beginnings of periodical and journalistic letters in France. For some time, in the hands of Bayle, Basnage, Des Maizeaux, Jurieu, Leclerc, periodical literature consisted mainly of a series, more or less disconnected, of pamphlets, with occasional extracts from forthcoming works, critical _adversaria_ and the like. Of a more regular kind were the often-mentioned _Journal de Trevoux_ and _Mercure de France_, and later the _Annee litteraire_ of Freron and the like. The _Correspondance_ of Grimm also, as we have pointed out, bore considerable resemblance to a modern monthly review, though it was addressed to a very few persons. Of political news there was, under a despotism, naturally very little. 1789, however, saw a vast change in this respect. An enormous efflorescence of periodical literature at once took place, and a few of the numerous journals founded in that year or soon afterwards survived for a considerable time. A whole class of authors arose who pretended to be nothing more than journalists, while many writers distinguished for more solid contributions to literature took part in the movement, and not a few active politicians contributed. Thus to the original staff of the _Moniteur_, or, as it was at first called, _La Gazette Nationale_, La Harpe, Lacretelle, Andrieux, Dominique Joseph Garat (1749-1833) and Pierre Ginguene (1748-1826) were attached. Among the writers of the _Journal de Paris_ Andre Chenier had been ranked. Fontanes contributed to many royalist and moderate journals. Guizot and Morellet, representatives respectively of the 19th and the 18th century, shared in the _Nouvelles politiques_, while Bertin, Fievee and J. L. Geoffroy (1743-1814), a critic of peculiar acerbity, contributed to the _Journal de l'empire_, afterwards turned into the still existing _Journal des debats_. With Geoffroy, Francois Benoit Hoffman (1760-1828), Jean F. J. Dussault (1769-1824) and Charles F. Dorimond, abbe de Feletz (1765-1850), constituted a quartet of critics sometimes spoken of as "the _Debats_ four," though they were by no means all friends. Of active politicians Marat (_L'Ami du peuple_), Mirabeau (_Courrier de Provence_), Barere (_Journal des debats et des decrets_), Brissot (_Patriote francais_), Hebert (_Pere Duchesne_), Robespierre (_Defenseur de la constitution_), and Tallien (_La Sentinelle_) were the most remarkable who had an intimate connexion with journalism. On the other hand, the type of the journalist pure and simple is Camille Desmoulins (1759-1794), one of the most brilliant, in a literary point of view, of the short-lived celebrities of the time. Of the same class were Pelletier, Durozoir, Loustalot, Royou. As the immediate daily interest in politics drooped, there were formed periodicals of a partly political and partly literary character. Such had been the _decade philosophique_, which counted Cabanis, Chenier, and De Tracy among its contributors, and this was followed by the _Revue