It has been observed that the Debats almost exclusively supplies the Academy with its contingent of publicists—­a circumstance accounted for by that journal being jealous of the purity of its language, and in other respects preserving a high and dignified standard.  It has, indeed, for an unusually long period enjoyed its reputation.  French and Belgian newspapers are very much of a mystery to an Anglo-Saxon.  They seem to flourish under conditions impracticable to American or English journals.  The Independance Belge and the Journal des Debats lie before us.  Neither of them contains sufficient advertisements to make up three of our columns, yet their expenses must, we should suppose, especially in the case of the Debats, published as it is where prices are so high, be very large.  Both these papers contain articles evidently the work of able hands, and in the case of the Independance the foreign correspondence must be a very costly item, forming, as it frequently does, five columns of a large page.  The price of each is twenty centimes—­high, certainly, for a single sheet.

It has often been observed, too, that French newspaper-men seem exceptionally well off.  They frequent costly cafes, occasionally indulge in petits soupers in cabinets particuliers, and, altogether, taking prices into account, appear to be in the enjoyment of larger means than their brethren of the pen elsewhere.  Of course, the success of a French newspaper is, even in the absence of advertisements, intelligible in the case of the Figaro or Petit Journal, with their circulation of 70,000 and 150,000 a day; but in the case of such papers as the Debats, whose circulation is not very large, it is difficult to explain.

The position of a journalist in Paris seems to stand in many respects higher than elsewhere.  Of course, the fact of contributions not being anonymous adds immeasurably to the writer’s personal importance, if it also gets him into scrapes.  Elsewhere, editors are men of mark, and certainly no one in the journalistic world can possibly be made more of than Mr. Delane in London.  But the editorial writers in his paper, who would in Paris be men of nearly as much mark as rising members of Parliament in England, are completely “left out in the cold,” gaining no reputation even among acquaintance, since they are required to preserve the strictest secrecy as to their connection with the paper.  Altogether, we are disposed to believe that Paris—­official “warnings,” press prosecutions and possible duels notwithstanding—­must be accepted as the journalist’s paradise.  To be courted, caressed and feared is as much as any reasonable newspaper writer can expect, and a great deal more than he is likely to get out of his work elsewhere.

R.W.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Cities of Northern and Central Italy.  By Augustus J.C.  Hare.  New York:  George Routledge & Sons.