drinking in Olympus, something sweeter far and more intoxicating than the sip of absinthe and the perusal of Charivari which regale the bourgeois mind in this present century of grace. So the crowds increase, and the petits maîtres strut about in their red-heeled shoes, endeavouring to look as if they knew more than all the newsmen put together; and bullies, with vinous voices, though no longer aggressive since Cardinal Richelieu has behead take off the keen edge of the popular day as which of them cannot? -- this craving for news? Imagine several hun- diurnal orgie of false reports is as dramdreds of Frenchmen, in wigs and kneebreeches, pressing towards a particular spot, as if their lives depended upon it. Women are there, and great ladies, with escorts of perfumed smirkers; King Charles' dogs, too, held in leash by silk ribbons, and yelping as their devoted tails and paws are trodden on by the headlong rush. Rings are formed everywhere, and men with their froggish faces aglow, in officious vanity, are declaiming falsehoods as loud and fast as they can remembered the Marquis of Beuvron and Count them-gesticulations, mimicry, and maybe a tear or two now and then, being called in aid to lend a dramatic emphasis where needed. Wonders are heaped on wonders, fables on fables, and the listeners raise their hands aloft, or shout, or stare aghast, or titter in unison with delighted relish if the narrator be wag enough (and trust a Frenchman on that score) to interlard his horrors with some neat bit of libel concerning any grande dame well known. The news-bawlers are of all sorts, sizes, and degrees. One had come straight from the war with his arm in a sling, another had received a long letter for all letters were long thenfrom a correspondent in Spain, Turkey, or Scotland; a third saw Cinq Mars and De Thou beheaded with his own eyes; a fourth has got a fat Englishman by his side, who arrived in Paris that morning, and whom he has pumped dry ever since for the public behoof; a fifth can tell all about the new Papal nuncio, who entered Versailles, with true Christian humility, drawn by eight horses, and preceded by a hundred menials in livery, and so on. Meanwhile from group to group, with inkhorns at their button-holes, quills behind their ears, and note-books in hand, dart the salaried newsmen of great nobles, jotting entries on flying leaves; and ever and anon, breathless, perspiring, and racing one another, hurry up the red, blue or yellow varlets of these nobles, who snatch the leaves as they are ready, and pelt back home to their masters - neither more nor less than if they were carrying modern telegrams. Some of the newsmen have larger and more eager audiences than others-old hands these, who can lie with the coolest assurance; they are known like crack bookmakers in the betting-rings, or like the acutest among bulls and bears in the jobbing markets. Philosophers may despise such, but philosophers are not common; and to the average Parisian, who can spare an hour every de Boutteville-Montmorency for duelling, - may The rage of certain shopkeepers for hearing news "Messieurs, je vous demande excuse, Trouver mon fainéant d'epoux, Et fait le nouvelliste au milieu de cent fous. Il pensa me faire enrager, Et d'un air tout mourant il me disait, 'Ma femme, A son apothécaire il en disait autant, daud Frenchmen disperse to their homes, praying there may be things newer still for to-morrow. But when the labours of the Tuileries are over, all is not finished yet for the leading newsmongers. Back in their lodgings, or seated in one of the coffee-houses of the Rue St. Antoine, they dictate to a staff of tattered scribes the news-letters they are paid to send regularly to courtiers at St. Germains and Versailles, or to provincial nobles. And arduous compositions some of these letters are for the newsman, who has his reputation to maintain and many hungry and unscrupulous competitors to outdo. So he takes care not to be dry. He flavours his facts with epigrams, his anecdotes with puns, and his politics with satire, which might cost him those useful ears of his if he bruited it aloud in the highways. On the whole, he produces a diverting letter, which must have been a boon indeed to the recipient; and which even the explorer of to-day, when he discovers it among the dusty piles of the library at the Arsenal, that of St. Geneviève, or the National Library in the Rue de Richelieu, may read with profit and not without admiration. II. THINGS were in this state when the Dr. Théophraste Renaudot above mentioned came to Paris. He was a shrewd man, born at Loudun in 1567, brought up in Paris, but graduate of the Faculty of Montpellier. In 1612, being then twentysix, he returned to the capital, and somehow got appointed at once Doctor to the King. But there was no salary attached to this post, which was in his case purely honorary, and so Renaudot opened a school, though the fact that he, a mere provincial doctor, had obtained a medical appointment at court, was very sore to the Paris Faculty of Medicine, who began to annoy him from that moment. Renaudot, however, was a man far ahead of his contemporaries in sagacity, patience, learning and humanity. Petty spite did not disturb him, or at least it did not deter him from executing any of the numerous plans he had in mind for the welfare of his contemporaries. He first inaugurated a free dispensary; and, being no friend to the bleeding and drugging processes then in violent vogue, he treated his patients with simple remedies, which were in direct contravention to those usually prescribed, but which oddly enough often cured them. This of course raised a grievous outcry. That a man should venture to invent new physic was bad enough, but that he should have the face to cure any one by its means was not to be stood for a moment. Guy Patin, the most celebrated physician; Duval, who had not his equal for cutting off a leg, especially when amputation was unnecessary, and the entire School of Medicine, fell on him tooth and nail. He had been impudent enough to assert that a roasted mouse was not a sovereign cure for gunshot wounds, that cobwebs boiled in camomile were silly things for an indigestion, and that nobody had yet been cured of the jaundice by swallowing the yolk of an egg with fleas in it. The School solemnly banned these heresies, and Renaudot received notice to close his dispensary under pain of being prosecuted for practising as a doctor in Paris without being duly qualified by a degree from the Parisian University. But Richelieu, who knew a clever man when he saw one, sent for Duval, and told him significantly that he should like to see him make it up with Renaudot. At the same time he appointed the latter Commissioner General for the sick and sound poor of the kingdom; authorized him to open a hospital in the St. Antoine quarter (each patient was to have a bed to himself in this hospital- -a novel luxury), and was gracious enough to take an interest in some chemical discoveries which Renaudot had made, and which supplied new curatives to the Materia Medica. Emboldened by this patronage, Renaudot now added to the tale of his sins by annexing a pawn-office to his dispensary. A third of their value was to be advanced on pledges, and the interest charged was no more than 3 per cent. per annum. clause specified, however, that the pledge was to be forfeited if not redeemed at the proper time; but Renaudot never availed himself of this privilege; and, to the great scandal of all Lombards, Jews and others, who had never lent for less than 25 per cent. and had always forfeited without mercy, this new establishment prospered in such wise as utterly to supplant its rivals. Need it be said that the Lombards and Jews unanimously protested in the name of the down-trodden poor against such usurious practices as the above, and that Guy Patin made a new and most desperate attempt to get Renaudot struck off the roll of practitioners as a mountebank. But once again Richelieu shielded the man with his strong arm, and Renaudot quietly struck out in a new philanthropic direction, by A instituting his famous Bureaux d'A-tion of his Bureaux, which might so dresses et de Rencontre. These were what easily have degenerated into a puff adwe should call a General Estate and vertisement concern, he classed friends Agency Office; with an "Exchange and Mart superadded; they met a want which must have been sadly felt before, and if they were Renaudot's only creation, they would still entitle him to rank very high as a benefactor of his species. and foes alike, according to the position which public opinion assigned them. There is a double entry in Renaudot's professional register, which is eloquent and almost touching, considering how cruelly the two men it names had perse cuted him. Surgical operations.-I know of no better surgeon than M. Duval, who lives in the Rue de la Ferronerie. His skill is very great; and always bestowed with courtesy." "Diseases of the eye, ulcers, eruptions on the skin. M. Guy Patin, physician to his Majesty, should be consulted by all persons afflicted as above. He is without a rival in these branches of the art." By paying three halfpence, equivalent to about fivepence of our money, anybody could go and register his wants, or be put into communication with other advertisers able to supply him with what he needed. People who sought to sell, let, purchase, or hire estates, houses, or lodgings; masters who were seeking servants, tutors, clerks, mechanics, and domestics desiring situations; tradesmen or private persons in search of loans; Elsewhere in his Code of Rules Reinquirers wanting information on matters naudot says: "Men intending to travel legal, administrative, medical, historical, are often unacquainted as to the shortest or geographical; owners of property who and easiest routes they should take; were anxious to effect exchanges or sales moreover, they know nothing of the all these found assistance at the towns through which they must pass; Bureaux d'Adresses. But this was only and again, many of them would like to the primitive form of the institution. make sure of a place where their letters By-and-by show-rooms were erected, could be sent during their absence and where people could deposit property for forwarded to them with punctuality. I exchange or sale, without letting their will accordingly furnish all intending names be known. Renaudot drew up a travellers with an itinerary telling them code of regulations, which we would what roads are the safest and what hosgladly quote but for its length; and in telries in the provinces offer the best this he had not only laid down rules most accommodation to man and beast. I will considerate and intelligent, out furnished also receive letters and parcels in deposit his reasons for them. Amongst other for all, not travellers only, whose conthings he said: " People may well be venience might be suited thereby; and I excused for not desiring everybody to will forward, on payment of the required know that they wish to sell or exchange sum in my office, an order for an equiva their goods. Let these confide their lent sum on any correspondent I may names in private to us: we will ticket have-and my correspondents are nutheir property with a reference number, merous in provincial cities." Elseand the transaction can be effected where again Renaudot undertakes to without publicity." Again: "Certain draw up petitions or to write letters for persons in search of a lawyer or the illiterate, to transmit parcels to any doctor cannot of themselves know, or part of Paris, Versailles, or St. Germains, at most know only by doubtful rumour, to advertise objects lost or stolen, and to what lawyers or what doctors are best keep a register wherein people could able to plead their special causes or to write messages for persons whose adtreat the particular maladies with which dresses they ignored or with whom for they are afflicted. To all such we will some other reason they were unable to make it our business truthfully to say, correspond directly. So that this extra"This lawyer is renowned for his knowl- ordinary man not only inaugurated in edge of land laws; this one is better France an Estate, Professional and Sersuited for commercial cases; this third vants' Agency, as well as an office for can eloquently defend a prisoner unjustly private sales and exchanges, but further accused of treason.' And as regards laid the basis of the Poste Restante, doctors, 'This one has been more success- Parcels Delivery, Post-Office Directory, ful than any other in treating small-pox; Tourist's Guide and Money Order Office; that other is much distinguished for his besides affording an outlet to troubled cure of wounds,""&c. And Renaudot spirits like those who correspond through was as good as his word, for in this sec-the agony column of The Times. It is * not surprising that his office in the Rue | owner would pledge it a year for 200 crowns, de la Calandre should soon have been all at 10 per cent. interest. Glory be to God! too small for its multifarious duties and 40. A soldier who has lost a leg and an eye that his original staff of six clerks should, in the King's service, thanks be to Heaven! in less than three months, have swelled will sell or exchange his sword, which is of no to fifty. Richelieu, in sheer admiration more use to him, but which came from his father and his grandsire before that, and is beauat the man, sent for him and thanked tified by a silver hilt richly carved and firm to him for the services he was rendering hold. It has never been drawn but in the the King's subjects. He also offered cause of the true faith, and has spilled the him money to extend his offices, and this blood of heretics more than could be numRenaudot accepted, but only as a loan. bered. It would leap out of the scabbard It was his custom to levy a commission unbidden at the sight of a Huguenot, nor less of six deniers per livre (franc) on the obedient to the empire of love, would it ever sales he effected, and by means of these fail a brave knight who unsheathed it to guard his mistress. It would be the fitting companand other receipts he soon repaid the ion of a clear heart and loyal hand; and the Cardinal every penny that had been ad-price of it is 28 crowns. Or, in exchange, vanced to him. But he did more than this. Finding that his registers were not always convenient modes of reference, by reason of the excessive crowds which pressed round them, he brought out a printed advertiser, which is almost the exact prototype of a journal at present well known in London. It was called Feuille du Bureau d'Adresses, and appeared every Saturday, at the price of 1 Opinions differ as to whether this paper preceded the Gazette de France, or was issued simultaneously with it. Probably it was first published in manuscript form, but came out in print at least six months before the Gazette, for a number bearing the date of June 14th, 1631, shows a periodical in full organization and containing indirect references to advertisements which must have appeared several weeks before. At all events this Feuille was purely an advertisement sheet -a forerunner of the Petites Affiches which were reinvented in 1746-it was in no sense a newspaper. Here are a few extracts which will mark its charac ter. 22. Wanted to sell or exchange a new coat of scarlet cloth (royal seal quality), lined with satin of the same colour and embroidered with silver lace. Price eight crowns; or the value would be taken in colonial produce. 27. A pair of earrings for sale or exchange. Two pearls, pear-shaped, and very white. Price 100 livres; or exchanges in lace for ladies' collerette and sleeves. 37. A fragment of the true holy cross, enchased under a diamond, which forms the centre of a cross lately belonging to the deceased Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen. It will protect its wearer in battle, and save from all dangers by sea. Price 250 crowns; or its The currency of that time was as follows: 15 deniers = 1 sol or sou; 20 sols = 1 livre tournois (franc); 3 livres = 1 écu' (crown); 20 livres = 1 louis dor. would be taken any article suitable to an aged warrior with more honour than means, though no blame is intended on our King, who recompenses all his servants with generosity above their deserts. Then under the heading of Affaires Meslées, we find: 103. A young dromedary for sale at a reasonable price. 107. An atlas by Henricus Hondius. Price 48 livres. 109. A man will give an invention for stopping game and preventing it from leaving a wood, or once it has gone out, from re-entering therein otherwise than at the spot one desires. 115. A companion wanted to travel to Italy with.* 124. Lodgings to let in full view of the spot where evil-doers are most justly executed. Then we come to advertisements of The Times order : If the gentleman with the blue feather, who saved two ladies wearing masks in the Rue St. Denis from the insolences of a drunkard, is as tender-hearted as he is brave, he will find one of his obliged servants ready to thank him without her mask at the gate of the Place Royal to-morrow at 4 in the afternoon. From L. to H. Once only, but never again. I thank God, but next Him the man who brained the mad dog at my shop door last Monday, and went away without listening to my gratitude. Modesty is the diadem of courage, but my wife and children would have been glad to embrace the friend who shielded us from a great peril, which makes us still shudder. Advertisements of this order were very numerous, for persons seldom set out for a long journey singly but waited until they could hear of a number more with whom they could make up a party strong enough to defend itself against highwaymen. It was not the least of Renaudot's services that he inquired into the respectability of companions who offered themselves, in order that an honest man might no more be exposed to travel with a rogue, who, once clear of Paris, would relieve him of his purse and luggage. Stolen, with unequalled effrontery, from an honest man who was returning home at night near the Church of St. Paul, a new cloak of gray cloth, a hat with a silver buckle, and a belt with a purse attached to it. The cloak and the hat were marked inside with the letters P. Y., and obedient subjects of the King are cautioned against buying them. The advertisements numbered many hundreds, and were very neatly classed, the size of the paper being ordinary folio, with three columns to a page. It is clear that from the moment he started his Feuille du Bureau d'Adresses, Renaudot must have conceived the possibility of founding a news-sheet; but, even if he had never published his advertisements, this idea must still have occurred to him. In the first place, his agency business brought an immense amount of varied intelligence to his knowledge; in the next place, he was the intimate friend of the genealogist, d'Hozier, who wrote him from abroad most long and chatty letters, which he would read to his patients lying sick in bed, much to their improvement; and, in the third place, the manuscript News Letters had attained, by the year 1630, to such a pitch of perfection, and found such a ready sale, that the notion of further popularizing them by printing must have suggested itself to more than one man before it was actually put into practice. But the great bar was this, that nothing could be printed without the King's privilege, and this privilege was not lightly granted. Edicts of a most sanguinary nature had been launched against clandestinely printed pamphlets in 1553, 1560, 1561, 1563, and 1570. From the year 1600 to 1610, these edicts had been renewed twice and three times every year, though, whilst Henri IV. reigned, delinquents were not hanged, but only fined for their first offence, and whipped for the second and following. But Louis XIII. set to whipping, imprisoning, and banishing erring printers as soon as he came of age; and in 1620 he even tried to interfere with the written News Letters; "which," says the royal edict, "have become a grievous nuisance by reason of the falsehoods and scandals they contain, and must henceforth be written with truth and propriety or not at all; failing which, their authors must dread our displeasure." This of course did not suit the newsmen; and they easily foresaw that, if obliged to submit their amusing productions in a printed shape to official censorship, these elucubrations would be shorn of half their at tractions. Accordingly, they avoided printing; and manuscript letters continued in vogue for several years after Renaudot launched his Gazette. This, well as in France. Here the laws about by-the-by, was the case in England as printing were as severe as there, and the Evening Post, published during the early years of Charles I.'s reign, expresses its astonishment that country gentlemen should pay 37. and 47. a year to have a News Letter sent them, when they could subscribe to the printed journal for 2d. a copy. In time, however, the Post found that it was no use trying to outvie the News Letters in interest, and so hit upon the sagacious expedient of leaving two of its pages blank, in order that those newsmen might fill them up by hand, and so afford country subscribers the double advantage of licensed news in print, and unlicensed tittletattle in writing. Renaudot, who had no wish to publish tattle, had no reason to fear censorship. He addressed himself to Richelieu, and craved leave to start a printed newspaper under royal patronage. The politic Cardinal was quite shrewd enough to see how useful might be to him an organ which would set information before the public in the manner he desired, and in that manner alone; so he granted all Renaudot wished, in the form of "letters patent," securing him an entire monopoly of printing newspapers, and moreover he conferred on his protégé the pompous title of Historiographer of France. The first number of the Gazette de France appeared on Friday, May 30, 1631. III. no mean ITS size was four quarto pages, and its price one sol parisis, i.e. 1-2d., worth about 1 1-2d. modern money. The publi cation of the paper had been heralded by a prospectus, very long, minute, and shrewd as usual, but of which no copy remains. All we know for certain is, that curiosity was much excited, and that 500 impressions of the first number were struck and sold in one dayachievement considering the tediousness of printing by the old wooden handpresses. The first number contained no preface or address, nothing in the way of a leading article, but plunged at once in medias res, and gave news from nineteen foreign towns or countries, but, oddly enough, not a line of French intelligence. This is the order in which the items were classed, and their dates. From Constantinople, April 2nd, 1631; Rome, April |