the chief of the printing works, I found to be a gentleman of great mechanical ability, and the inventor of a damping machine, which I saw at work, and which is by far the most simple ever brought under my notice. A pipe is suspended from the ceiling, made like a two-light pendant, the arms perforated, and it is made to work by means of a cam, backwards and forwards over the pile of paper, the workman keeping time with its movements in laying on a new supply of paper over that already damped.

The work done at the Moniteur office in the shape of pictorial embellishment is of the highest class, and includes those fashion-book plates which English ladies are so delighted to see at the beginning of every month. I had given to me an electro-plate of one as a souvenir of my visit, and it is certainly a beautiful specimen of a delicate engraving, being electro-typed apparently equal to the original. For a newspaper and printing establishment I should think the Moniteur office must stand at the head of all others in Paris, certainly that of our Times is not to be named with it in the same day. I do not, however, forget that the Times is not a jobbing office, and that, therefore, the comparison is not exactly fair.

The Journal Officiel was established five years ago, on account of a difference between Government and the Moniteur, and I was informed that the building in which it is printed was erected in less than three months, although judging from appearances it ought to have been the work of a year. It is certainly a most complete office, and embraces the very latest improvements. The compositors' frames are made of cast iron, and instead of being placed back to back they are all in one direction, the back of the one frame containing several

THE "JOURNAL OFFICIEL."-THE

"MONITEUR." 371

shelves for the use of the compositor standing in front of the next. The compositors are arranged round the gallery, lighted from the roof, and they appear to have every convenience and comfort which can fall to the lot of a printer. One composing room into which I was taken is at the very top of the building, and there a few compositors every now and again are placed under lock and key, whilst printing State papers which must not see the light until the proper time arrives. The machine room of the Journal Officiel is rather dark, but very lofty, and contains eight or ten news machines, driven by a 35-horse engine. Whilst all the Paris daily papers profess to report the speeches in the National Assembly and claim 56 seats in the reporters' gallery, to the entire exclusion of their provincial brethren, the Journal is the only one which gives anything but an epitome; therefore during the sitting of the Assembly, the circulation of the latter sometimes rises, I was told, to 200,000 copies a day. It is a small sheet, about the size of the London Gazette, and like it consists of just as many pages as may be necessary. The stereotyping arrangements both in the Moniteur and the Journal offices are of the most perfect kind. In the former eight moulds, eight drying stoves, and eight turning lathes all stand ready for immediate use, so that not only are the stereo plates rapidly manufactured, but turned in a lathe, so as to prevent the possibility of the paper being inked except from type. The pages of the Journal Officiel being much smaller than those of the Moniteur, they are cast in six moulds, each mould making four pages. I brought with me two or three matrix pages of the Journal, and it would be but poor praise to say that they equal anything that can be desired in a newspaper office.

The manager of this department, M. Barbay, is a very young man, but full of energy, intelligence, and amiability.

The Petit Journal is in one of the very best streets in Paris, and its office large and complete in all its parts. Its stereotyping arrangements are much the same as those I have already described; but the smallness of the page in nearly every case renders the production of stereotyped newspapers a much easier matter than it can be in England. One thing which struck me as curious was that I found an entire ignorance amongst the machinists of the advantages to be gained by the washing of their type by steam whilst in the page. In no case, either in Italy or in France, have I found that plan adopted, although it has been common for years in Lancashire, some parts of Scotland, and in the Guardian office.

( 373 )

LETTER LVIII.

PRINTERS AND

NEWSPAPERS.-Continued.

It sells at 7 d., and is
It is dated Saturday,

PARIS, October.-I had no time to refer in my last to the illustrated papers of Paris. Two of them are highly respectable, almost equal to our Graphic or Illustrated London News. The Monde Illustré is printed at the Moniteur office, and has a title page like the Illustrated London News. It sells at fourpence, and is dated Sunday. The second is called L'Illustration, Journal Universel, and it also has a standing cut on the first page, like the other. evidently worth the money. probably because its printer, M. Martinet, is a pronounced Protestant, I shall notice further on. A highly respectable ladies' paper, called the Revue de la Mode, is issued at the Moniteur office every Sunday. It gives elegant plates, and it fairly boasts that at the end of the year its 52 numbers form a magnificent volume of 416 pages and 24 sheets of coloured "patrons" or patterns. It is dated Sunday. Various pictorial papers are issued, more or less comic, but nearly all indelicate. There are coloured ones, called the Eclipse, the Sifflet, the Cri-cri, the Guêpe, and the Scie. Poor Thiers and poor exEmperor! Wasps, saws, and whistles are at both of

them day by day. Truly, caricature is decidedly entering into French manners, as one Frenchman says. The Parisians love to contemplate M. Thiers under the most strange forms, and "l'homme de Sedan "-the man of Sedan-under aspects the most grotesque. One editor wisely asks if it is a time to laugh the very day their brethren of Alsace are definitely considered as Prussians.

The jokes of some are very poor-as poor as many home ones. I notice one announcing that Prince Alfred is to marry the daughter of a powerful Scotch seigneur, and it is added that there are many young London girls who would choose husbands in Scotland because there one finds la fleur des pois.

A "Comic-Finance" paper would be a rara avis in England. One such is in its fifth year here. It is illustrated in the most rustic style, and roads, rails, and money tell their sorrows in woodcuts, poetry, and prose.