I am not a good judge of any kind of manufacture except those connected with literature or the fine arts, so I will pass by the cottons of Manchester and the silks of Lyons with the simple observation that Lancashire has produced the spinning jenny and Lyons the Jacquard loom. With regard to the printing of newspapers and books, which I understand better, the French are admirable in the exquisite, but their common work is not so good as the English. French _éditions de bibliophile_, such as those of Lemerre, Jouaust, Tross, and the Société de Saint Augustin, not to mention many publications by Quantin and others, are equal to the best work of English printers in the mechanical qualities of type-cutting and clearness of impression, whilst they are, I think, a little superior to it in taste. All the French _éditions de bibliophile_ that I possess or have examined are scrupulously correct in their freedom from typographic errors, whilst with common French editions it is just the contrary. There is a very well known Parisian publishing house that issues an immense quantity of volumes so rich in typographic faults that no English publisher would own them; yet ordinary French readers, who are very inattentive and also very patient, either do not notice or do not object to them. The fact is that there are two distinct classes of book-buyers in France--_les amateurs_ and _le vulgaire_. The first are hard to please, and will have nothing to do with ugly or faulty editions, whilst they will give any price for exquisitely perfect work; the second neither know nor care anything about the matter, and in producing for them it does not signify how bad the work may be, provided only that the price does not exceed three francs fifty centimes per volume. The carelessness of the French about cheap work used to be very conspicuous in their newspapers, but these have improved during the last decade. I well remember the time when it was almost impossible to find a single English name or quotation, however brief, correctly printed in a French newspaper. English critics always attributed these faults to the writers of the articles, but they were more frequently due to absolute carelessness in correcting.[87] The press-work, too, used to be disgraceful; it is now fairly good in the daily papers and excellent in the illustrated weeklies. France is not a good country for presentable editions at moderate prices. The two most popular poets--Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset--are not to be had in anything answering to the readable current editions of Tennyson. There are the big octavos and the little exquisite Elzevirs for amateurs, and the vulgar editions for the public. [Sidenote: The Exquisite and the Vulgar.] [Sidenote: Qualities of Painting in France.] [Sidenote: Qualities of English Art.] [Sidenote: Crudity of Colour.] [Sidenote: Home Success of Artists.] [Sidenote: Landseer and Rosa Bonheur.] [Sidenote: Meissonier.] [Sidenote: Turner and Claude.]