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.")

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 "XIX 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

"Le Charivari"- which was the model of "Punch," as the sub-title of that journal attests to the present day was founded more than half a century ago by Charles Philipon, the inventor of the historic likeness of Louis Philippe to a pear. The comic journalist is like unto the Irish-American immigrant who when questioned as to his politics asked anxiously, "Have ye a government ? - Thin I'm ag'in' it!" "Le Charivari was against the government of Louis Philippe, so was it against the Republic of 1848, and so would it have been against the Second Empire, if the Imperial censors had not held it bound and muzzled. Forced to turn from the manly satire of politics to the more effeminate satire of fashion and life, “Le Charivari" lost much of its influence and power. The boisterous fun of Cham and the delicate indelicacies of M. Grévin but ill made up for the loss of the roughand-ready satires of Daumier, often of a vigorous and vitriolic brutality unmatched in the history of caricature. Only too frequently both the text and the illustrations of "Le Charivari" and of its fellow comic papers "Le Journal Amusant" and "Le Petit Journal Pour Rire" bear witness to the French worship of the strange goddess. Only too frequently are they absolutely unfit for publication. M. Taine, in his "Notes on England,"

was specially struck by the total unlikeness of the English comic paper to the French in the subjects it treated and in the decency and cleanliness of the treatment. The English comic paper, like the English novel, is written to be read by the English young lady, while the French comic paper, like the French novel, is more often than not intended only for men, or for women who are willing to look at life as a coarse-grained man views it. Of course it is easy to say that just as the French novel is more artistic than the English,- I do not include the American novel with the English here, so the French comic paper is comic while the English not unfrequently is comic only in intent; but this is in reality only an aggravation of the offense. There is no sin more heinous than letting the devil have all the fun. It is to be said for "Le Charivari” that it has never speculated in pornography, and that its lapses from what we of the English stock are wont to consider as good morals, if not good taste, are accidental rather than premeditated. It remains to be noted that “Le Charivari" is a four-page daily, and for many years it was the only illustrated daily paper in the world. Its illustration or illustrations fill the most of the third page: formerly they were lithographic, but they are now produced by one of the many mechanical processes.