dressed up to convey an idea of the rank
and manners of the class to which the
prosecutor, or culprit, or witness belongs.
They are usually sustained at the rate of
one word, with a hyphen before it, per line.
For porters and their wives, conversations in
bad grammar and slang orthography are
substituted for what was really said. Sublime
expressions of super-sentimental generosity are
ascribed to lenient prosecutors. Almost every
minor criminal is portrayed as of a comic
turn of mind. He generally pilfers, or cheats,
or assaults the executive for the fun of the
thing, and his defence consists of epigrams
and bon-mots. Great criminals are utterly
useless to a newspaper until some halo of
romance has been thrown around their crimes.
The prisoner murdered his uncle, or poisoned
and robbed his landlord, or poignarded and
rifled his dearest friend, to relieve a stranger
from the pangs of hunger, to buy his dying
mother some delicacy she was longing for, or
to marry the idol of his soul, and to establish
himself in life with comfort and respectability.
When no feasible sublimity of that degree of
intensity can be called up, and the culprit stands
confessed simply and nakedly a murderer, and
nothing but a murderer, the reporter to—suit
the taste of the present editor-in-chief of
the French press in general—pronounces the
wretch to be either a Republican or a Socialist.

In those little ruptures which break the
private tenour of domestic life, it not uncommonly
appears that vice triumphs, and virtue
is unrewarded. When a money-loving father
and a jolly agreeable young prodigal are at
issue, all the amusement which is got out of
the case, by the romantic reporter, is extracted
at the expense of the close-fisted parent. The
elderly husband, who presumes to bring his
young wife into court—however great her
crimes, and however severe his sufferings—
will be sure to find himself caricatured in the
next morning's papers. Although the
decision on the affair may be just, yet, as the
magistrate seldom appears in the story, it
is not always given.

In every French newspaper there is a column
or two, headed " Various Facts," purporting to
contain all the fearful accidents, melancholy
catastrophes, and lamentable occurrences of
Paris and the provinces, which the papers are
that day called upon to record. There is a
suspicious air about most of them. You fancy
you have heard something like them
somewhere before; especially if you have read
many French romances. Nothing but initials
of the parties are given, with a few less
romantic exceptions. Why that secrecy ? Is
it tenderness for the feelings of Sieur de P——
who has strangled his sweetheart with her
own hair? Is it hyper-Gallic gallantry towards
Madame B——, who has broken the neck of
her husband, by suddenly closing the window
upon him, when the unfortunate man was
looking out to observe the state of the
weather? The locality, too, is generally
vague. If it be in the provinces, the reader is
given a whole arrondissement to guess at; if
in Paris, the quarter only is mentioned. Why
that mystery?

One remarkable feature in the " Various
Facts," given under one head in all French
newspapers, is the straightforward manner in
which they are recited. There is an official
air about the "Sieur de So-and-so;" and a
laconism in the narrative, which distinguishes
them entirely from the Police Reports. They
are only suspicious from their curt
improbability. Thrilling incidents would appear
to be too plentiful in this department to
require any stretching out from the narrator.
They have no headings; they relate the
circumstances only; leaving to the judgment
of the reader, whether they constitute
an accident, an occurrence, or a catastrophe
—feeling, probably, that no title, in however
large type, could add or take away from the
fearfulness, melancholy, or lamentable nature
of the fact. The state of alarm or excitement
—considerable, or otherwise—into which the
neighbourhood may be thrown, is excluded as
irrelevant: anything which can " be better
conceived than described," they leave to be
conceived, and say nothing about it. But for
this conciseness, who could have hoped to
comprehend the complicated tricks and counter-
tricks of lover, wife, and husband, related
in the " Droit," the other day; ending, of
course, as all such stories do in France—whether
in drama, novel, or ballad—with the
complete defeat of the husband's schemes, and
the final triumph of the wife and lover! Related
in the English style of newspaper narrative,
who could have unravelled that tangled
skein of blunders, which finally left the injured
husband a prisoner in the station-house, and
secured to the happy pair twenty-four hours'
fair start for the frontier ? Twenty lines suffice
for the tragic story of a young couple whose
bodies were found in the Seine, near the capital,
bound together by cords, with a statement of
the heartless conduct of relatives, " who had
endeavoured to separate those who now united
themselves for ever," wrought in needle-worked
letters, upon the bosom of the white frock of
the unfortunate young woman. Their remains
may be vainly sought in the " Morgue; " for
nothing had been heard there of the
melancholy occurrence. In thirty-six lines, we
were told, in the " Estafette," a short time since,
how the Sieur X——was a barber, in the
department of the Seine and Marne, (the
author of the spelling-books, by the way, could
think of no one but Xerxes when an owner
for this scarce letter was wanted;) how he had
a pretty wife; how a customer coming
incessantly to be shaved and have his hair cut,
aroused his suspicions; how a friendly neighbour
confirmed them; and how, when the
unsuspecting customer delivered over his
head, on the next occasion, into the hands of
the Sieur X——, with a careless inquiry of
" What news ? " the irritated barber replied by