taires throughout the country. The 'Siè-1

The Siècle has not enlarged its size. It cle' is said to have 42,000 abonnés, and consists of twelve columns, exclusive of adthe shares of 200 francs, which have al-vertisements, and is about eighteen inches ways borne an interest, have been nearly long, and twelve and a half broad. The reimbursed to the proprietors, and are now feuilleton consists of six columns, and is worth five or six times their original cost. much better written than any other portion Ten years ago there were only two journals of the paper. Alphonse Karr, the author which paid, as a literary and commercial of the 'Guèpes,' is one of the principal conspeculation: these were the Gazette des tributors, and Frederic Soulié has sold his Tribunaux' and the Constitutionnel;' but pen as a feuilletoniste for six years to the now the 'Siècle' and the 'Presse' are the Siècle' and the 'Presse' conjointly. The most successful as commercial speculations. Siècle' has always appeared to us a dull paTo show the vicissitudes of newspaper pro- per-probably it is necessary that the writers perty in France, it may be here stated, that should level themselves down to the intellect in 1839 the 'Presse' was sold for 1200 of the genre epicier-and indifferently writfrancs, but in 1841, two years afterwards, it ten. The review of Thiers' History, which was worth a million to its new proprietors. made some noise, was by Chambolle, the The editor of the 'Siècle' is M. A. editor, as the review in the 'ConstitutionChambolle, a member of the Chamber; nel' was written by Merruau, the Friend of and M. Gustave Beaumont, the author of a Thiers. But a far more correct, comprework on Ireland, forms a portion of the hensive, copious, and fairer review of this conseil de rédaction. The pains-taking work, appeared just after its publication, in and laborious Leon Faucher also writes in No. 69 of the Foreign Quarterly Review,' the political department. That very dull, published in the month of April, last year. common-place, pompous, overrated man, We are now to speak of the oldest of Odillon Barrot, to whose family, com- the new order of journals-we mean 'La prising brothers, brothers-in-law, uncles, Presse.' This paper was founded in June, and nephews, the Revolution has given 1836, by M. Emile de Girardin, said to be 130,000f. a year, and concessions of land a natural son of the Count Alexander, or in Africa, valued at 42,000f. a year, is the his brother, Stanislas Girardin, by an Engobject of the Siècle's' idolatry. This is lish mother. The Revolution of 1830 saw not to be wondered at. Ferdinand Barrot, Emile de Girardin an Inspecteur des Beaux brother of Odillon, a writer, and a share- Arts. Shortly after that event, he became holder in and supporter of the 'Siècle,' re- the editor of the Journal des Connaissanceived 24,000f. as avocat du Trésor; and ces Utiles,' of the Panthéon Littéraire,' on the first of May, in the past year, one of of the Musée de Familles,' and of the the editors of the Siècle obtained the de-Voleur;' but all these journals died in coration of the Legion of Honor. No won- quick succession. He then published a der, then, that the writers in this journal book called 'Emile,' which had no great call the ex Volontaire Royal, who wept success. This is certainly no proof of want over the boots of Louis the Eighteenth the of talent, or, at best, but negative proof, night of his departure for Ghent, and who while it affords positive evidence of no received in recompense of his loyal tears, common energy, and very great industry. at the period of the second Restoration, as As M. Girardin had no fortune, and had a gift from the king, a place which he after-married the pretty Delphine Gay, (daughwards sold to the Jew advocate, Cremieux, ter of Sophie Gay,) who had nothing but for 300,000f-no wonder that they call her pen and poetry, it was necessary he this patriotic recipient and dispenser of should do something to create an existence, good fat sinecures, orateur eminent, hom- or a name and an existence, if that were me, politique considerable.' If a pompous possible. Conjointly, then, with an homand prophetic tone, a magisterial and sol-me à projets, one M. Boutmey, who had inemn air, and common-place ideas and sen- vented a machine called paracrotte, or mudtiments, suffice to make an eminent orator, defender, which was to be attached to the and the postponing of electoral reform till heels of pedestrians, and another instruliberty is secured by the erection of the en-ment, called a physiortype, the ingenious ceinte continuée, a considerable politician Emile launched on the waters of the Seine -what an anti-climax!-then is Odillon the project of the 'Presse.' As the jourBarrot an eminent orator and a considera-nal was larger and cheaper than all other ble politician. French journals-as it was a joint-stock.

6

company on a new plan, as applied to news- the aristocratic name attached, that the papers-as, in a word, there was a garish, Causeries' were read, but because of the slap-dash flourish, and melodramatic char- ease, grace, spirit, and talent which they latanism about the thing, and a certain var- disclosed. That they were what is called nish of cleverness, shrewdness, modest as a 'lucky hit,' and pleased readers, there can surance, novelty, and rouérie-the pros- be no doubt. Meanwhile the paper was pectus took; the shares went off briskly; practically conducted, and in a most merand, lo, and behold! the journal was born, cantile spirit. The interests of the coma strong and healthy babe, after no long or mercial and shop-keeping classes, as well painful gestation. In 1837, when only a as of the very numerous class of petits renyear old, it had 15,000 abonnés; and in tiers, were considered, sustained, and pan1838, the product of its advertisements dered to. In the political department, the amounted to 150,000 francs. It must, in journal had no very fixed or staple prinjustice to this journal, be stated, that it ciples, and took for its motto 'Au jour le was the first to teach the French public jour.' As to political creed or conviction, the use and advantage of advertisements. the thing never entered into the head of Twenty years previously, there were not Girardin, unless as a means to wealth, contwo columns of advertisements in any sideration, and what the French call, a poFrench paper; whereas, two years after the sition. But the man was adroit, confident, existence of the Presse,' it could boast of ready, and full of resources, and never defive columns well filled. The mother of spaired, even when his prospects were of Mde. Emile de Girardin-Sophie Gay, née the gloomiest. With all his address and Lavalette-had published, under the title management, he barely paid his expenses. of Causeries du Monde,' a periodical work, The Russian emperor and the Russian sysof which she had sold the copyright to tem of government, however, were without Alphonse Karr, the sharp writer of the a champion at the Parisian press, and Girar'Guèpes.' This maternal precedent, doubt- din entered the lists. That this was done less, suggested to the daughter, then of the from pure love and affection, all Paris beripe age of thirty, but of considerable beau-lieves; for every body knows that the Rusty, no mean accomplishments, of rare sian emperor never pays literary men either talents, and already favorably known as a in paper roubles or silver roubles. Whepoetess, to help her husband Emile in his ther they are ever paid by him in Dutch new avocation. She started accordingly ducats, or malachite vases, or bills drawn in the 'Presse,' with a series of articles by the Baron Stieglitz, the Jewish banker called 'Causeries Parisiennes,' signed the on the English Quay, at Petersburgh, is best Vicomte de Launay, which papers had im- known to those who pay and to those who mense success. Many of the vulgar-mind- receive, what Frederick of Prussia called ed and title-worshipping of our countrymen the yellow hussars.' Though variable in -and their name is Legion-will suppose other sentiments, feelings, and opinions, that this was from the aristocratic pseudo- Girardin has ever been true to the monster, nyme with which the articles were signed; Nicholas, and his system; and whenever he but no human being in France cares a rush dares say a word in favor of either the one for a title, unless the bearer of it has some- or the other, he is sure to do so. His pure thing better to recommend him. In Paris, love for the Cossack might be pardoned, and, indeed, in all France, society has and would be unsuspicious, if it were not agreed thatcontemporaneous with a fierce resentment against England and the English. There is not a vile or a base imputation, which the 'Presse,' in its murky malignity, does not calumniously cast at perfidious Albion. Inhumanity, savage barbarity, fraud, trickery, hypocrisy, avarice, and corruption, are weekly, if not daily, imputed to us, by a man whose journal is conducted in the most shopkeeping spirit-by a print which seeks to put all classes under contribution, from the autocrat of the Russias to the smallest actor and actress of the Odeon or Porte St. Martin, or to the most miserable tailor who

The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.'

If De Beranger, Chateaubriand, and De la Martine, were in a salon in France with the De Montmorencys, the De Levis, the De Guiches, the poets and men of genius would march to the salle à manger before the feudal, territorial, and mentally undistinguished aristocracy; and the place of honor would be assigned them in any assembly. Not so, indeed, in free and liberal England. It was not, therefore, because of

6

riages, horses, &c., yet somehow or other there was nothing to justify this; for the journal was sinking by little and little, and the shareholders were perpetually required to pay fresh calls. From the moment M. Dujarrier entered the concern, however, things wore a flourishing aspect; and, though the expenses of management amount to 282,000 francs annually, yet each cinquantiéme share originally negotiated at 4000 francs, now sells from 30,000 to 35,000, albeit the shareholders have yearly received ten per cent. for their money. An unlucky fatality seems, however, to hang over this journal. In 1836, as we before stated, Girardin, the principal editor of the Presse,' shot, in a duel, the able and eloquent Carrel; and in March, 1845, Dujarrier, the associate and co-editor of Girardin, lost his life in a duel with a person of the name of

pants for notoriety. If this be doubted, the | nished house; or, to use the words of Jules proofs are at hand. Among the works Janin,' aussi bien logé que les agents de placed at the head of this article, is a pam- change, with pictures, livery-servants, carphlet, intituled Venalité des Journaux, par Constant Hilbey, Ouvrier.' This poor tailor tells us, at p. 12 of his pamphlet, that not only did he pay two francs a line for the insertion of a poem in the 'Presse,' according to the tenor of the receipt in the marginal note at foot, but that at the request of one of the editors (Granier de Cassagnaç), who had noticed his volume of poems, he sent that person, who first wished for a silver teapot, value 200 francs, four couverts d'argent and six small spoons. A couvert d'argent, as the reader is aware, means a silver fork, a silver spoon, and a silver-handled knife. Thus was the tailor put under contribution for four silver forks, four silver spoons, four silver-handled knives, and six small spoons, the cost of which, at the very least, must have been 200 francs. This was pretty well for a column and a half of criticism, even though the critic Rosemond de Beauvallon, till within the spoke of the author (as he did) in conjunction with Brutus, Cassius, Staberius, Quintus Remius, Quintus Cecilius, Atticus, Abelard, Cardinal d'Ossat, St. Paul, the Magdalen, and Victor Hugo.

Perfidious Albion should not, however, despair. If she should ever think the advocacy of the Presse' worth having-a not very likely supposition-Emile will take her brief, if the quiddam honorarium be forthcoming. What though he be now the most untiring vilipender of our name and our country-calling us robbers in China, and butchers in India; what though he be the most curt and contumelious in his epithets of abuse, crying, Death and hatred to the English government! what though he revel in prosperous and well-paid malignity, offer him but the brief to-morrow, and he will straightway become our zealous advocate. The scales will then fall from his eyes, and our sanguinary and sordid policy will not appear so utterly indefensible as it did when he had a retainer from Russia only. The financial prosperity of the 'Presse' is said to have been in a great measure due to M. Dujarrier.

Though M. Emile lived in 1839, 'en grand train,' possessing a fine, well-fur

*La Presse, Rue St George, 16. 'Reçu de M. Hilbey, la somme de cent soixante francs, pour insertion dans le journal. Nature de l'insertion, poesie: A la Mère de celle que j'aime. 'Le Cassier, PRAVAZ.'

'Paris, 7 Septembre, 1839.'

last three weeks an exile in Spain,† in consequence of an arrêt of the Cour Royale de Rouen, which declared that he committed un homicide volontaire sur la personne de M. Dujarrier, et d'avoir commis cet homicide avec premeditation.'

In 1843, at the suggestion of Dujarrier, the 'Presse' published, under the title of a supplement, Le Bulletin des Tribunaux,' adding 20 francs to its price. Six thousand additional subscribers were in consequence obtained in a very few months. The last accounts published by the 'Presse' place its profits at 200,000 francs, or £8000 a year; and if its agreement with the 'Compagnie Duveyrier' prove a successful speculation, it is estimated that its net profits will be 300,000 francs, or £12,000 a year, at the end of 1846.

To the English reader, some explanation of the Compagnie Duveyrier' is quite indispensable. This company farms out the advertisements of certain journals, allowing the proprietors so many thousand francs a year net. To the Presse,' for instance, Duveyrier and Co. allow 100,000 francs, or £4000, and for this sum the 'Société General des Annonces,' as it is called, has a

right to so many columns of the journal. erature. In their morality any trick is fair to The head office of the society is in the gain an abonné or an annonce at two Place de la Bourse, No. 8; but there are francs the 'petite ligne,' or, still better at 214 bureaux d'insertion in various quarters twelve francs la grande ligne en petite of Paris, or from five to a dozen in each texte.' Journalism and literature run equal arrondissement, according to its population, dangers from these tricky tradesmen. In commerce, &c. There is a scale of char- seeking to make newspapers books and ges peculiar to the society. What are books newspapers, these men destroy the called 'les annonces agrées,' are charged at distinctive character and nature of books two francs la petite ligne, or twelve francs and newspapers. The book in being cut la grande ligne, en petit texte. It is a great into fragments, and written not to portray problem whether this company will be suc- truth and nature, but to suit the journal and cessful-a problem which time alone can its customers, is written to sample and patsolve; but it is the opinion of an excellent tern. At the end of the tenth, or twelfth, friend of ours-the editor of the Constitu- or seventh column, as the case may be, tionnel' M. Merruau, that the undertaking there is an interesting situation, where the will be successful. Though the small teas- tale breaks off, on the Monday. The groing and worrying usually thrown at the cer's daughter, the dyer's wife, the baker's English by the Presse,' may have made it cousin, and the priest's niece, are in rappopular with a portion of the populace of tures, and look for the paper on Tuesday Paris, yet its greatest success (apart from with eager expectation. The tale or the the roman feuilleton) is owing to its com- novel is therefore like Peter Pindar's ramercial intelligence, its dramatic accounts zors, not made to shave, but to sell; not of robberies, murders, fires, and sudden written to represent life as it really is, but deaths; not forgetting its chronicle of affairs to present it as a series of startling incibefore the Police Correctionelle. dents and surprising contrasts. It will result from this system that as a political authority the journal must be lowered, and as a literary effort the book discredited. Independently of this consideration the public taste becomes as a consequence daily more vitiated and perverted. All relish for serious literature, or matured, well reflected productions, is lost. The moral, the political, and the literary views of the question are sacrificed to the mercantile, mechanical, and money-getting. Romances are now ordered by the wholesale houses, in the

What is the roman feuilleton, our readers will naturally ask? It is a novel or tale, written in the most ad captandum and exaggerated fashion, from seven to fifteen small columns of which are published daily, with a view to obtain readers, and, by ne ́cessary implication, advertisements; for the advertiser will assuredly go to the journal which is most read. The Presse' was the first to invent this execrable system, by which literature is made alternately the prostitute and decoy duck of the most sordid venality. Before 1830 the main fea-journal line, by the square yard or the square ture and distinguishing characteristic of each French paper was its political party or color. The greedy spirit of speculation has changed this. The desire of the traders in newspapers now is by the feuilleton to absorb all literature, unless such as is published in their own pages, and to render such literature as they put forth tributary to this soul-degrading money-grubbing. The great object of the Girardins and Cassagnacs is to get money, money, money. 'Rem quocunque modo rem' is their stereotyped motto. In their anxiety to procure customers-i. e. readers and advertisements -they may be likened to the Hebrews of Holywell-street, or the old clothesmen of Monmouth-street and Rag-fair, who, to use the cant of the trade, are of the 'pluck you in' school. The Presse' and the ' Epoque' are of the 'pluck you in' and fripier school in lit

foot, with so many pounds of abuse of priestcraft; so many grains of double adultery; so many drachms of incest; so many ounces of poisoning; so many scruples of simple fornication or seductions of soubrettes; and so many pennyweights of common sense to knead together the horrid and disjointed masses of parricide, fratricide, incest, murder, seduction, suicide, fraud, covin, gambling, robbery, and rouérie of all sorts, of which the odious whole is compounded. The Girardins and Cassagnacs, notwithstanding all their shrewdness and sharpness, are of that vulgar order of men who think that with money at command they can do any thing and obtain every thing. Hence it is that the Presse' pays nearly 300 francs per day for feuilletons to Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, De Balzac, Frederic Soulié, Theophile Gautier, and

Jules Sandeau.

'M. de Balzac l'écrivain et M. de Balzac le

gentilhomme sollicitent de sa Majesté la faveur d'une audience particulière.'

But what will be the re- Russian system, the Czar expressed a desult in 1848? That each of these person-sire that it should be answered by a ages will have made from 32,000 to 64,000 Frenchman. Balzac, on this hint, started francs per annum for two or three years for for Petersburgh, and on his arrival forwriting profitable trash of the color of the warded to his Imperial Majesty a note, of foulest mud in Paris; marked with the mark which the following is a copy :of the beast, and furnished according to sample, as per order of Girardin, Cassagnac and Co. They will have had little labor and much money, it is true; but they will also have for ever lowered their names and On the following day, one of the gentlefame; and, what is worse, they will have men in ordinary of H.M. suite delivered to lowered literature and literary men for Balzac a letter written in the royal and many a long day to come. To be the hack imperial hand, to the following effect :of booksellers is no doubt to suffer unutterable bondage; but to be the hack of scheming political adventurers and chevaliers d'industrie is the last and worst of human calamities. The literary men of France may well say, with our own Cowley

'M. de Balzac le gentilhomme et M. de Balzac l'écrivain peuvent prendre la poste quand il leur plaira.'

The fault of Balzac is the incorrigible permanency, notwithstanding ten thousand humiliations and exposures, of a most glowing, yet most despicable vanity. The

'Come the eleventh plague rather than this foolish fellow believes himself poet, histo

should be;

Come sink us rather in the sea,

Come rather pestilence, and reap us down,

Come God's sword rather than our own.

In all the bonds we ever bore

rian, metaphysician, statesman, dandy of the first water, journalist, dramatic author, man of family, man of fortune, and above all, charmant et beau garcon! Not con

We grieved, we sighed, we wept; we never tent with being one of the cleverest ob

blushed before.'

a dozen

scurity.

servers and painters of manners of a certain class or classes, he aspires to be as It is not only with existing literary ce- diplomatic as Talleyrand and Metternich lebrities that the Presse' plays these gain- combined; as poetic as D. Beranger, Chaful pranks, but the death of men of emi-teaubriand, and La Martine; and as fashnence is speculated upon during their lifetime, and an ostentatious postobit publica- D'Orsays, Septeuils, and Canouvilles. This ionable and foppish as the De Guiches, tion of the memoirs of Chateaubriand, and universal pretension has destroyed the little the souvenirs of La Martine is promised so that remained of De Balzac's waning repsoon as these illustrious authors shall have ceased to breathe. That the feuilletonists utation; and the man whose productions, of the Presse' are all men and women of years ago, were read in every genius and talent cannot be denied; but clime, is now fast sinking into unpitied obone of them, with all his genius and talent, is an arrant literary impostor and quack."The nations which envied thee erewhile Only think of Honoré Balzac, who came Now laugh (too little 'tis to smile), to Paris in 1820, a poor printer of Tou- They laugh and would have pitied thee, (alas!) But that thy faults all pity do surpass." raine, sporting the gentilhomme d'ancienne souche,' and wearing a cane studded To return, however, to the Presse. For with precious stones, worth £80, to which a short time Girardin, the editor, was depMde. de Girardin has consecrated a volume. uty of the Meuse. At his election, his The pretentious, aristocratical airs of this civil rights as a Frenchman were ungenevery foolish man, but who as a writer may rously and unjustly attempted to be called be called a literary Rembrandt, or Albert in question. For many years the influence Durer, so burgeoise and Flemish is his of Count Molé was paramount at the style, so detailed and minute his finishing,'Presse,' and even still his opinions are were properly treated, according to the visible in some articles; but at present this Gazette of Augsburgh, by a monarch, for journal must be considered as the organ of whom we have no love, but who, for once M. Guizot, and of his forty or forty-five in his life, was right. After the admirable personal adherents, who think him the only and truthful book of M. de Custine had possible minister. We have said that the laid bare the infamies and atrocities of the Presse' is an authority on commercial