“We publish more than our own share of worthless trash,” once said a French writer to me, “but it is always better written than your trash, for our bad writers must have some knowledge of grammar, which it appears yours lack, and they must write with what looks like a certain measure of style, whereas your bad writers shine by absence of the smallest pretension to style of any kind”; which means, of course, that illiterate French men and women know their language better than illiterate English men and women know theirs. They have been better trained and disciplined in the maintenance of grammatical laws. And while English journalism would, I am confident, never descend into the gross personalities and insults of the low French Press,—that kind of journalism presided over by MM. Drumont of _La Libre Parole_, Millevoye of _La Patrie_, Judet of _Le Petit Journal_, and Rochefort of _L’Intransigeant_, the unspeakable _Intransigeant_,—more intellect, education, and style are expended in the columns of an ordinary French paper than would be needed to carry on a dozen successful London papers. No London journalist would think it worth his while to spend an entire morning over the “confection” of a bright leaderette, read to-day and forgotten to-morrow, or be content to cast real brilliance on the ambient air in the reckless fashion of the polished French journalist. The thousand exquisite things Daudet in this fashion flung into the bottomless abyss of journalism without a thought—Provençal spendthrift that he was!—that he was wasting his intellectual capital! The _Temps_, a Protestant organ, is the most serious, the best informed, and the most respectable of Parisian newspapers. It has not the dash, the astonishing verve, the invincible courage of the _Figaro_, but it is always well written, moderate, and interesting. The dramatic and literary columns are special features. The day of the _Débats_ is over. It once held the first place as an intellectual and political paper, but it has lost all vitality, and it has become that unacceptable thing in such an atmosphere as Paris, _démodé_. Few of its subscribers have remained faithful to it, and only one or two of its distinguished contributors.