Bishop Browne and Bishop Butler.

125

fashions of philosophy change as well as others; but no change in them will ever alter the high estimation in which genuine thinkers will hold the 'Analogy of Bishop Butler, as a work which unites the most comprehensive and conscientious investigation with the firmest and most reverent faith.

We have now accomplished what we proposed, and in taking leave of our readers would earnestly urge upon them, but especially upon young men and young ministers, a careful and frequent study of this great book. Many take it up, and soon give it up, because they find it so dry and uninteresting. This is simply because they have made it the beginning of their studies; a place for which it is about as well fitted as Locke on the Understanding is for teaching the alphabet. But when they have been prepared by some good preparatory reading in books of thought, they will find it, as we do, vastly more interesting than much of the thing called poetry, which young men buy and read. With such helps as Dr. Angus's valuable edition supplies, any young man of fair ability may master it by attentive study; and his great reward will be a well-regulated mind, a calm and unblenching faith, a manly contempt for the transcendental moonshine which fascinates others to their destruction, and a readiness to give an answer to every man that asketh a reason 'of the hope that is in him.'

ART. VII.-(1.) Le Moniteur Universel, Le Journal des Débats, Le Siècle, La Patrie, La Presse, L'Opinion Nationale, Le Constitutionnel, La France, L' Union, Le Temps, La Gazette de France, La Gazette des Tribunaux, Le Droit, Le Courrier du Dimanche, Le Nord, Galignani's Messenger, L'Esprit Public, Vert Vert, Figaro Programme, L'Orchestre, Le Figaro, Le Charivari, Le Sport, Le Journal Amusant, Le Harneton, Le Passe-Temps, Le Petit Journal pour Rire, Journal de Jeudi, Roger Bon Temps, Le Siècle Illustré, Le Roman, Le Tintamarre, Le Boulevard, Le Petit Journal Quotidien, Paris Journaliste.

(2.) Les Grands Journaux de France, 1863.

(3.) Physionomie de la Presse. Par UN CHIFFONIER. Paris: 1848. (4.) Realistes et Fantaisistes. Par MERLET.

1863.

(5.) Les Democrates Assermentés et les Refractaires. Par P. J. PROUDHON.

1863.

(6.) Le Fils de Giboyer: Comédie en Prose. Par EMILE ANGIER, de l'Académie Française, Bibliothèque du Théâtre Moderne.

(7.) Bibliothèque Dramatique.

(8.) Les Folies Dramatiques. 1863.

(9.) Paris Journaliste. Paris: 1854.

(10.) Les Elections de 1863. Par PREVOST PARADOL.

1863.

(11.) Une Fusion Légitimiste Orleaniste et Républicaine. Par E. DALTON SHÉE, Ancien Pair de France. 1863.

EVERYTHING relating to the history, social life, domestic institutions, and moral and literary progress of the French people, must be interesting to Englishmen. The intercommunication between the two races has now, owing to the perfection of steam and rail, become so frequent, that the habits, teachings, and tones of thought of the French must have much more influence on us for good or for evil than at any antecedent period of our history. Formerly, and indeed within the memory of men still in their prime, the intercourse between England and France was solely confined to the higher, or to a select few among the better middle classes. But within the last seven or eight years persons of all conditions travel to France, and hundreds of thousands of individuals who twenty years ago never journeyed beyond the limits of their native county, have taken more than one trip to Paris. Artisans and working men have gone thither in cheap excursion trains, and the class of Englishmen who formerly in the summer months proceeded to

Greater Intercourse between England and France. 127

Margate, Ramsgate, Southend, and Brighton, there to spend their annual holiday, now extend their peregrinations to Paris, Versailles, and Fontainebleau. It is true, few of these persons concern themselves with, for few of them understand, the language or literature of France. But there are other classes of our countrymen who travel with different views and objects, and whose visits across the Channel have been steadily augmenting since 1855. The student classes belonging to the learned professions and to the fine arts, now, owing to the quickness and small cost of the journey, visit France in tenfold the numbers they did formerly, and most of these already possess some acquaintance with the language and literature of our neighbours. Within the last three years, however, a much more numerous class than the students of the schools have betaken themselves to travelling in the land of the Gaul. The treaty of commerce, and the abolishing of passports, have put the commercial, manufacturing, and shopkeeping classes throughout our realm in motion; and there is hardly a mercantile or manufacturing house of any eminence in our great cities and towns, or in the staples of our industry, that does not send its junior partners or commis voyageurs to Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, or Marseilles. This crowd of active, vigorous, and pushing men are all great readers of newspapers, and it is not unimportant to consider in a political and moral sense how their minds may be affected by French Journalism. French Journals, too, though still far from circulating largely amongst us, now in their decadence, circulate more largely in clubs, coffee-houses, reading-rooms, and hotels, than at any former period, and have had no inconsiderable effect on the writings and tone of thought of a portion, we mean the cheap portion, of our own metropolitan and provincial Press. It therefore behoves us to examine and scrutinize more closely than we have hitherto done, this French Journalism, and to consider whether it is really worthy of the more extensive diffusion and acceptation which it has recently obtained amongst us from circumstances wholly irrespective of, and unconnected with, its literary, political, or economic merits.

Seventeen years ago, when the monarchy of the junior branch of the Bourbons was still in existence, and France enjoyed the blessings of a Constitutional Government, we endeavoured in this Review* to give an account of the versatile, vigorous, brilliant, and clever Journalism which then existed in France, and which, though in the main ably and eloquently fulfilling its mission, was not without its errors and its faults.

See Foreign Quarterly Review, No. vi., for February, 1846: 'Art Journalism ' in France.'

The chief of these faults was a spirit of clamorous and factious exaggeration, a spirit of vehemence and passion, to which Frenchmen have at all times been far too prone. The Press of Louis Philippe's time, while ably using, sometimes abused and misused its high office, and in this wise lost ground among the higher bourgeoisie and better classes. But with all its faults of omission and commission, the Press of the Restoration of the Government of July, and of the earlier days of the Republic-in other words, the Press of 1815, of 1820, of 1830, of 1840, and 1848-was a great and free instrument, often passionate, often prejudiced, often perverse, often mistaken, often factious, occasionally corrupt, but in the main active, energetic, useful, clever, brilliant; exercising, we admit, however, a too inordinate and overwhelming influence. That the French Press sometimes abused this influence, we do not deny; that it occasionally roused and stimulated the people to frenzy, and sapped the foundations of authority, cannot be questioned or gainsaid; but it must be admitted that the Press of France from 1830 to 1848 was a great intellectual instrument, wielded by writers of no common order, possessing readiness, ability, dialectical skill, and all the advantages derived from education and culture. The moral element, the sense of a conscience, and the sense of a responsibility commensurate with such enormous powers, were often wanting; but at all events there was a free stage for all doctrines and dogmas, every shade of opinion was represented, and if any noxious notions were ventilated by the Nationale, the Reforme, or the Democratie Pacifique, these found a corrective in the measured articles of the Débats, of the Constitutionnel, or the more advanced Siècle. If Ultramontanism, intolerance, bigotry, and superstition found refuge and utterance in the Gazette and Quotidienne of twenty years ago, there were the Courrier Français, the Globe, the Presse, the Corsaire, and the Figaro, to supply the corrective.

In the interval between the 24th February, 1840 and 1850, this state of things was wholly changed. After the 24th of February, 1848, there sprung up within six months a host of journals of all sizes, opinions, and views, advocating the extremest and wildest doctrines. It will hardly be credited now, but the fact is nevertheless true, that between February and August, 1848, there started into being no less than 283 Journals, daily, three-day, and weekly. Some of them lasted for a few months, but the majority perished within a week of their birth. Every second man you met in the streets in the closing days of February and the commencing days of March, 1848, had the ambition to become a Journalist, seeking and

Excesses of the French Press before and after 1848. 129

hoping by this means to propagate his opinions and to rise to place, power, wealth, and fortune. Nor was it the stronger sex only that was bitten with this mania. Many women aspired to become Journalists, among the more remarkable of whom were Madame George Sand and Madame Adele Esquiros, the wife of M. Alphonse Esquiros, a gentleman who then founded a Journal called L'Accusateur Public, the organ of the Club du Peuple, of which he was President. Since those delirious times Monsieur and Madame Esquiros have, like scores of Journalists of that epoch, greatly modified their opinions, being no longer Red Republicans; and Madame George Sand, in the era of Ledru Rollin the Editor of Le Bulletin de la République, and a contributor, with Barbes and Pierre Leroux, to La Vraie République, has long since retired to her estate in the country, where she writes comedies, romances, and apologetic discourses in favour of an Emperor and a strong Government. What has come of Madame Eugénie Niboyet, who fifteen years ago edited a daily political and socialist paper called La Voix des Femmes, we have no precise means of knowing; but the probabilities are, that she has also become as Imperialist as M. Amadée De Césena, who, in the same year of 1848, was Editor of a democratic Journal called Le Triomphe du Peuple. The cheap democratic and socialist papers of 1848, advocating the wildest and the most mischievous doctrines, did more to destroy. the prestige and power of French Journalism than any of the severe laws passed against the Press in the days of Charles X. To the excesses of that Press may be fairly attributed the declining power of French Journalism and the success of the Coup d'Etat of December, 1851.

It cannot be too often or too loudly proclaimed in England, that low-priced Journalism in France has not only tended to lower the standard and staple of the article produced, but has also had the effect of powerfully contributing to produce a state of things in which the will of one man alone predominates in a nation of thirty-eight millions, who fifteen years ago enjoyed the blessing of Constitutional freedom. The fearful license, the misuse and abuse of the printing-press of 1848, could not, we admit, have continued under any well-constituted Government; but there was a mean between this unlimited license and that systematic repression and coercion, that terrible system of warnings, which renders the existing Press of France a mere machine in the hands of the Executive Government. The law of censorship, as resorted to in the time of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., considerably interfered, no doubt, with the freedom of the Press; but there then existed in France a House of Peers and a Chamber

NO. LXXV.

K