You enter through a narrow passage flanked with wire cages, in which are confined for the day the clerks who take account of advertisements and subscriptions. Melancholy objects seem these caged birds; whose hands alone emerge at intervals through the pigeon-holes made for the purpose of taking in money and advertisements. The universal beard and moustachios that ornament their chins, look, however, more unbusiness-like than are the men really. They are shrewd and knowing birds that are enclosed in these wire cages. At publishing time, boys rushing in for papers, as in London offices, are not here to be seen. The reason of this is simple: French newspaper proprietors prefer doing their work themselves,—they will have no middlemen. They serve all their customers by quarterly, yearly, or half-yearly subscriptions. In every town in France there are subscription offices for this journal, as well, indeed, as for all great organs of the press generally. There are regular forms set up like registers at the Post-office, and all of these are gathered at the periodical renewal of subscriptions to the central office. The period of renewal is every fortnight. Passing still further up the narrow and dim passage, one sees a pigeon-hole, over which is written the word ‘Advertisements.’ This superscription is now supererogatory, for there no advertisements are received; that branch of the journal having been farmed out to a Company at 350,000fr. a-year. This is a system which evidently saves a vast deal of trouble. The Advertising Company of Paris has secured almost a monopoly of announcements and puffs. It has bought up the last page of nearly every Paris journal which owns the patronage and confidence of the advertising public of the French Capital. At the end of the same dark passages, are the rooms specially used for the editors and writers. In France, journals are bought for their polemics, and not for their news: many of them have fallen considerably, however, from the high estate which they held in public opinion previous to the last revolution. There are men who wrote in them to advocate and enforce principles; but in the chopping and changing times that France lives in, it is not unusual to find the same men with different principles, interest or gain being the object of each change. This result of revolution might have been expected; and though it would be unfair to involve the whole press in a sweeping accusation, cases in point have been sufficiently numerous to cause a want of confidence in many quarters against the entire press.