burthening their pages by the reiteration of their own peculiar doctrines; while Cagefigue is distinguished by that local colouring and that vraisemblance, which carry with them such deep conviction.

This nisus, (if I may be allowed the phrase) towards history, is but a natural consequence of the great discussion of political principles, incidental to the existing war of castes and principles, which arose out of a restoration, that has restored little or nothing, and has left the nation and the aristocrats to settle with each other as they may. Still, however, it indicates a growing solidity in the national character; and it is among the most striking and important changes of modern times. It is a sure guarantee of the earnestness with which the nation is pursuing the acknowledgment of their political rights; and a pledge that they deserve, and will therefore obtain, a better form of government, than that under which they now linger.

There are doubtless numerous publications of a more trifling and ephemeral character, to

meet the wants of a public so varied as that of Paris. But the great majority of the productions of the Parisian press are marked by a seriousness, which looks only to practical utility. Works of disgraceful bigotry and narrow sectarian religion are few, and of a very limited sale; and the illumination of the nineteenth

*

It is not that efforts are not daily making to replunge the French population into bigotry; but that they are made with so little judgment or knowledge of the feelings of the public, that their circulation is merely co-extensive with their gratuitous distribution. How is it possible that such a work as is criticised in the following passage, could take with any one above the intellectual calibre of an ideot ?

"Quoi qu'il en soit, il nous est tombé entre les mains un petit journal obscur qui peut donner lieu à de singuliers rapprochemens: il est intitulé: Chronique édifiante ouvrage utile aux personnes pieuses qui veulent avancer dans la perfection. Les auteurs, sous le prétexte de défendre la religion, que l'on n'attaque point, l'outragent en effet de la manière la plus monstrueuse, insultent, en outre, à tout ce qu'il y a de plus sacré. Il est dit, dans la Chronique édifiante, que la mort de M. de la Chalotais, fils du célèbre procureur-général, sur l'échafaud révolutionnaire, est l'œuvre directe de Jésus-Christ qui frappe les pères dans leurs enfans, et dont la colère s'étend sur toute une généra

century is rarely insulted with insane illustrations of the Apocalypse, and virulent denunciations of divine wrath, such as daily figure in the literary advertisements of the London Journals. Neither does there exist in Paris a public requiring a daily supply of personal scandal, and of frippery delineations of fashionable vices, and modish inanity. The fashionable novel fell, in France, with the Crebillons and the Duclos; and if there are still a few individuals who occupy their leisure in pursuits as trifling, or as criminal, as those which

tion. Il y est dit encore que le fils de Buffon a justement expié par le même supplice l'athéisme de son père, auteur de l'Epoques de la nature? L'auteur ose insinuer que c'est en punition de sa présence à l'Opéra, qu'un prince de la famille des Bourbons a été assassiné, enfin, on lit, dans la Chronique édifiante, cette phrase, qu'aucune épithète ne peut qualifier, parce qu'elle réunit tous les genres d'insulte et de profanation: "Marat serait-il donc encore au Panthéon?......Non; mais malgré les règles de la sainte église, qui défendent de rien placer de profane dans les églises, on aperçoit dans celle de Sainte-Geneviève Louis XVIII. tenant à la main.... quoi ? l'Evangile ?.... non. La charte !..." -French Paper.

dissipated the ennui of the noblesse of Louis the Fourteenth's day, there are none so debased and degraded as to find amusement in their literary repetition. In England, this class of novel-writing was commenced for the purposes of a just and legitimate satire: but a spirit of toadyism and trifling finds account in its delineations; and the mercantile activity of publishers has overflowed the market with imitations and réchauffées, which have no object but the gratification of a vitiated taste.

VOL. II.

G G

450

LA CLASSE INDUSTRIELLE.

VISIT TO ST. OUEN.

ONE of the greatest losses which France has sustained, since we last visited it, has been the death of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld Liancourt. No plebeian pride, no democratic prejudice, no principle of equality, can guard the imagination from the magic of such a name, coming as it does on the memory, with all its splendid associations "thick about it,”— wit, worth, valour, the dreams of chivalry, the facts of history, and the evidence of contemporary merit. Still a name is but a name; there are de la Rochefoucaulds, and de la Roche