and never quite satisfied with what exists. This is just the tone of their organ. No paper has such a horror of a revolution or sees the red cap of 93 so visibly in the front of a republic-yet no paper protests so constantly against being ministerial. "It's a great pity -no one regrets it more; but not a party, not a person, not an opinion, is just what it should be." This is the tone of the Constitutionnel; when it attacks the government more openly, it does so not upon a principle but an act; the brutality of a police agent, the bad lighting of a street, the extravagance of a féte. If any doubtful case of home policy arrive, off the Constitutionnel starts with some question of foreign policy. The French have been insulted at Ancona; the English wish to take possession of Algiers; the Prussians are meditating an ingress into France; out comes the tri-coloured flag; your eyes are dazzled with the glory of France; a day or two afterwards when opinion is decided, the Constitutionnel returns home, and takes the popular party.

This paper, with all its faults howevercommon in its sentiments, and not peculiarly elegant in its language-is, notwithstanding, the most useful, as well as the most popular

in France; because it constitutes a kind of intermediate link between the higher bourgeoisie and the people, and fills up that space between the legal and the illicit papers, which is so unfortunately and fatally vacant in England.

As the Constitutionnel is the organ of the petite bourgeoisie, the Débats is the organ of the great bourgeoisie in France.

No paper has been so attacked for a variation in its principles as the Journal des Débats, formerly Journal de l'Empire. The principles it has advocated have been different, but the party it has remained attached to has ever been the same.

The Journal des Débats has always represented the bourgeoisie supérieure; the higher branch of that body which we call the middle classes in England, and which is, more than any other, interested in the maintenance of order, in the security of property, and in peace.

The advocate of the empire, when the empire was a guarantee for that political stability, without which commerce and industry find it difficult to exist-in turn imperialist, royalist, carlist, and philipistadvocating no particular dynasty, and only leaving Charles X. when his monarchy became as much a struggle between two castes

is

as between two opinions-such has ever been the Journal des Débats ;-organ of the most important class in France, and naturally invested with a corresponding importance. No paper has so large a circulation in Paris, nor any paper sustained with more tact and ability. To any one wishing to see the progress made by France in the last fourteen years, and the progress made more especially by that class which is now at the head of affairs, I recommend a comparison between the Journal des Débats of 1834, and a paper of the same title in 1820. You see a pigmy by the side of a giant. In the first place the Débats of 1820 is about one quarter of the size of its robust successor; then look at the paper, at the printing! and above all compare the style and the writing!

In short, in this paper and its progress behold a type of the body it is addressed to!

As early, however, as 1815, MM. Villemain and Salvandy mingled in the politics, and MM. Geoffroi and Hoffman in the literature of the Débats. M. Bertin de Vaux the present peer was also one of its principal supporters; and along its pages has at times

* I believe, almost entirely the property of Messrs. Bertin.

glanced the eloquent and fantastic pen of M. de Châteaubriand.

The Gazette de France has some resemblance to the Standard of England. It is written with singular talent, and advocates monarchical principles with liberality, eloquence and ability. A royalist paper* among a people of republican feelings its sale increases.

The Gazette de France was in its glory at the time of M. de Villèle; it opposed M. de Polignac; and since the revolution of 1830 has taken a singular and most subtle direction. During the restoration it attacked openly and ingeniously the constitutional doctrines that were then in vogue, always respecting, as the despotism of Bonaparte would have respected, the French passion for equality; and contending, with much impudence and plausibility, that it was an absurd prejudice to suppose that birth had ever been any barrier to the success of intelligence. It has now, keeping in view, however, its ancient course, and departing as little as possible from its ancient principles, taken a yet bolder and more popular tone of discussion.

* It is in this paper that the ancient Etoile and the old Journal de Paris are now melted down. MM. de Peyronnet and Villèle were among its contributors.

To the charter of the restoration, its system of election and centralization, it opposes an enlightened view of the ancient constitution which Richelieu and Louis XIV destroyed; contriving thus to trim up a very decent romance from the chronicles of those dead times. Already, in a masterly and well known view of the revolution of 1789, there had been fashioned from disjointed fragments a political Frankenstein of this description. I say a political Frankenstein-for as the magnificent but horrible creation of Mrs. Shelley was not a man resuscitated, but the shreds and patches of a variety of men combined into one form, so the constitution of M. le Maistre was not the constitution of any one time, but the bits and pieces of a variety of times, such as had never in reality existed, and harmonized together,— and which, now for the first time wrought into a compact shape, bore a pale and livid aspect among existing things.

It is, however, this creation of M. le Maistre which the Gazette reproduces and applauds.

The regenerated resurrection of the old provincial governments-the organization of primary assemblies, which, in many instances (the right for example of choosing a regency), would exercise a direct and immediate power.