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The same abortive tales and stories which "star" some of the cheap London papers have been copied from the French, in those diatribes called the "Roman feuilleton,” to distinguish them from the “feuilleton " which preceded, and which consisted of clever papers upon worthy subjects of a very informing and superior character, by some of the first-class French writers. These last are superseding, by the same " art of writing," in matter and language, which is seen in the same class of literature in England, both in and out of the newspapers. The principle of gain ruling all. It was the venal Presse of Girardin which introduced this practice of pandering to the lowest and more vicious tastes. Many of these diatribes are translated and published here at the cost of morality, to the gain of the lower order of the general mind, and tending to the corruption of morals. The writers of the "Roman feuilleton" are paid well. One paper expends three hundred francs a day for its worthless and immoral trade. The Sues, Dumases, Souliers, Balsacs, and others, in this mode contribute too frequently, to the degradation of their literature. Solid learning and the interests of morality are tacitly stigmatised in some similar works.

Thus publication after publication is brought before the reader's view in the present volume, showing an extensive acquaintance with the subject, and no little diligence in collecting facts. We have the names of most of the editors of the works described, and in most cases, too, the salaries paid to them. Very far different, we repeat, is the treatment of literary men in France from that in England in this respect; and the information furnished under every head is considerable, as well as novel, as regards the better order of journals.

The Revue des Deux Mondes still continues to be the best conducted of the French periodicals. It was established by Count Molé, and supported by some of the first literary men in France. It contains a political chronicle, which was at first written by a Genoese named Rossi. The activity of the French press is very considerable. For details in this respect the best reference that can be made is to the present volume.

Mr. Kirwan enumerates, and by no means insists he has included all, no less than 343 periodical works in Paris. Thus, the daily journals of repute are in number 21; smaller satirical journals, 6; journals weekly or monthly, &c., 27; religious and moral (12 being Protestant), 24; legislation and jurisprudence, 38; political economy and administration, 3; statistics, history, and travels, 12; literature, 44; fine arts and music, 9; theatre and its affairs, 2; mathematical and natural sciences, 13; medicine, 28; military and naval, 12; agriculture and rural economy, 22; commerce and industry, 23; public instruction, 7; women, girls, and children, 20; fashions, 11; sites and landscapes, &c., 4; advertisements, 17. The country out of Paris possesses 258 publications. Can it be marvelled at that the two countries where the press is most active in Europe, leaving party politics out of the question, are the most powerful? It is not necessary that the press should be free to slander and abuse rulers under the changes of the passing hour to work out good in the end. The great social point is to set society thinking to the greatest extent that individuals having a capacity for it are able to do, and the exercise of the reason will in the end bring forth salutary fruit.

"There is in the French of all classes, educated or uneducated," says

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our author, "a great vivacity of conception, a remarkable facility of expression, a wonderful daring and audacity, and it is no marvel that literature and journalism have had their coup d'état, too, effected by the writers of the realistic, fantastic, and sensational school. These men. have dethroned Corneille, Racine, Boileau, Molière; they have dethroned the virtuous Fénelon, the austere Bossuet, the tender Massillon; they have dethroned Montaigne, Pascal, Montesquieu, and Voltaire; they have dethroned Chateaubriand and De Staël, whom nobody reads now.' So far, no doubt, it is true; but for how long a term will these dethronements last? We discover the like thing here, for the multitude was ever the same, and there is this difference, that the rejected of the past are the rejected of a multitude shallow in judgment, fitful in applause, fluctuating in principle, at a time when the superfices of things are mistaken for depth only because there is a movement in advance. No one believes that the masses just emerging from the night of ignorance in England, by giving a like welcome to similar works here, can be judges for the scholar or the reader of taste, or represent those who will come after them. The advance of the multitudinous mind to the comprehension of the letters of the alphabet, for example, could give it no power of final judgment in works it could not comprehend or taste from their superiority until it became more forward in progress. The critics and judges of literature in the past time were men of learning. The critics, in particular, possessed a power of judgment acquired by study. In place of these we have now works, often as immoral and injurious in families as wretched in taste. A public that is just escaped its previous shackles cannot yet judge as accomplished critics did in the past time, when some of the best productions of the best writers obtained celebrity slowly through the judgment of a few in their favour. Pope even goes so far as to assert that no good and lasting literary work made its way that was not brought out in the teeth of multitudinous disregard and even neglect. Cowper almost in our own time was condemned, as "the poor old blind schoolmaster," Milton, had been long before him.

The present subject is so copious, that we find it impossible to do justice to the details given by the author in an article of a few pages. The author himself must have had difficulty to keep his matter within compass, in respect to those portions of it which have appeared from his hands in some of our more popular reviews. He severely censures the present restraints under which the papers of France are placed, and dwells at considerable length upon the large amount of money required as caution-money for newspapers (à la Castlereagh here a few years ago, where it was a flagrant violation of the freedom of the press, when, too, no danger threatened the country). Upon such a system every man might be equally called upon to give pecuniary security for good conduct during the range of his allotted years. It is not at all necessary to abuse a man and call him vile names, and thus get under the lash of the law, in detailing a fact useful to the community, because the proof may be given in a relation of circumstances that will answer every end; but then truth is a libel! It is free disquisition that should be guaranteed. The French are divided into so many parties, Bonapartists, Orleanists, Bourbonists, Communists, Republicans, and we know not how many more parties, that a free press would produce singular party ebullitions, all right and all wrong. Abstractedly, a press

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shackled by any government deprives the country where it rules of title to be placed on the list of countries enjoying freedom. The French, however, under the Bourbons, the Republic, the Bonapartists, and the different governments during the last threescore years and ten, have never shown that they could make a temperate use of that great instrument, any more than of any principle of government, that for a moment left it comparatively unshackled. There is such a vivacity, such a difficulty of self-government among conflicting parties in France, that a censorship of one kind or another was esteemed less dangerous by all. Under Louis XVIII., while protected with an English army, and there was a pretended government by charter, the press was not only restrained, but half the English papers, which could not be read by the larger part of the people, were forbidden to enter France. The present government, therefore, is in that respect more liberal than its predecessors, with their fears and illjudgment on the subject. It would be far better for its own reputation's sake even to prosecute or persecute the press at the rate of Spencer Perceval in England, in which nation that minister attempted to arrest free discussion altogether, rather than to suffer a licenser to be attached to a government, the head of which was elected by the popular voice.

We recommend as unique in its intelligence this picture of the French press of late years. We should willingly follow it out further had we room. Upon many points the consideration bestowed upon the productions of the press by the French people shows the importance attached to it, and a degree of regard to its communications and arguments to which England exhibits no parallel. That it labours under restraints, and that to a needless extent, even considering French party feeling in all its phases and the vivacity of the people, there is no doubt. Louis Napoleon should see this, and, if it were only to avoid the example of the Bourbons and of his uncle, have conceded something to a more advanced era, and to his own more extensive experience than theirs, who ruled alone by "right divine." Setting an example of relaxation as to restrictions, the surrounding des potisms of Europe could but imitate if they desired it, in that the example of which would place France among the foremost in free institutions. When we see what has been accomplished in the way of free trade, let us hope at some future time to find that the case, if only gradually effected. Mr. Kirwan's volume will be a work of reference of no mean value on the subject of which it treats, displaying so large a knowledge as it does of the French press and the existing state of society in that country.

* Mr. Pitt, in the alarm and hubbub of the French revolution, filed in twentytwo years only fourteen informations against the press. Perceval, in three years, with no such pressure, filed forty informations! This minister was a conspirator against the freedom of our press.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

VEGETATION OF THE NEWLY-DISCOVERED LAKE DISTRICTS OF EASTERN AFRICA.

WE are indebted to Captain Grant-Captain Speke's companion in travel-for having made a unique collection of plants, by the drying process, in the newly-discovered regions of Eastern Africa. This collection having been made over to the Hookerian Herbarium at Kew, the determination of the specimens was begun by Mr. Black, the curator, and when he was unfortunately obliged to give it up from ill-health, it was continued by Dr. T. Thomson, F.R.S.

The catalogue appendaged by the latter gentleman to Captain Speke's "Journal" is based on a comparison of the specimens with the Hookerian Herbarium, and is acknowledgedly imperfect in the present state of our knowledge of the African flora. Large collections have of late years been made in Eastern Africa by Kirk and Meller of Dr. Livingstone's expedition, and in Western Africa by Baikie, Barter, and Mann; but they are still, for the most part, undescribed. We are happy, however, to learn, through Dr. Thomson, that a general flora of Tropical Africa is contemplated by government, on the recommendation of Sir W. Hooker.

The value of such a publication can be scarcely over-estimated, for as we think can be shown, even from a general consideration of the collection brought home by Captain Grant, very valuable additions may be expected to our already large lists of useful and ornamental plants. Timber-trees, fruits, cereals, edible vegetables and plants, applied to different purposes, abound in great variety. Intertropical Africa is one of the original countries of many of the gums, fragrances, and essences familiar to us from Biblical times; and if China acquired renown by its tea and mulberry-worm, Kaffa is entitled to little less distinction as the original country of coffee; but it is, above all, as applied to the arts and to medicine-herbs with as yet untried dyeing, colouring, gummy or resinous, and therapeutic or healing properties, that there are reasons to anticipate the greatest advantages to humanity.

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The collection made by Captain Grant consists in all of 750 species, gathered between Zanzibar and the southern border of Egypt. Of these, 420 only belong to known species; and although this number might, Dr. Thomson thinks, be increased to 450 species, still it would leave the large number of 300 species undetermined. Of these, two-thirds at least have, we are told, on a rough estimate, been collected by previous travellers, so that not more than 80 or 100 species are quite new. Granted even

that this is probably an over-estimate, it would not in any way affect the light in which we wish to place the collection-that of the possible utility of the flora of a new country-the resources which it appears to have March-VOL. CXXX. NO. DXIX.

afforded to antiquity, and the availability which it presents both in its existing flora, as well by the agricultural indications given by that flora, to a future more enlarged intercourse with the new countries now so recently opened to enterprise and civilisation.

We must not, in contemplating such a future, allow our minds to be downcast by the failure of the Livingstone expedition. The site selected for that opening was close by one of the main outlets of the great lacustrine systems of Central Tropical and Eastern Tropical Africa, and was hence, probably, one of the least healthy to be met with in the country. Quilimane, and the many mouths of the Zambesi, with the great marshy delta, steaming in an African sun, have been long notorious for their unhealthiness. Even the interior-up at Seña and Tête-have been tried by the Portuguese-better adapted than ourselves to such a climate-but they also failed. What is even the interior of such a region, but still the united fall of the Shiré, the Zuambesi, the Liba, the Chobe, and the Zambesi; the first bringing down the overflow of the great lake of the Maravi-the Nyassa par excellence-the second of the Shuia, Ruena, and other interior lakes of unknown character and extent; and the last two draining a very considerable portion of Southern Central Africa? Such a great outlet of interior waters could not in such a climate but be most obnoxious to the health of Europeans.

Too much dependence was also placed upon the probable or possible civilisation and co-operation of the African. The unusual humanity of the uncorrupted Makololo had aroused hopes of improvement in the mind of so amiable a man as Dr. Livingstone, which were only destined to be wrecked by a longer experience. A new and more correct view of the true position of the negro in nature, and of his capabilities for intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, are gradually being introduced into this country by a few, but select band of strong-minded men, who do not allow a mistaken philanthropy and a most erroneous and misplaced sentimentality to sway the conclusions that can be alone deduced from an honest study of the subject to mystify the deductions obtained by their own unbiased judgments, or to pervert the conclusions obtained by positive scientific inquiry.

Add to this, the negroes of the sea-board have been in most points so long subject to the evils of kidnapping, and of mutual attempts of the more powerful to enslave those who are less so, brought about by the traffic in human flesh encouraged among themselves, and without by Eastern nations-Arabs and Turks-by Europeans, notoriously the Portuguese, and by the New World, whether Anglo-Saxon, Spanish, or Portuguese, that an already corrupt nature is in their instance doubly so. An indisposition to labour, favoured by a bountiful climate, is enhanced by insecurity of person and property, and the evil passions of an unrestrained nature are wrought to almost diabolical excesses by the nearest road to wealth being through the commission of unpunished crimes. Uganda, Karagwah, Uzinza, and the surrounding regions, are East African Highlands, with a mean elevation above the be which sea, may estimated at from 3000 to 4000 feet. The natives are not, strictly speaking, negroes, but semi-Abyssinian-it may be a mixed race of Ethiopic or Arabian and negro, or it may be, as advocated by Captain Speke, of a semi-Shem-Hamitic race of Ethiopia; still they are, to all intents and purposes, more improvable than the pure negro race.

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