circulation of the "Constitutionnel" is now only two thousand. Edmond About, the novelist, was the founder and manager of the "XIXe siècle," and it was to his own paper that he contributed his manly "Romance of an Honest Man." The "XIX Siècle" was the organ of the anti-clerical middle class, the Voltairean bourgeois. Its success was assured when it took a bold and patriotic position during the revolutionary usurpations of the 16th of May; after About's death it lost its grip. "La France" was founded by the late Emile de Girardin, the inventor (in France, at least)

ROCHEFORT.

of the cheap newspaper. In his hands the paper was a militant republican organ. Like the "XIX Siècle," its opportunity came with the reactionary and insidious intrigues of the 16th of May. The double-leaded and doubleshotted articles of M. de Girardin were awaited daily with the utmost interest; the crowds formed in line before the kiosques every afternoon to get early copies of the paper; and its circulation rose at one time to 120,000 copies. But Girardin is dead, “La France" has gone over to the monarchists and the anarchists, and its influence has departed. Under Émile de Girardin "La France" fought side by side

with the "République Française," the paper started in 1871 by Gambetta with the aid of M. Challemel-Lacour, M. Paul Bert, M. Spuller, M. Ranc, and M. de Freycinet. It was his share in the "République Française" which made Gambetta financially independent. In the hands of his friends it is the outspoken advocate of the policy he professed, and its influence on contemporary politics is perhaps larger than that of any other paper in Paris excepting only the "Temps." Part of this influence is due to the circulation of more than 150,000 achieved by a one-cent tender to the "République Française"- the "Petite République Française," a tiny little sheet, modeled on the "Petit Journal," and advocating with mingled vigor and moderation the same broad views of French politics which are set forth in the parent paper.

Among the more radical journals are the "Justice," the "Rappel," and the "Intransigeant." The "Justice" is the organ of M. Clémenceau. The "Rappel" was the organ of Victor Hugo: it was started just before the fall of the Empire by his two sons, now both dead, and by his chief disciples and personal adherents, M. Paul Meurice and M. Auguste Vacquerie. It beats time for the more advanced democrats. Its chief writer is M. Edouard Lockroy, who married the widow of one of Hugo's sons. The "Rappel" has a literary quality more pronounced than is usual in polemic and political newspapers. It was in the "Rappel" that M. Henri Rochefort, when he was an exile, published the most of his serial stories, at least one of which, "Mlle. Bismark," has been translated in America.

M. Rochefort is one of the most striking figures in contemporary Parisian journalism, and his career is curious in its contrasts. A radical republican of an advanced type, M. Rochefort is by birth the Marquis de RochefortLuçay. A free-thinker now of the most aggressive school, one of M. Rochefort's earliest efforts in literature was a poem in honor of the Virgin. Successful beyond expectation in his destructive attacks on the hollow pretensions of the Second Empire, M. Rochefort began as a hack writer of comic copy for the minor papers and as a maker of cheap farces for the minor theaters. It is to be said, however, that M. Rochefort's entrance into politics was almost accidental, and that his bitterest diatribes owe their effect chiefly to his mastery of the methods of comic journalism. In fact, M. Rochefort's transformation from a lively critic of ephemeral fashions into a stinging assailant of the Imperial Government was a slow and gradual evolution, and it took the best of three years (1865-1868) before the change was complete. It was in June, 1868, that he abandoned

the "Figaro," and issued the first number of his own weekly, the "Lanterne," a little pamphlet of thirty-two pages, clad in a cover of fiery red. Of the first number eighty thousand copies were sold. In the "Lanterne," the flippant chatter of the "Figaro" no longer accompanying it, the girding wit of M. Rochefort had full play, and the Imperial court winced under the satire which made it ridiculous. When the "Lanterne" was forbidden in France, its offices were transferred to Brussels, and the weekly numbers were smuggled into France. A favorite device was to pack them inside plaster busts of the Emperor of the French. In 1869 M. Rochefort was elected to the Assembly, and returning to Paris, founded the "Marseillaise." It was in consequence of articles in the "Marseillaise" that one of its contributors, Victor Noir, called on Prince Pierre Bonaparte and was shot dead by the Prince. Arrested in February, 1870, M. Rochefort was set free in September by the fall of the Empire. In February, 1871, he founded the "Mot d'Ordre," and in September he was condemned to a long

term of imprisonment for his part in the resistance of the Commune of Paris to the Republic of France. Sent in 1873 to New Caledonia, he escaped in 1874, crossed America, paused in London, and settled in Geneva, whence he returned to Paris in July, 1880, when the general amnesty of the communists was proclaimed. Two days after his return he brought out a new daily paper, "L'Intransigeant," which remains the mouthpiece of the extreme Left, impracticable and intractable. "L'Intransigeant" seems, however, to be to the taste of a certain section of Parisians, for its circulation is quite thirty thousand copies nearly as large as that of the "Temps," which most competent critics would be inclined to call the best paper in Paris. "L'Intransigeant" is M. Rochefort's personal organ; it says what he thinks, and it is read simply to see what he says; its importance is due wholly to M. Rochefort. And so the "Justice" is the personal organ of M. Clémenceau: but M. Clémenceau is taken seriously and M. Rochefort is not. The "République Française" was Gam

betta's organ, but Gambetta was the center of the strongest and sanest group in French politics, and the" République Française," although it has lost a little of its circulation since Gambetta's death, did not depend on any one man, however popular or able. It is a good general newspaper, while "L'Intransigeant" of M. Rochefort and the "Justice" of M. Clémenceau are organs, no more and no less.

The "Temps" and the "République Française" are the best representations of the temperate, moderate, and yet vigorous republicanism of France. The "République Française" is tainted by a certain aggressive agnosticism, the result of a violent reaction against ultramontane pretensions. The "Temps" is Protestant in its leanings. The "République Française" is a morning journal, and the "Temps" is an afternoon paper: they support the same views, and pay the same attention to foreign affairs. The "Temps" is now owned and managed by M. Adrien Hébrard and M. Jacques Hébrard, who are both senators. It has the strongest staff of any Parisian paper. In foreign correspondence, in political information and criticism, in literary and artistic reviewing, and even in the gathering of news, it is the foremost of French newspapers. In its sobriety of tone and dignity of manner it resembles the best English and American dailies. It is in the "Temps" that M. Edmond Schérer publishes his critical articles, and M. Schérer is the French critic whose articles on Wordsworth and Goethe served as texts for two of Mr. Matthew Arnold's most interesting essays. M. Schérer is, in a measure, the successor of Sainte-Beuve, but he has not yet Sainte-Beuve's authority. His mind and his manner are drier and have less charm; but none the less is he a chief representative of the higher criticism in France.

Among the other eminent literary contributors is M. Legouvé, the dramatist, who published in the "Temps" the most of his admirable notes on reading aloud, an art of which he is past-master. The art critic is M. Paul Mantz, and the musical critic is M. Weber; and, although they may have equals among their fellow-journalists, they have no superiors. The dramatic critic is M. Francisque Sarcey, to whom I shall recur shortly. There is a weekly scientific review by M. Vernier. There is an abundance of foreign correspondence of a very high quality. There is a weekly sketch of country life called "La Vie à la Campagne," by M. Georges de Cherville; and there was a weekly chronique called "La Vie à Paris," by M. Jules Claretie. Since the fall of 1885, when M. Claretie was appointed director of the Théâtre Français, this article has been contributed by that charming writer, M. Anatole France.

le Ministre " is an admirable novel; it stands even a comparison with the " Numa Roumestan " of his friend M. Alphonse Daudet, which deals with a subject closely akin. As a novelist M. Claretie has had the tact and the insight to borrow from the naturalists just enough of their descriptive methods, without allowing the exhibition of things to overpower the revelation of persons. Besides his novels, M. Claretie has also written plays, at least one of which, the "Régiment de Champagne" has been acted in the United States. He is also a historian, and he has made the epoch of the French Revo

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lution wholly his own. He has a wider knowledge of literature and life in England and in Germany than most Frenchmen, having frequently visited both countries. Next to the breadth of his knowledge of men and things, he has indefatigable industry, and the union of these two qualities makes him one of the foremost journalists of France. M. Claretie has a pleasant wit and a sharp eye; his tastes are clean and honorable; and so the best of his chroniques in the "Temps" was sometimes not unlike one of Mr. George William Curtis's always delightful " Easy-Chair" articles, and the worst of them was always an amusing medley of judicious observation and antiquarian research. As M. Claretie's chroniques in the "Temps" were more widely quoted from than any other non-political articles of the Parisian press, it is no wonder that they have found many readers when gathered together into annual volumes. The future historian of manners and customs and fashions and ephemeral fancies will have no more trustworthy source of information than the yearly tomes of M. Claretie's "Vie à Paris." (For the instruction of the inquiring, it may be noted that M. Claretie pronounces his name Clar-ty.")

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The honor of being the most quoted writer on the "Temps" M. Claretie shared with M. Sarcey, whose criticism of the drama of the day fills the ground-floor of the "Temps "every Sunday afternoon. M. Sarcey is a graduate of the Normal School; and M. Taine and About were his classmates there. When they left the school in 1848, M. Taine was first, About third, and M. Sarcey fifth. For ten years M. Sarcey taught; then he gave up teaching and took to journalism under the guidance of his friend About. M. Sarcey has recently written a lively and instructive account of his life at the Normal School and of the constant intellectual fencing in which the brilliant band of scholars indulged. He asserts that he can always tell a graduate of the Normal School by the sincerity of his disputation, and he informs us that the scholars had declared war on two formulas only too frequently heard in debate. One of these is the assertion that the adversary is an ass, and the other impugns his motives, declaring that he is too clever to believe what he says. Whenever, therefore, any of the young debaters lost his temper and sneered at the sincerity of his opponent, the entire body arose as one man and said: "Sir, you are an ass!" And when he protested in vain, the chorus rejoined: "Then you do not believe a word of what you say." The German students have in like manner made war on two other silly formulas, which they term the apple and the spinach argument. The apple argument is the twitting of an opponent with a

change of opinion, and it is so called because an apple when accused of having changed color answered that "it is only bad fruit which remains green"; and the spinach argument is the self-congratulation on the fact that one does not think like the opponent, and it is so called because a lady once declared that she was very glad she did not like spinach, for if she did, she would eat it, and she could not bear it.

The robust sincerity thus learnt in the Normal School M. Sarcey has carried through life. M. Sarcey is honest, earnest, and devoted to his work, whether it be the exposure of an ultramontane trick or the analysis of a new play. He used to roast a priest for breakfast every morning in the "XIXe siècle," and he parboils himself every evening in one of the Parisian play-houses, all of which are as innocently free from ventilation as a Turkish bath. M. Sarcey is independent; he has never been willing to join any society or to accept any honors; more than once has he refused the cross of the Legion of Honor. His special characteristics are a robust and broad common sense and an equally broad good humor. As a dramatic critic he has attained to the highest repute; his authority, I venture to believe, is greater than was Jules Janin's—and it is assuredly founded on a firmer base. M. Sarcey has a great many qualifications for a dramatic critic, and he has in abundance the most important of all—he is very fond of the theater. He is fair, he is willing to hear both sides, the temper of his mind is judicial, and it is only when he is absolutely convinced of the guilt of the prisoner that the sword of justice falls; but when it does fall, it falls swiftly and to good purpose. M. Sarcey has sympathy with both the dramatic and the histrionic arts. He has insight into both, and he has logically coördinated a system of principles about them both. He is almost the only dramatic critic I know whose report of a performance gives a sound reason for its success or its failure. He has a habit of going at once to the heart of a play, and in telling the story of a drama he sets forth first of all the essential situation, the vital knot, the salient point where this play differs from all other plays. This is a very rare faculty. M. Vitu, for example, contents himself with a verbatim report of the plot of a play, followed by a criticism of its construction and its characters; but M. Sarcey so sets before you the situation that you are enabled to criticise for yourself and to seize at once on every point of his criticism. M. Sarcey has always refused to allow the collection of his dramatic criticisms, declaring that they are journalism and not literature. The only book about the stage he