During the twenty years of Louis Napoleon, political caricature being extinguished, France was inundated with diluted Gavarni. Any wretch who drew or wrote for the penny almanacs, sweltering in his Mansard on a franc a day, could produce a certain effect by representing the elegant life of his country, of which he knew nothing, to be corrupt and sensual. Pick up one of these precious works blindfold, open it at random, and you will be almost certain to light upon some penny-a-line calumny of French existence, with a suitable picture annexed. I have just done so. The "Almanach Comique" for 1869, its twenty-eighth year, lies open before me at the page devoted to the month of August. My eye falls upon a picture of a loosely dressed woman gazing fondly upon a large full purse suspended upon the end of a walking-stick, and underneath are the words, "_Elle ne tarde pas à se réapprivoiser._" She does not delay to _retame_ herself, the verb being the one applied to wild beasts. There is even a subtle deviltry in the syllable _ré_, implying that she has rebelled against her destiny, but is easily enough brought to terms by a bribe. The reading matter for the month consists of the following brief essay, entitled "August--the Virgin:" "How to go for a month to the sea-shore during the worst of the dog-days. Hire a chalet at Cabourg for madame, and a cottage on the beach of Trouville for _mademoiselle_. The transit between those two places is accomplished per omnibus in an hour. That is very convenient. Breakfast with Mademoiselle; dine with Madame. This double existence is very expensive, but _as it is the most common_, we are compelled to examine it in order to establish a basis for the expenditures of the twelve months." Is it not obvious that this was "evolved?" Does it not smell of a garlicky Mansard? And have not all modern communities a common interest in discrediting anonymous calumny? It were as unjust, doubtless, to judge the frugal people of France by the comic annuals as the good-natured people of England by the _Saturday Review_. [Illustration: The Den of Lions at the Opera. (From _Les Différents Publics de Paris_, by Gustave Doré.)] It is evident, too, that the French have a totally different conception from ourselves of what is fit and unfit to be uttered. They ridicule our squeamishness; we stand amazed at their indelicacy. Voltaire, who could read his "Pucelle" to the Queen of Prussia, her young daughter being also present and seen to be listening, was astounded in London at the monstrous indecency of "Othello;" and English people of the same generation were aghast at the license of the Parisian stage. M. Marcelin, a popular French caricaturist of to-day, dedicates an album containing thirty pictures of what he styles _Un certain Monde_ to his mother! We must not judge the productions of such a people by standards drawn from other than "Latin" sources.