Charles X. alone understood the question. By ordering the suppression of newspapers he conferred a great service upon the arts and civilization. Newspapers are in a certain sense courtiers or jobbers, who interpose between artists and public, between king and people. We know the fine things that resulted therefrom. This perpetual barking and snarling benumbs inspiration and causes such a feeling of distrust in the heart and mind, that no one dares place his confidence either in a poet or in a government; the result being that royalty and poesy, the two greatest things in the world, become impossible, to the great detriment of the people, who sacrifice their well-being to the paltry pleasure of reading every morning a few vile sheets printed on vile paper, besmeared with vile ink, and filled with vile stuff. There was no criticism of art under Julius II., and I never heard of any _feuilleton_ on the subject of Daniel de Volterra, Sebastiano del Piombo, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Ghiberti della Porta, or Benvenuto Cellini; and yet I think that, for people who had no newspapers, who did not know the word _art_ or the word _artistic_, they had a fair share of talent and acquitted themselves reasonably well at their trade. The reading of newspapers hinders the growth of genuine scholars and genuine artists; it is like daily dissipation that brings you, enervated and weak, to the bed of the Muses, those harsh, exacting damsels who will have none but fresh and lusty lovers. The newspaper kills the book, as the book has killed architecture, as artillery has killed physical courage and muscular strength. No one realizes the pleasures that the newspapers deprive us of. They strip everything of its virginity; they prevent us from having anything of our own, even from owning a book all by ourselves; they deprive us of the pleasure of being surprised at the theatre by telling us beforehand how every play ends; they deprive us of the pleasure of spreading idle gossip and tittle-tattle and slander, of inventing false news or peddling genuine news for a whole week through every salon in society. They drone ready-made opinions to us, do what we will, and warn us against things we might like; by their means, dealers in phosphorous matches, although they have poor memories, discuss literature as impertinently as provincial academicians; by their means we hear, all day long, in place of artless opinions or individual nonsense, ill-digested fragments of newspapers, which resemble omelets half cooked on one side and burned on the other,--and we are pitilessly stuffed with news three or four hours old, which children at the breast already know; they deaden our taste, they make us like those people who drink spiced brandy, and those who swallow lemons and grape-stalks, and lose the flavor of the most generous wines and cannot appreciate their delicate, perfumed bouquet. If Louis-Philippe should suppress all literary and political