ger de Beauvoir. Some of your readers, dear Oliver, may say that I am a laudator temporis acti-that I can see no virtue but in the past. But that is not so. The living and actual writers in the Débats would as little countenance such monstrosities. Armand Bertin, the editor and proprietor of the paper, is a scholar, and a gentleman moving in the very first circles of the Parisian metropolis; M. Salvandy, a very recent writer in the paper, is Minister of Public Instruction; M. St. Marc Girardin, one of its ablest contributors, is one of the most learned professors of the Sorbonne, and one of the most distinguished members of the Chamber of Deputies; and M. de Sacy, perhaps its most celebrated political writer, was bred an advocate, now holds a high situation at the Institute of France, and is one of the personal friends of Louis Philippe. As to Philarete Chasles and Michel Chevalier, the one has too much taste and learning, and the other too much common sense, to demean himself after the fashion of the detestable clique of the Trois Frères. even the feuilletonists of the Débats would loathe such company. Théophile Gautier has written some good articles in La France Littéraire, and an excellent book on Spain; and as to Jules Janin, though an insufferable coxcomb, and a species of French Malvolio, walking cross-gartered and wearing motley, he is incontestably a man of talent, and has greatly raised himself in the estimation of all independent men by the publication of his letter to Madame Girandin, on her comedy entitled L'Ecole des Journalistes. Nay, As to the ancient Constitutionnel – that is to say, the Constitutionnel from 1818 to 1835-it would have shewn no quarter to such despicable and disreputable rauriens as congregated at our friend Collet's in the Palais Royal. Charles William Etienne, the late editor, was a scholar, a gentle man, and a man of wit, and author of some of the best comedies in the French language. For forty years of his life, during fifteen or sixteen of which he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he lived in the very best French society; and though a political writer lively and piquant, and full of strength and spirit, he was, as Count Molé well and truly remarks in that scourging speech which he recently made to Alfred de Vigny on his reception at the Academy, above all, a gentleman and a man of the world, full of tact and good breeding, civil and polite to men, and deferential even to homage to women. What else could you expect from the author of the Deux Gendres? As to the lively little dwarf Thiers, formerly a writer in the Constitutionnel, though a man of very indifferent breeding, and brusque and unpolished manners, he always had too much shrewdness, sagacity, and sense, to mix himself up with gamblers, demireps, and commercial managers of literary speculations. True, you may quote against me the orgy at the country-house of the "Knight of the Bath"-Count (!) Vigier (bless the mark!) in 1833 or 1834; but this was a party of men only, invited to a house-warming by a vulgar nouveau riche and parvenu, to whom a château life was new, and no esclandre was the result. De Remusat, an ex-minister and very recent writer in the Constitutionnel, was always a quiet, well-behaved man, and no one knows better than yourself that Duvergier d'Hauranne was no roysterer loving to hear the chimes at midnight. As to M. Merruau, the present editor of the Constitutionnel there breathes not a more quiet and retiring gentleman within the enceinte continuée; so much so, indeed, that he goes by the name of Le Sacristain among his brethren of the broad sheet. In your day Constant, Villemain, Cauchois, Lemaire, and Mignet, figured away at the Courier Français, and your friend Leon Faucher has not very long ago indited in it; but all these were grave, respectable men, unlike the individuals who flaunted at the Beauvallon trial, who were merely gamblers, bullies, and adventurers, speculators in a low style of literature, commercial managers of new literary firms and enterprises, striving before all things to gain money, for the maxim of these loose livers is, "Qui a de l'argent a des pirouettes." It were a great mistake, however, I repeat, for your readers to suppose that these men represent any considerable section of the press, for men of all shades and complexions of political opinion repudiate and disown them. You well know that I am no admirer of that secular-minded priest, M. l'Abbé de Génoude, who, though the son of a poor limonadier of Grenoble, apes the airs of a Grand Seigneur, and aspires to the cardinalate; but though this sly and sanctimonious priest works with untiring energy and perseverance to push the sale of his translation of the Bible in twenty-two volumes, and as earnestly and zealously to force the sale of the Gazette de France and the Corsaire Sutan, of both of which he is the sole proprietor, yet though the holy man would go great lengths to bring together the royalists and republicans, I do not believe he would so far cominit himself, even for this purpose, as to be hail, fellow, well-met! with every Frippe-lippe of a minor theatre, every fille au vilain (car qui eu donnera le plus l'aura) of the pavé of Paris, every fire-eater of the Champs Elysées, and every cogger of dice of the Rue Louis le Grand. Such an assembly is only fit for the refuse of the Roman Feuilleton, or La Cour du Roi Pétaud. "Chacun y contredit; chacun y parle haut; Et c'est tout justement la Cour du Roi Pétaud." As to Colnet, the glory and the pride of the Gazette de France, he was a noble by birth though a bookseller by trade; and even though he were inclined to social and convivial meetings, which he was not, would have chosen his society amongst the distinguished and the learned rather than among the rake-helly riff-raff so often named. As to Michaud of the Quotidienne, he loved "Crusaders" of a holier war than a war of drabs and doubloons. Nay, even the writers in the Republican National have tastes and habits morc aristocratic than to be seen in such society. The chivalrous though mistaken Armand Carrel would not have marched through Coventry in such company; and Marrast and La Roche, as well as Bastide and Thomas, have always, to their honour be it said, expressed the greatest con * Molière. tempt for those dabblers in the funds and railways belonging to the subordinate ranks of the press, who are enabled to live like financiers and agents de change, having a dancer or a singer for a mistress, and an operabox for an evening lounge. The Siècle is, as you are aware, a paper established within the last eleven years, yet it has a greater circulation than any journal in Paris. It counts 42,000 subscribers, and the shares are now worth nearly ten times their original cost. This journal represents the grocers, chandlers, shoemakers, and tailors of the metropolis, and its banlieue; and as it is necessary to be somewhat dull and very decorous to please this majority, neither Chambolle nor Gustave Beaumont would run the risk of keeping ill company. Leon Faucher, of his own mere motion, would shun such men as the Beauvallons, thinking them neither men of probity nor men of letters; and the pompous and solemn Barrot would think them too fast-livers, and far too lavish in their expenditure, to suit his temper or his taste. The men of the Démocratie Pacifique, the Communists and Fourierists, would hold nothing in common with gluttons, gamblers, and debauchees. Hugh Doherty the writing-master, Victor Daly the architect, Brisbane the North American, Considérant the ex-officer of engineers, Meill the German Jew, and Jourmet the working man, with his long beard and paletot à capuchon, the indispensable costume of all good Fourierists, would have been out of place in such gay company, with a puré de gibier for a soup, and filets de laperaux à la Voppalière for a pièce de résistance. Only think of Doherty and Daly swallowing hermitage and château du pape, and the Jew Meill eating oreilles de cochon en menu du roi, without being aware of the forbidden food he had just swallowed. Little Lesseps, of the Esprit Public, comes of a consular family, and holds his head too high to stoop so low. And as to the writers in the Revue des Deux Mondes, they look to be administrators and functionaries; and it would not do for such men to consort with the cogging and † Michaud was author of a History of the Crusades. the cozening among the loose fish of You cannot fail to have remarked, hemence, a personality, and a shameless unprincipledness, theretofore unknown to the press of France, and only discreditably known in certain Sunday journals in England. Before the institution of the Presse journals were divided into different party sections, as, for instance, Carlist, Republican, Dynastic, Napoleonic, Tiers Parti, &c. But from the period Emile de Girardin entered the lists he manifested a complete indifference on the subject of political principle. As to convictions, belief, or political party or banner, he had none, his only object being to get as many readers and subscribers as possible. Opinions, therefore, and principles were sold; the cause of Russia was upheld, while England was abused, vilipended, and calumniated. The corruption commenced in the political part of the paper, descended through all the minor departments, and Granier de Cassagnac (afterwards proprietor of the Globe and now of the Epoque), who, in 1839, conducted the literary department or Feuilleton, was charged at the close of the last year by one Hilbey, a tailor by trade, and author by preference, with having received 160 francs for the insertion of a piece of poetry commencing "A la Mère de celle que j'aime." The tailor further goes on to reveal to the public that, at the request of Cassagnac, who first wished for a silver teapot value 200 francs, he sent that person four coverts d'argent and six small spoons. In this very season of 1839, when these scenes were enacting, the man who but a couple of years before was sans six sous, was sans souci as to worldly wealth. It is known to all the world, and recorded by Jules Janin, that he kept as fine a house as an "agent de change," with livery servants, carriages, horses, &c. And though some portion of these luxuries were due to his own efforts and talents, and unscrupulous industry and perseverance, and some portion to the lively Causeries Parisiennes of his wife, which appeared in the Presse, and were signed Vicomte Delauney, still they were in a greater degree attributable to the efforts and management of Dujarrier, who was a keen and successful, or, perhaps, I should rather say a lucky, man of business. It was Dujarrier who, in These two journals have done more, in my mind, to bring about such a social state as we have been deploring, and to degrade and demoralise the press of France, than all the ministries which have existed since the period of the first Revolution. But let us hear, in the first place, a little of their history. The founder of the Presse is Emile de Girardin, a natural son of Count Stanislas. He commenced life as an inspector of the fine arts, and was successively editor of four journals, which died in quick succession. He then published a book called Emile, which had no success. After five successive failures he seems to have thought himself desperate enough for any enterprise, and, as a natural sequence, he married. The wife of his selection was the pretty Delphine Gay, a woman of wit and beauty, with her poetical talents for a dowry. But poetry, dear Oliver, will not make the pot boil, and it was necessary that Emile de Girardin should dine as nearly seven times a-week as possible. He promised himself a fortune in the invention of the Paracrotte, or mud-defender, but the Paris public was blind to its merit, and Emile only fell deeper into the mire. The Phisotype was next tried, which promised monts et merveilles ; but at the end of the year the happy pair found that they had " beurre 'plus de que du pain." The Presse was the next speculation, and as it was a joint-stock company, and in a year when joint-stock speculations are not so discredited as they are now— mising a journal larger and cheaper than all other French journals-the shares went off briskly. The journal, therefore, was well launched; but from the time it has started into being, an example was given of a ve -pro 1843, suggested to Girardin the publication of a supplement entitled Le Bulletin des Tribunaux, which cost twenty francs additional. This move obtained for the Presse an increase of 6000 subscribers; and it was supposed that at the period of Dujarrier's death the journal was making from 7 to 8000l. a-year, net, of which Dujarrier is reported to have received yearly no less a sum than 50,000 francs, or 2000l. of our money for, be it observed, he possessed eight out of twenty-five shares. This, no doubt, appeared a mine of gold to a man who had not 1200 francs a-year five years previously, but it in no degree justified the lavish expenditure, or the course of life and of play, which the unfortunate man was leading. The indictment, or acte d'accusation, read at the trial, announces the elegant luxury in which he lived, and goes on to state that "if he gained money easily he spent it as quickly, and had a general reputation as a bold and generous player." But these words "elegant luxury" and "bold and generous player," write down in burning, branding letters the man's condemnation. "Il faut opter des deux être dupe ou fri pon, Tous ces jeux de hasard n'attirent rien de bon." There is nothing harder, my dear Oliver, than the heart-nothing, in general, viler or more fitful than the temper of a professed gambler. Open out the cards or the dice before a table of gamblers, and the passions of cupidity, envy, avarice, and fury, are brought at once into play. Feel the pulse of the gambler, and you will find it quick, unequal, feverish. His tongue is parched, his lips and cheeks livid; his temper, however originally good, becomes demoniacal; his health, however robust, at length gives way. The smallest trifle irritates and provokes him; words which would pass unheeded by another are seized on by him. Beauvallon and Dujarrier were both gamblers, and for jidle words or still idler gesture, incident to a gambling and vinous orgy, the one lost his life, and the other all of character that remained to him, which, to say the truth, was little enough. VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVIII. Mercantile avarice and mercantile cupidity were, however, at the bot-. tom of this discreditable quarrel. Dujarrier played pretty much the same part at the Presse that Beauvallon played at the Globe, and the quarrel took its rise (though its proximate cause was a loss at cards) in the most mercenary motives that can sway the mind of man. At the Presse Dujarrier was manager, controller, and caissier. He it was who engaged and paid the Feuilletonists, and arranged who was to write the Roman Feuilleton for weeks and months in succession, and how much the writers were to receive. In this catering for the paper he had his favourites, as such manner of men generally have, and this, of course, led to envy and jealousies; but notwithstanding his vanity, his ignorance, his coarse and over-familiar manners, and deficiency on the score of early education, he probably was in moral character just as respectable as any of the Romance-writers whom he employed, and nearly as well, if not quite as well, educated; for be it known to readers in England that neither education nor acquired knowledge are deemed in any degree requisite to those persons. At the rival paper, the Globe, Beauvallon played pretty much the same part that Dujarrier played at the Presse. Independently of the old adage that two of a trade can never agree, there were other causes, not merely of disrelish but of loathing. Beauvallon was the brother-inlaw of Granier de Cassagnac, who had originally been the principal coadjutor of Emile de Girardin at the Presse. Cassagnac having quarrelled with his principal, set up for himself a rival paper, the Globe; out of which the Epoque has since risen. In the Globe he had called Girardin by every infamous and every opprobrious name, and proclaimed that all the good articles were the productions of his own pen; in fact, that the astonishing success of the Presse was wholly due to his talent. This was indignantly denied by Girardin, who stated that Cassagnac was an impudent, lying Gascon, who, when editor of the Journal Politique of Toulouse, was flogged in the public street, and obliged to take refuge in the interior of a diligence to save himself from further stripes. "Ah!" says Cassagnac, "what of that? You, Emile Girardin, sitting by your pretty wife at the Opera, were flogged before 3000 persons!" "But that's not so bad as you," says Emile. "Didn't you, by scampish messengers, send round the prospectus of your paper to the subscribers to other journals ?-ay, send them round in cart-loads ?" "Oh, jarnie ne vous y frottez pas!" says Cassagnac. "What a respectable fellow are you, forsooth! to sicken at such trifles,-you, the rejected of the electors of Bourganeuf, whose electors preferred Vidocq, the police spy, as an honester man!" "Au moins," rejoins Emile, "I am not capable of ordering gaiters of a particular cut for my newspaper porters by way of an advertisement, and then refusing to pay for them because they are not exactly made to pattern!" "Quelle mouche vous pique," says Granier. 66 Gaiters, quotha! Did I ever puff up the shares of a coalmine which never existed, or in which there were no coals, and sell my actions at a premium? Did I ever play the blagueur at St. Berain ?" "Ventre Saint-Gris!" exclaims Emile. "Here's a pretty fellow to talk of blague, indeed! in the latter paper), but who guide, govern, and control their every tone and movement. "Tel maître, tel valet." When the directing spirits thus ribaldly demean themselves, what is to be expected from the Feuilletonists, poor-devil authors and French penny-a-liners, under them? A total lack of manners and principle-an entire absence of truth and taste. To Girardin, Cassagnac, Dujarrier, and Beauvallon, is altogether owing the furtive introduction of the Roman Feuilleton into French literature. This creation-the offspring of the political indifference supervening upon a state of constant change and revolution-has now assumed gigantic proportions, and at the present moment threatens not merely to overshadow political discussion, but to destroy all literature. The newspaper romance, my dear OLIVER, or Roman Feuilleton, is an unnatural, artificial work, the disgrace of even a low style of literature. It is a novel or tale, written in the most exag gerated fashion, which is published daily in the small volumes of what, ten or twelve years ago, was called the Feuilleton. The ancient Feuilleton, as you well know, was the peculiar boast and pride of the French press. It was unique in journalism. It consisted of the small, short columns, separated from the political articles, debates, and advertisements, and was devoted to pure literature, or literary or theatrical criticism. It was in these feuilletons that again and again appeared articles that will live as long as the most classic productions of the French language, models of clear, correct, candid, and learned criticism. The men who then supplied the Feuilleton with matter, such as Feletz, Dussault, and Hofmann, were exact, and scrupulous, and conscientious, and long meditated on the works which they criticised. And the proprietors reaped the reward of their labours, for the series of articles in the Débats by Hofmann, on mesmerism and somnambulism, on Chateaubriand, De Pradt, Madame de Genlis, and the Jesuits, raised the paper to 18,000 or 20,000 abonnés. But these earlier writers were firstrate scholars-men regularly edu cated in the universities of their A geux who comes into my bed-room on a hot July day, and taking off his shirt, and clothing himself in one of my six best clean chemises, walks away! Gentleman, indeed! C'est un gentilhomme de Beauce, il est au lit quand on refait ses chausses." says "Impostor and quack!" Granier. "You proclaim that the success of the Presse is owing to your pen; but all the good articles that ever appeared in it were written by me, or certain persons who shall be nameless." "Galopin de Gascogne!" says Emile. "How dares the fellow, who ordered a steam printing-press and then refused to pay for it on one pretext or another, presume to call any honest man to account?" Such are the fellows-abusing each other, verbatim et literatim, in this fashion of fishfags-who give and have given not merely life and being to the Presse, Globe, and Epoque (the Globe has now merged country-where they had obtained |