should such a fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to her father's sex?"

"Go on your way, please."

"What, Beauty, and drag you after me? Do but look; I never saw such a tangle!"

"O, 'tis shameful of you; you have been making it worse on purpose to keep me here-you have!"

"Indeed, I don't think so," said the sergeant, with a merry twinkle. "I tell you you have!" she exclaimed, in high temper. "I insist upon undoing it. Now, allow me!"

Certainly, miss; I am not of steel." He added a sigh which had as much archness in it as a sigh could possess without losing its nature altogether. “I am thankful for beauty, even when 'tis thrown to me like a bone to a dog. These moments will be over too soon!"

"Not for my pleasure," she said.

Bathsheba was revolving in her mind whether by a bold and desperate rush she could free herself at the risk of leaving a portion of her skirt bodily behind her. The thought was too dreadful. The dress-which she had put on to appear stately at the supper-was the head and front of her wardrobe; not another in her stock became her so well. And then, her appearance with half a skirt gone! What woman in Bathsheba's position, not naturally timid, and within call of her retainers, would have bought escape from a dashing soldier at so dear a price?

"All in good time; it will soon be done, I perceive," said her cool friend.

"This trifling provokes, and-and-"

"It is done in order that I may have the pleasure of apologising to so charming a woman, which I straightway do most humbly, madam," he said, bowing low.

Bathsheba really knew not what to say.

"I've seen a good many women in my time," continued the young man in a murmur, and more thoughtfully than hitherto, critically regarding her bent head at the same time; "but I've never seen a woman so beautiful as you. Take it or leave it-be offended or like it-I don't

care."

"Who are you, then, who can so well afford to despise opinion?" "No stranger. Sergeant Troy. I am staying in this place.―There ! it is undone at last, you see. Your light fingers were more eager than mine. I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there's no untying."

This was worse and worse. She started up, and so did he. How to decently get away from him-that was her difficulty now. She sidled off inch by inch, the lantern in her hand, till she could see the redness of his coat no longer.

"Ah, Beauty; good-bye!" he said.

She made no reply, and, reaching a distance of twenty or thirty yards, turned about, and ran indoors.

Liddy had just retired to rest. In ascending to her own chamber, Bathsheba opened the girl's door an inch or two, and said—

"Liddy, is any soldier staying in the village-Sergeant somebodyrather gentlemanly for a sergeant, and good looking—a red coat with blue facings?"

"No, miss.

No, I say; but really it might be Sergeant Troy home on furlough, though I have not seen him. He was here once in that way when the regiment was at Casterbridge."

"Yes-that's the name. Had he a moustache-no whiskers or beard ?"

"He had."

"What kind of a person is he?"

"Oh! miss-I blush to name it—a gay man. But I know him to be very quick and trim, who might have made his thousands, like a squire. Such a clever young dand as he is! He's a doctor's son by name, which is a great deal; and he's an earl's son by nature!"

"Which is a great deal more. Fancy! Is it true?"

"Yes. And he was brought up so well, and sent to Casterbridge Grammar School for years and years. Learnt all languages while he was there; and it was said he got on so far that he could take down Chinese in shorthand; but that I don't answer for, as it was only reported. However, he wasted his gifted lot, and listed a soldier; but even then he rose to be a sergeant without trying at all. Ah! such a blessing it is to be high-born; nobility of blood will shine out even in the ranks and files. And is he really come home, miss?"

"I believe so. Good-night, Liddy."

After all, how could a cheerful wearer of skirts be permanently offended with the man? There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba will put up with a great deal of unconventional behaviour. When they want to be praised, which is often; when they want to be mastered, which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom. Just now the first feeling was in the ascendant with Bathsheba, with a dash of the second. Moreover, by chance or by devilry, the ministrant was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome stranger who had evidently seen better days.

So she could not clearly decide whether it was her opinion that he had insulted her or not.

"Was ever anything so odd!" she at last exclaimed to herself, in her own room. "And was ever anything so meanly done as what I did-to skulk away like that from a man who was only civil and kind!" Clearly she did not think his barefaced praise of her person an insult now.

It was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once told her she was beautiful.

The French Press.

FOURTH PERIOD.

NEWSPAPERS DURING THE REVOLUTION.*

I.

THE Royal decree convoking the States General to meet at Versailles on the 5th May, 1789, was issued on the 15th July, 1788, which gave France almost ten months to prepare for the most eventful parliamentary election in her annals. There can be no doubt that this long time had much to do with the thoroughness of the revolution which followed the meeting of the Assembly. The King's decree had enjoined that the deputies of the three orders-nobility, clergy, people-should ascertain clearly what were the wishes of their constituents, in order to submit them to him in writing; and this invitation to all Frenchmen to set to work constitution-making stirred up every man who could hold a pen or declaim a dozen phrases on politics. No impediments were placed in the way of free discussion. It appeared to be the sincere wish of the King to come at length to an understanding with his people; and as the nation believed in his sincerity, the tone of the press suddenly softened, and the controversies as to which was the best of political systems were carried on, not without warmth indeed, but with general loyalty towards the Crown. None of the countless elections held in France during the past eighty years have been conducted with such independence and dignity as those for the States General. The unintelligent expedient of the ballot had not yet been devised: so the electors in borough and canton voted like men who felt they were discharging a responsible trust. They were actuated by a sublime faith, for the States General had not been convoked since 1614, and it was heartily believed that the Assembly would remedy all wrongs and cause a new era to dawn for the country. Accordingly, the men who went to Versailles as representatives of the people were truly the pick of the nation.†

"The French Press," First, Second, and Third Periods, CORNHILL MAGAZINE, June and October, 1873; February, 1874.

†The States of 1789 were the 17th in French history. The first were summoned in 1802, by Philip IV., on the occasion of his dispute with Pope Boniface VIII. The second met in 1308, and ratified the abolition of the order of the Templars; and the third were convoked by Philip IV. in 1313, to deliberate about taxes. In 1317 and in 1328, the States assembled again for the coronation of Philip V. and Philip VI., who inherited by virtue of the Salic law, and desired to have that law confirmed and in 1356 and in 1380 the States met again to appoint regencies: on the former

How the three orders assembled each in a separate room of the Royal Palace, and how the deputies of the Third Estate were impolitically presented to Louis XVI. with ceremonies intended to humiliate them and make them feel their inferiority to the nobility and clergy; how after this the three orders walked processionally from the Church of Notre Dame de Versailles to that of St. Louis, and heard a dull inaugural sermon by the Bishop of Nancy; "who missed," as Mirabeau said, "the grandest opportunity ever afforded to man for saying something fine, or holding his tongue;" and how M. Necker, the Controller of Finances, laid before the States his lamentable report on the monetary embarrassments of the kingdom, and hinted that the deputies had been convoked solely to dispel these embarrassments, and for nothing else—all these details are well known to students of French history. Our purpose here is to show what part the Press played in the revolution; and it must be said at once that this part was a leading one. From the day when the States met, journalism entered upon a new and fiercely combative phase. The days of theorizing were past; there was a national Parliament at Versailles, whose debates had to be reported on from day to day for the enlightenment of excited readers, and anxiously criticized. The deputies of the third estate had to be encouraged and stimulated, those of the nobility and clergy to be remonstrated with, appealed to, and threatened. Daily and hourly it was urged that the Parliament should be reminded that it was no mere readjustment of taxes that the nation demanded, but reforms full and searching; and, above all, a Constitution. Mirabeau, Maret, Barrère, Brissot, Gorsas, Loustalot, Condorcet, Garet, Rabaud, St. Etienne, Louvet, Carra, Mercier, Fontanes, Chenier, Fréron, Marat, Hébert, Robespierre, Siéyès, and Babœuf-these were but a handful of the writers who plunged into the lists pen in hand, with each his

occasion, during the captivity of King Jean in England, and in 1380, during the minority of Charles VI. It will thus be seen that the States General met seven times in the fourteenth century. The eighth meeting was in 1420, to ratify the Treaty of Troyes; the ninth in 1468, to prevent the dismemberment of Normandy in favour of the King's brother; the tenth in 1484, to recognize the majority of Charles VIII.; the eleventh, in 1506, to approve the marriage of Louis XII.'s daughter with the Duke of Angoulème (afterwards Francis I.); and the twelfth in 1560, when a code of commercial laws was drawn up, which continued in force till the Revolution. The thirteenth and fourteenth States General, known as the States of Blois, met in 1576 and 1588, and wasted much time in trying to reconcile the contendant factions of the League; and the fifteenth meeting was held in Paris in 1593 by the Leaguers, and voted to little purpose the perpetual exclusion of Henri IV. from the throne. The sixteenth States, convoked by Henri IV.'s widow, Marie de Medici, were remarkable from the fact that the representatives of the third estate made a resolute attempt to force a charter from the Queen Regent, and, had they been headed by a capable leader, they might then and there have established parliamentary government in France. As it was, they failed, but their attitude inspired so much terror to the Crown that Louis XIII. and his two next successors would listen to no proposals for re-summoning them. During 175 years taxes were levied, wars made, and treaties concluded without any national assent or ratification.

own private paper and code of opinions. As to the ruck of lesser journalists, they were innumerable, for not only every man who could write, but every man who had received the faintest smattering of education, felt himself competent to give his advice on the crisis. A period had come when brains might hope to snatch away all the posts hitherto usurped by birth and privilege. Every Frenchman thinks he has brains, so every Frenchman saw in the desired revolution-first, his own welfare, and next, that of his fellow-citizens. From 1789 to 1791 the national eruptions of discontent, ambition, patriotism, folly, and fury, gave birth to more than 1,200 new journals in Paris alone.

Foremost among journalists, as among parliamentary debaters, was Mirabeau. He was born in 1749, and had passed his youth so disreputably that his father had been obliged to shut him up for several years at Vincennes. Here he studied a good deal, wrote some immoral novels, and on his release was practised enough in penmanship to apply to M. de Calonne for a situation as Government clerk. The Minister judged him too intelligent, however, for a subordinate office, and sent him on a political mission to Prussia; but Mirabeau soon tired of diplomatic service. He visited England, and in 1786, full of ideas of liberty and constitutions, borrowed money sufficient to start a paper, which, oddly enough, he called the Conservateur. It was not an ordinary journal, but a weekly compilation of political extracts from ancient and modern authors, and Mirabeau avowedly launched it with the intention of earning an income, whilst he wrote pamphlets of his own on the topics of the day. But the public were not anxious to know what Cicero thought about universal suffrage, or Milton about a freedom of the Press; so the paper failed, and, after an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the editorship of the Mercure, Mirabeau joined with Brissot in founding L'Analyse des Papiers Anglais. It was characteristic of Mirabeau's thoroughly French mind, that undertaking to publish analyses of all that appeared in the London papers, he knew not a word of English, and his partnership with Brissot, who did know English, was not an idea of his own. "I heard," says Brissot, "what Mirabeau was going to do, and called on him to talk about his programme. He admitted that his English analyses were to be a mere mask under which he would discuss French affairs. 'That is,' said he, I shall dress up English essays so that they will seem to apply to our case.' But do you know English?' I asked. Not a syllable,' answered he; but no more do my readers. I daresay I shall learn in time by spelling over the papers regularly.' I then offered to assist him gratis, and he accepted, with his usual good nature. Prompt and bold in attack, he soon had some violent polemics with Mallet du Pan about the trial of Warren Hastings and the situation of the English in the East Indies, and in these my experience of England, and my knowledge of British history, stood him in good stead. I also composed against Mallet a number of letters, which were published in Mirabeau's name, and I must do our adversary the justice to own that he was well acquainted

VOL. XXIX.-NO. 178.

26.