillot's love for controversy, there might be some hot skirmishes now and then to keep the Boulevards lively.

Unfortunately, M. Rénan writes seldom, and he never gives heed to personal attacks. A man of fifty, with quiet, winning manners, a pleasing voice, and a handsome face, clean shaven as a priest's, no one would take him for the best abused man on the face of the globe - the author, who, with his "Life of Jesus," has sowed doubt broadcast, earned at M. Veuillot's hands the title of "wholesale peopler of madhouses and Antichrist," and been solemnly excommunicated by the Pope. Yet the strangest thing about M. Rénan is, that having been educated for holy orders, he has retained none of the casuistry of Romish seminaries. He refused ordination (and thereby renounced lucrative preferment, which had been promised him) because his master, M. Dupanloup, now Bishop of Orleans, was unable to solve some doubts that had beset him; and ever since he first put a pen to paper he has abided by two maxims : to make his own meaning clear, and never by a subterfuge to avoid facing the argument of an adversary.

M. Rénan may be accepted as the incarnation of that French passion for logic which will take nothing for granted, but must have it all proved by rule of thumb. The consequence is, that instead of being a Republican, he is a theoretic Monarchist (without reference to particular dynasties), reflection having convinced him that Republicanism, however sound in doctrine, has invariably broken down (save in small States) in practice. This is a bitter pill for Republicans of the Louis Blanc type to swallow; but the great difference between M. Rénan's style of reasoning and theirs is that they will make no allowance for facts which do not tally with their preconceived notions and prejudices, whereas M. Rénan starts without any prejudice, and aims solely at discovering abstract truth.

M. Louis Blanc, whom we have all met in London or Brighton at the period when he was English correspondent to the Temps, and who now divides his time between fidgety silence in the National Assembly and occasional dogmatic contributions to the Red Rappel M. Louis Blanc, with his systematic one-sidedness, would make any fair-tempered man hate Republicanism, and he has made such men hate it by the thousand.

A dainty homunculus (as Mr. Carlyle might call him), smaller in statue than even M. Thiers, with a wizen, hairless face, dapper hands, feminine voice, and a feline method in conversation, he has been surnamed the Jesuit of Republicanism, and is the originator of that sound theory that Republicanism is a law of nature, and that nations have no right to set up kings, even if it suits them. Premising all his arguments with this hypothesis, he rejects lessons of history, experience, facts, knowledge, and all expedient policy in short, and is, in his own way, every whit as intolerant as the most fanatical of Legitimists. Indeed, if there be Legitimists so hot, it is because there are Republicans so fractious - pragmatical little men, who ride big hobbies over the likes and dislikes of mankind, and would have all humanity bow to an ideal picture of Democracy, as absurdly overcolored as the daubs which are hung up outside shows to set clowns agape.

M. Louis Blanc cannot understand that a man of M. Rénan's intellect should be so feeble as to look at two sides of a question; and M. Rénan is at a loss to conceive why a man should swear that the whole earth is red because his own spectacles happen to be scarlet. M. Louis Blanc will go to his final judgment with the ten volumes of his "Histoire de la Révolution " under his arm, and he will point to his panegyric of Robespierre with the satisfaction of one who has done his best to promote good-will and confusion among men. M. Rénan will reach his deathbed unshaken in the belief that if MM. Robespierre and Louis Blanc had flourished together, the one would have eaten

up the other and left the world but little the better for being abandoned to the incisive experiments of the survivor.1

But to return to M. Louis Veuillot, who hates MM. Rénan and Louis Blanc with equal piety. This modern Torquemada has not always been the ferocious Ultramontanist we behold him now. Like Augustine of Hippo he passed his early life among the profligates, contributing to comic news sheets, fighting duels with actors whom he had quizzed and brother journalists whom he had libelled, and publishing a novel, "L'Honnête Femme," much less edifying in its tendency than the title might suggest. But having gone on a tour to Rome in 1838, when he was just fiveand-twenty years old, the religious ceremonies of Easter week wrought such a powerful effect on him that he came back an altered man. Good-by to songs and suppers, revelries and profane literature. M. Veuillot's friends laughed at the change that had come over him, and argued that it would wear off; but M. Veuillot growlingly anathematized them, and from that time to this he has been busy classing his fellow-men into two categories: namely, a very small one who will troop into heaven behind him because they subscribe to his newspaper, L'Univers, or, at all events, adopt its tenets; and a painfully large one, who will be kept waiting at the gates without a chance of ever obtaining admittance. Priests of all shades, bishops, and even a few saints jostle one another in this last category, for M. Veuillot is no respecter of persons, and has long since learned that the cowl does not make the monk. Of his own zealous authority he has re-judged a round dozen of saints who he asserts were canon zed in a hurry or owing to erroneous information (which does not prevent him from championing Papal infallibility), and he rebukes tepid bishops and weak-kneed members of the lesser clergy without stint or scruple.

A few years ago Monseigneur Dupanloup lost patience under M. Veuillot's admonitions, and gave vent to his feelings in a well-known letter, beginning, "Monsieur, le rôle que vous cherchez à jouer dans l'Église est intolérable.” But M. Veuillot did not care for that. The Pope approved him; and it was perhaps lucky for the Pope that he did approve, for M. Veuillot is much like that French lady who, being told that she ought to live in subjection to her husband because the Holy Spirit, speaking through the mouth of St. Paul, had ordered it so, answered, "Ah! mais moi je ne suis pas du même avis que le Saint Esprit." In person M. Veuillot bears some resemblance to the portraits of Mirabeau, his features being deeply pitted, his lips full and sarcastic, and his eyes ever aglow. He is now sixty, but ripeness of age has in no way quenched his fiery spirit nor his indefatigable industry. He probably reads more than any other man in France, for, making it his duty to keep an eye over the orthodoxy of the whole Church, he dips into every new work of theology, and leaves not a pastoral or a mandamus unexamined. Talk to him in private about his travels, or about any secular matter not tending to controversy, and you will be struck by his genial humor and his fanciful shrewdness in describing scenes and customs he has witnessed. He has also, though unmarried, a wonderful love for children; and if you catch him drawing out the yellow silk handkerchief, which he flourishes benevolently as a prelude to social intercourse, the chances are ten to one that the hearth-rug will be littered with sugar plums which he has bought for baby acquaintances. But mention the name of a prominent freethinker or Church waverer, and M. Veuillot's aspect undergoes a curious change. Back goes the yellow handkerchief into the capacious tail of his coat, his knotty right hand plunges straight into the bosom of his shirt, a sardonic grin (it is really not a smile) breaks over his expressive

1 The writer thinks it well to state that, in expressing his admiration for M. Ernest Renan's impartiality and good faith as a logician, he offers no opinion on the Life of Jesus, which is not in question here. M. Renan is not infallible; but those who heard bis lectures when he was Professor of History at the College de France, and those who read the political and literary articles which he contributes from time to time to the Débats and Revue des Deux Mondes, must do him justice as a reasoner, however much they may differ from his views on Christianity.

lips, and quick as malice itself M. Veuillot launches one of those pitiless bolts which quiver into the weakest part of a delinquent's armor.

M. Veuillot is a terrible man for inventing epithets which sum up all the foibles of an enemy, and stick to him through a lifetime. He christened Prince Napoleon Jérome Egalité, M. Thiers King Ego, Father Hyacinthe the Sancho Panza of the Church; and his printed sketches of divers anti-clerical people are like anatomical dissections, so cruelly do they expose the innermost blemishes of the victims. Freethinkers walk in much terror of M. Veuillot; and if they have any peccadilloes even on their private consciences, take care not to come athwart him; but perhaps Churchmen feel even more fearfully towards this Inquisitor of a man. It could scarcely have been pleasant for the bishops at the last Ecumenical to see M. Veuillot stalking about the Vatican as if he were the usher who had brought all these holy men together, and meant to punish such of them as were refractory; neither can it be agreeable at this juncture for foreign priests, who know little of M. Veuillot, to discover that he knows all about them, and is concerned to hear from private reports that their proceedings are not what to his mind-they should be. Possibly, if the Romanist clergy throughout Christendom were privately polled, a strong majority would opine that M. Veuillot is a trifle too good for our earth, and that if he were withdrawn from this vale of tears, which he illumines with his blazing sanctity, it would be a providential release for him and for them.

--

But M. Veuillot shows no anxiety to quit this scene of his ecclesiastical wrestles; and so long as he continues to splash epithets at his opponents for the cleaning of their souls, one of the writers most frequently bespattered by him will be, as heretofore, M. Edmond About, editor of the XIXème Siècle, and Paris correspondent of the Athenæum. If ever France should possess a truly paternal government, which will restrict every man to the work he can best do, that government will prohibit M. About from writing in newspapers at all, and send him back to fabricate us some more novels. M. About is a capital novelist. His "Trente et Quarante " is a very gem, and his "Mariages de Paris" tales to read and re-read; but he is a poor journalist inconsistent, flighty, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, by no means free from personal bias in judging men and measures. So long as he confined himself to fiction it fared well with him, for he achieved reputation, wealth, and paved his way to a fine marriage; but one day he took it into his head that he was born for political destinies, and since then he has been running to seed at a precipitous rate. The late Emperor was primarily responsible for unhinging M. About's brain, having invited the witty author to Compiègne and pinned a red ribbon to his button-hole. Then he talked to him about the Roman question; and as it was part of Imperial policy at that period (1858) to be on ill terms with the Pope, M. About was asked whether he would go to Rome at Government expense, and write a book about it-the implication being that his book on Rome should bear a close resemblance to his amusing skit on Greece, "Le Grèce Contemporaine." Of course M. About was delighted.

We all have our weaknesses, and M. About's weakness was, and is, to hear himself called "Le petit-fils de Voltaire." He much loved to be noted as a famous infidel, and it would have been sweet to him if the Pope would only have banned him in a special bull, to be posted on all church doors throughout Christendom. Thus congenially disposed he went to Rome, and wrote of it all the evil that could be decently crammed in 300 octavo pages, after which he returned, expecting his reward in the shape of a post under Government. But the Emperor's Papal policy had in the mean time veered, and M. About was told that he should have a diplomatic appointment by and by, only that his Roman book having caused "a great scandal," it was advisable to wait until the soreness of it had passed off. Prince Napoleon conveyed this message at one of those jovial Friday dinners at his Pompeian Villa of the Avenue Montaigne, where he gathered, at the private request of his

cousin, all the eminent pagans whom the Emperor durst not invite too often to the Tuileries. The Prince told M. About to wait-and M. About waited. He waited, and wrote more novels, got married, and enlarged his fine estate at Saverne. He waited, and from the official columns of the Moniteur wrote furious anti-republican articles, which secured him promotion in the Legion of Honor. But the diplomatic appointment kept tarrying, and at length the "Grandson of Voltaire" lost patience, and following the immemorial wont of baffled Frenchmen, discovered that he had been from the first an ardent Liberal. This was about five years ago, and M. About lost no time in revealing his long concealed Liberalism in the Gaulois, then a new paper started in rivalry to the Figaro.

From the Gaulois he passed to the Soir as editor, with a salary of 60,000fr., and at the outbreak of the war appointed himself special correspondent, and wrote from the battlefields a series of letters most remarkable for everything except gratitude to the Sovereign who had so often and so kindly befriended him. Gratitude, however, has never been M. About's forte, and he would gladly subscribe to the late Nestor Roqueplan's aphorism: "L'ingratitude est l'indépendance du cœur," adding thereto this maxim of his own: "Les bienfaits coûteraient trop cher s'il fallait les payer." The late critic Sainte-Beuve, who knew M. About well, said of him, "Chacun de ses livres est une belle œuvre et une mauvaise action," meaning that the author of "Le Roi des Montagnes" could seldom resist the temptation of saying a witty thing at the expense of people whom he intimately knew, whence that vein of demure personalities which runs through all his novels - personalities which the generality of readers cannot detect, but which are apparent enough to the initiated, who read between the lines. Without going so far as M. Sainte-Beuve, one may say of M. About that he is one of those delightfully keen psychologists whom it is pleasanter to have as a neutral acquaintance than as a foe. He is now forty-five, but looks ten years younger; and you have only to glance at his wide-awake face, rendered deceptively bluff by a hay-colored beard, his malicious blue eyes and meaning smile, to guess how agreeably this thorough Parisian can pull absent celebrities to pieces over a quiet dinner-table, or in a snug drawing-room before an admiring audience of ladies. M. About is a great favorite with ladies, but as regards men-friends he stands in much the same position as Prince Talleyrand, who remarked that he had all his life through possessed one sincere friend-and that was himself. However, M. About can boast of at least a fervent comrade and worshipper in the person of M. Francisque Sarcey, the dramatic critic to the Temps, and M. About's chief contributor to the XIXème Siècle. As Boswell was to Johnson, so is M. Sarcey to M. About; but we know that Johnson did not consider himself bound to repay Boswell's admiration by a warm show of kindred feeling. With respect to political opinions, M. About is still hoping, so his enemies say, for a diplomatic appointment; and meanwhile he advocates a sort of chameleonous republicanism, which varies much in hue, according to the color of the party that may happen to be in the ascendant. His latest public achievement has been to fight a duel with M. Edouard Hervé, and to pay a fine of £8 for this misdemeanor, which arose from an interview with the Count of Paris. Two years ago, when it looked as though the Count were going to become King, M. About requested M. Hervé to present him to his Royal Highness, and M. Hervé having complied. M. About said, with an amiable bow, to the Prince, "All the hopes of France are centred on you, Monseigneur." This year the hopes of France having centred elsewhere, M. About found it convenient to ignore his compliment and to abuse the Prince, whereat M. Hervé waxed wroth, and some bitter articles ensued, culminating in the fine of £8 above-mentioned. However, all who know M. About do him the justice to feel sure that, should the Count of Paris become King after all, this little unpleasantness will be forgotten, for Louis Philippe d'Orléans is not vindictive, and M. About is ever generous in forgiving and forgetting the hard things he has said of others.

Another journalist who has long hankered after a public post but nothing less than a seat in the Cabinet would suit him is M. Emile de Girardin, the founder of the Presse, and owner of the Liberté-"le Grand Emile," as Boulevard wags call him. M. de Girardin wears a long wisp of hair over his forehead like the great Napoleon, and just as the dancer Trenis said a hundred years ago, "This century has begotten three men Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and me" so would M. de Girardin willingly say, or at all events think, "Two men have illustrated this century - I and Napoleon." He is now past seventy, and has glanced at events all his life through that sheen eye-glass of his, which was once a very will-o'-the-wisp, leading Frenchmen forever into new fields of speculation, financial quagmires, and political morasses. At an age when most boys are at school, M. de Girardin had written a novel; before he had even shaved he started a joint-stock company; at twenty-five he founded a paper, which candidly called itself Le Voleur, because it filched the best articles from all the other journals; and at twenty-five and a half this paper had procured him three suits-at-law, a criminal action for libel, and two duels. But M. de Girardin won his suits, got acquitted for the libel, and winged his adversaries; after which he started afresh, and inaugurated a promising era in journalism by publishing serial fictions in a daily paper along with political leaders, and selling the mixture for a halfpenny cheaper than rival newspapers.

This grand idea of the roman feuilleton put the completing touch to M. de Girardin's fame. All the other papers, even the grave Débats (which trebled its circulation by M. Eugène Sue's novel, "Les Mystères de Paris") felt bound to season their politics with long-winded romances; and the Presse, in which this experiment had been first tried, brought its owner a cool £10,000 a year. M. de. Girardin's next exploits consisted in marrying the beautiful and witty Mlle. Delphine Gay (then known in literature as the "Viscount de Launay "); in shooting and killing Armand Carrel, the chief of Republican journalists (1836); in accurately predicting the fall of every Cabinet that declined listening to his advice, and in getting talked of as a possible member of all new Cabinets.

After such a well-spent career M. de Girardin might fairly claim to sit at rest in the sumptuous palace he has bought in the Champs Elysées next to ex-Queen Isabella of Spain; but M. de Girardin is one of those men whom nothing in this life will wholly silence, and he takes as great a pleasure as ever he did in bestowing advice on statesmen who have not asked him for it. He has been called Le Saint Sacrement, because it has been remarked that Governments only send for him when their condition is past praying for; and his arrival invariably acts like a Nunc Dimittis which closes their career for good and all. He hurried to the Tuileries on the 23d February, 1848, just in time to counsel Louis Philippe's abdication when it was too late. He was consulted by Napoleon III. in 1870, by the Empress Regent after Sedan, and by M. Thiers on the eve of the 24th May; but he has never been able to persuade either Sovereign or Premier that he would be a valuable person to have in an administration. This has imparted to his conversation a somewhat injured tone, and he insensibly speaks of himself as of a man whose worth contemporaries have ignored. He has certainly made more noise in his time than any dozen other journalists clubbed together; and what is still better, he has made varieties of noises, for there is not a single opinion in the catalogue of political creeds which he has not at one time or other advocated. In this respect he may be said to have set an example of suppleness to this and the coming generation of writers, who make, and will make it a point of honor to quote him as a precedent whenever they wish to assail_today what they defended yesterday- and vice versa. But he has set as good an example in other points, for he was the first to launch that style of spasmodic leader, chopped into trenchant lines and short paragraphs, a style now become classical. No great trouble is needed for such leaders, and M. de Girardin, who has never deigned to read up the annals of any nation but the French, had a

great art for jumbling up scraps of historical lore, picked up in desultory reading. In 1848, when he threw himself, heart, soul, paper, and pen, into the advocacy of Louis Napoleon's Presidential candidature, this was the sort of leader to which he would treat the readers of the Presse every evening. There were generally three or four of these leaders, all bearing his signature; and it must be borne in mind that each of the sentences, here divided by dashes, occupied a separate line of large print, well leaded. L'Empire, c'est la Paix."

Empire is peace-Peace is Empire Without Empire Empire-Without no peace Without peace no Empire- Why is Empire peace? Because it is propped up by bayonets- Why are bayonets peaceful? Because they frighten the Foreigner -To each nation its Providential man -To England a Pitt, to France a Napoleon Why was Pitt strong? Because he ruled free England - Why was England free? Because she was ruled by Pitt-There was a King called Nebuchadnezzar — A King of Babylon and Nineveh Why may the French nation be some day compared to Nebuchadnezzar ? — Because this King of Babylon, being a fool, was sent to herd for seven years with the beasts of the field-Will France ever herd with the beasts of the field? Yes, and chew the cud of remorse and humiliation When and why? - France will herd for seven times seven years with the brute nations of the world- And be despised - And laughed at- And mocked — And it will serve her right- If she do not elect Louis Napoleon.

--

turer

This style of composition might occasion surprise if found in a leading column of the Times, but to a Parisian public it tasted well, with a glass of bitter drink just before dinner. To this day Frenchmen allude, with a national pride, to the Great Emile's journalistic feats, and point to his numberless successful disciples in the Press as a proof that his name can never be obliterated. And yet it is probable that M. de Girardin will be remembered less in connection with his fine manner of writing than because of the good-humored patronage he has always extended to young and struggling men of letters. Himself an adventhe term is no disgrace to him, for he wrote an autobiography, greatly glorying in the title - he has never missed a chance of fostering youthful talent. His principal contributors have always been young men, for he loved to have such about him; and any one, no matter how shabby, eccentric, and friendless, who came to ask him for employment, was sure of obtaining it, if he passed satisfactorily through an ordeal to which M. de Girardin would subject him to test his sharpness. One of the Great Emile's favorite tests consisted in saying to the aspirant: "Call on me to-morrow at six." If the aspirant came at six P. M., he was a lost man: but if he had the sense to guess that so Olympian a personage as this editor must be afoot and busy with the early bird, the Great Emile's thin lips smiled approvingly, and he would say: "That's right, you'll stop and breakfast."

III.

It has just been mentioned that M. de Girardin has had many disciples: they have, in fact, been so numerous that Parisian journalists who have not at some time or other served under the Great Emile's orders are almost exceptions. M. de Girardin's practice was to keep a writer till he had achieved a name, then the two generally quarrelled ; for the Great Emile was renowned for having a new idea every day, and when his contributors became too consequential to jump obediently from notion to notion every twenty-four hours, he would hint that the world was large enough for two, and bow his unbending disciple out. Let us, however, take our seats in front of the Café de Suède, next door to the Variétés Theatre, and see M. de Girardin's old pupils, and indeed all other Parisian journalists of note, file by towards five P. M., the "absinthe hour;" with thirsty but cheerful looks, just fresh from the printing and publishing offices, that cluster about the Rue Montmartre.

The Café de Suède is the headquarters of journalists athirst, and a score or two of them are sure to drop in to discuss the news in the first editions of evening papers which appear between four and five. All these educators of the people are not equally eminent, nor do they call for full biographies at our hands. But many of them are powers in their way, and deserve at least a nominal mention.

First a young man of thirty-two, with unfortunate looking shoes which show his stocks, and unbraced pantaloons which exhibit a bulging expanse of linen below his waistcoat. The nap of his hat bristles up, he has a pile of papers under his arm, his hands are thrust deep in his waistband, and he walks as if the cares of State still sat on his shoulders. This is M. Clement Duvernois, editor of the Ordre, the Empress Eugénie's paper. He was once a Radical, and a gushing pupil of M. de Girardin's at a period when the latter was at quills drawn with the Empire; but one day he changed opinions somewhat unexpectedly, was met going in and out of the Tuileries with notes for the Emperor's "Life of Cæsar," and eventually blossomed out as Minister of Commerce -a post he held for three weeks, that is from the 10th August to 4th September, 1870. M. Duvernois wears a ferocious-looking beard, and he does not forgive the Republican party for having nipped his career as a statesman untimely in the bud. If the Empire were restored, he would hope to be some day prime-minister, and would wage war upon M. Rouher, whom he secretly regards as a hindrance in his way; for if M. Rouher were gathered to his fathers, and if M. Duvernois could obtain a seat in the Assembly as easily as he did in the Imperial Corps Législatif, then he would assuredly lead the Bonapartist faction and be reckoned a somebody. Meantime he writes well and violently, earns a fine income, and would probably buy a pair of braces and brush his hat if he could divert his thoughts from the public weal.

Behind him comes another writer, careless in his attire, and with him one of the best-dressed men in Paris: these two are M. J. J. Weiss and M. Henri de Pène, editor of Paris Journal. M. Weiss is like one of those rough-bound books which one must not judge from the cover. He disdains gloves, but he writes as few other men can; and, what is better, he is a singular instance of chivalrous political fidelity, "pushed almost to Quixotism." Originally editor of the Journal de Paris, M. Weiss assailed the Empire in vigorous but always temperate language, and claimed for France a Parliamentary Government and liberties. When the Emperor called M. Ollivier to power, and seemed thereby to be entering upon a Liberal policy, M. Weiss felt it would be uncandid to continue his opposition; and so he accepted a post in the Fine Arts department, and has been secretly fretting over his mistake ever since. If he were as many other men, M. Weiss would easily have shaken off his yoke of allegiance after the 4th September, and have set to work abusing the régime he had served; but he was not like other men. Having drawn Imperial pay, he will not stoop to write against Imperialism, though at heart he never loved that form of rule, and possibly loves it now less than ever. His terse and scholarly articles in Paris Journal are much read, but there is a disenchanted tone about them, and when M. Weiss talks to you he does so with those frequent shrugs which mark a Frenchman's belief in the utter vanity of things human. M. Weiss's editor, however, still thinks there are cakes and ale to live for. He twists a gold-headed cane in his well-gloved hands, fillips a speck of dust off the silk facings of his coat, and tells you, with an aristocratical smile, that he would like to flick all Republicanism into space as easily.

A thorough exquisite is M. de Pène; cool, handsome, and brave as a Zouave. He burst into renown by very nearly being slain in a duel, under circumstances rather comical. Being then a contributor to the Figaro, he wrote of the officers of a certain line regiment, that they rushed into the supper-room at the Tuileries balls as if they were a troop of jackals. Justly incensed, the officers drew lots

among them as to which should challenge M. de Pène, and made a vow that they would fight him, one after another, until his insolent blood were spilled to the last drop. But they were spared this trouble, for the first officer thrust home so cruelly that for six weeks M. de Pene's life was despaired of, and the colonel of the said regiment declared that the honor of "his jackals' was satisfied. As the Army was not popular at this date, it needed no more than this duel to make M. de Pène a hero, and to double the worth of his literary signature. He soon found a moneyed man to risk starting a paper in his company, and there he is now, a living instance of the fact that a hole in the chest is not always an unmixed evil.

But duellists will always be liked in France, for look at this young giant who comes striding along with his curly head aloft and his creole features, snarling at a pair of Radical journalists who flit by him. This is M. Paul de Cassagnac, who has fought about a dozen duels, and will be engaged in many more such encounters before he has done. He is editor of the Pays, and has been so for the last three years, though he is but little past his thirtieth year, and knows not much of literature. To write in the Pays you must have a good command of virulent adjectives, and must be an adept with swords or pistols. You must, further, worship Napoleon III., believe that the Second Empire heaped innumerable blessings upon France, and be well versed in all scandals appertaining to the private lives of foremost Republicans. M. de Cassagnac plies his pen as if it were a bludgeon, and when not engaged in writing articles of three columns' length — for his style is not concise - he may be generally found fencing in M. Paz's gymnastic rooms, and there is no denying that he fences well. A congenial friend of his is M. Edmond Tarbé, who edits the Gaulois, and tries to model his clothing and manners on those of M. de Pène without quite succeeding. M. Tarbé earned some distinction by riding out of besieged Paris disguised as a postilion, and going straight off to Brussels whilst his countrymen were getting their heads broken. At Brussels he started a provincial edition of his Gaulois, and, to the astonishment of the public, began to champion the claims of the dethroned Emperor, whom until that time he had always assailed. There was a mysteriousness in this proceeding which has never been cleared up; but it is enough for ordinary inquirers that the Gaulois has been since the war one of the most obedient and most frequently "inspired" organs of Chiselhurst. It is also soothing to know that M. Tarbé has amassed a fortune of several million francs by his paper, and finds no difficulty in spending his money, being young and fond of hospitality.

But we must pass lightly over the next covey of journalists who come scudding down the Boulevard in a brotherly throng. M. Louis Jourdan, the tall, gray-headed, and austere editor of the democratic Siècle; M. Anatole de la Forge, a short-bearded and waddling iconoclast in spectacles, one of the chief contributors to the same paper; M. Hippolyte Castille, whose articles, signed with the pseudonym of "Alceste," have caused the suppression of no less than three daily papers, and who, for all his vigor, looks a quiet old gentleman enough; and M. Edouard Portalis, a young dandy, who is a son, nephew, cousin, and brother of staunch Conservative landowners, and who himself dabbles with the tips of his yellow gloves into the frothings of extreme democracy, and lately tried to form a new alliance between Red Republicans and Red Bonapartists_under Prince Napoleon. Then we have M. Francisque Sarcey, friend, as above said, to M. About - a fat, pleasant critic, who would look well disguised as a monk of old, and who contrives to say, in nine out of every ten articles he writes, "at the time when I was a schoolmaster" - the fact being that he once held a professorship in a Government college, and was dismissed therefrom for telling his pupils that Augustus was a poor sort of character, and Brutus a much better citizen than Cæsar.

Next to M. Sarcey we may meet M. Charles Monselet, dramatic critic to Evénement, and very busy at this juncture trying to set up a new joint-stock theatre at the Porte