passed away besides necessarily forming
a tome of more or less heterogeneous
contents. All at once this set of publications
ceased, temporarily; for they have since
re-appeared in an exaggeration of cheapness
offering to their purchasers ten thousand
letters of fairly-printed type for a single
centime, or the tenth of a penny. At the
time, they were driven from the field by
little, handy, non-illustrated volumes of
science, romance, history, biography, and
other subjects of general interest, sold at
from one to three and a-half francs, according
to their publisher's calculations of cost and
price. These convenient, amusing, and often
instructive volumes, show no signs of any
diminution of public favour.

But about three years since, there appeared
on the booksellers' counters a folded sheet
calling itself Les Cinq Centimes lllustrés, or
The Illustrated Five Centimes, which we
might English as The Illustrated Halfpenny.
It was, and continues to be, neatly and
respectably got up; and if there was not in it
everything which a reader could wish for,
why, what can you expect for a halfpenny?
Frenchmen stared, and laughed, and bought
single numbers of the preposterous new
periodical; Frenchwomen and children,
pleased with the cuts, subscribed for the
quarter or the year. It was so cheap, that
it was not worth the pain of going without
it. It pervaded the land, like the frogs of
Egypt, appearing in out-of-the-way places,
nobody knew whence or how. English people,
remembering the Mirror of old, and the
Penny, and its copy, the Saturday Magazine,
were in no wise astonished to find the
Illustrated Centimes soon grown into an
established phenomenon; a success, exciting the
envy and the imitation of others. Then
followed the Journal pour Tous, the Journal
for All, price two sous, and the Journal du
Dimanche, or Sunday Journal, price one sou;
both of which are now firmly established, the
former having a weekly circulation of eighty
thousand, the latter of a hundred and ten
thousand copies. The prosperous career of
these three periodical pioneers called up
numerous others into being. Halfpenny, penny,
three-halfpenny, and twopenny new periodicals
are being scattered over the whole area of
France, with the profusion of leaves after an
autumnal gale, and some of them as fleeting.
But the grand fact remains unshaken, that an
unknown market for, and an unthought-of
means of getting rid of, printed paper, has
been very recently discovered. Does a man
want to advocate or advertise any whim,
project, or crotchet of his own, "crack!" as
the French say, he starts a one-sou journal,
appearing fortnightly or monthly, which
reaches the long term of nine or ten
numbers, and then stops suddenly, having
answered his purpose more or less. But
journals of wider aim than those have
suffered an early extinction for want of
stamina. The Magic Lantern has burnt
itself out; and the Useless Journal (Journal
Inutile), a would-be joke on the others, has
drawn in its horns and gone to repose in its
shell.

Still we have, thriving in apparently robust
health La Ruche Parisienne, The Parisian
Hive; La Feerie Illustrée, Illustrated Fairy
Tales; Le Passe-Temps, The Passtime; Le
Voleur, The Thief, printing eighteen thousand
weekly; L'Omnibus, fourteen thousand; La
Semaine des Enfans, The Children's Week;
Le Roger Bontemps, The Roger Fairweather;
Les Amis du Peuple, The Friends of the
People; Journal Illustré des Voyages et des
Voyageurs, Illustrated Journal of Travels
and Travellers; La Lecture, Journal de
Romans, Reading, and Journal of Novels;
besides several others.

Of these cheap periodicals, some have been
sent forth by the first Paris publishers; the
Journal pours Tous belongs to Hachette, and
L'Univers Illustré is a recent speculation of
the Brothers Michel Levy. The success of
more than one low-priced journal is
attributed in part to translations from the
English. In this respect, the taste of the
two nations is exactly opposite. French
fictitious narrative, translated, is nearly
unsaleable in England at the present date;
although, in past days, Paul and Virginia
and several other tales established their
footing in our literature. But versions
of English and American novels into
French, even when not of the highest order,
are a popular and profitable article of
trade. Novels which can hardly find readers
here, are translated, read, and purchased in,
France. That they are not offered for sale
in three regulation volumes, price one guinea
and a-half, may have something to do with
the circumstance. Of course, soon after the
completion of a novel, with the author's
leave, or without it if it can be legally done,
translations from Dickens, Thackeray, Edgar
Poe, James, Cooper, and the whole of the
Anglo-American romancers, stare you in the
face from every bookseller's window.
Something of the kind takes place in the
newspapers. The French, having no parliamentary
debates of their own, supply the void by reading
the debates of the English House of Commons;
translated abstracts of which regularly
appear. It is a consolation to orators to
whom their countrymen turn the ear of
indifference, or whom they even interrupt
with ungentle sounds, to know that if they
can only catch the eye of the speaker and
get reported, they may be read wherever the
Constitutionnel or the Siècle circulate, with
the belief on the reader's part that their
audience hung captive on their honied lips.
Translated leading articles are also of interest
and use to a shackled press.

The French cheap journals can hardly be
said to be the foster-children of an unknown
public, like the corresponding publications in