The _Presse_ was founded in 1836, about the same time as the _Siecle_, by Emile de Girardin, a son of General de Girardin, it is said, by an English mother. Till that epoch of fifteen years ago, people in Paris or in France had no idea of a journal exceeding in circulation 25,000 copies, the circulation of the _Constitutionnel_, or of a newspaper costing less than seventy or eighty francs per annum. Many journals had contrived to live on respectably enough on a modest number of 4000 or 5000 _abonnes_. But the conductors of the _Presse_ and of the _Siecle_ were born to operate a revolution in this routine and jog-trot of newspaper life. They reduced the subscription to newspapers from eighty to forty francs per annum, producing as good if not a better article. This was a great advantage to the million, and it induced parties to subscribe for, and read a newspaper, more especially in the country, who never thought of reading a newspaper before. In constituting his new press, M. Girardin entirely upset and rooted out all the old notions theretofore prevailing as to the conduct of a journal. The great feature in the new journal was not its leading articles, but its _Roman feuilleton_, by Dumas, Sue, &c. This it was that first brought Socialism into extreme vogue among the working classes. True the _Presse_ was not the first to publish Socialist _feuilletons_, but the _Debats_ and the _Constitutionnel_. But the _Presse_ was the first to make the leading article subsidiary to the _feuilleton_. It was, even when not a professed Socialist, a great promoter of Socialism, by the thorough support which it lent to all the slimy, jesuitical corruptions of Guizoism, and all the turpitudes and chicanery of Louis Philippism. When the _Presse_ was not a year old it had 15,000 subscribers, and before it was twelve years old the product of its advertisements amounted to 150,000 francs a-year. Indeed this journal has the rare merit of being the first to teach the French the use, and we must add the abuse, of advertisements. We fear the _Presse_, during these early days of the gentle Emile and Granier Cassagnac, was neither a model of virtue, disinterestedness, nor self-denial. Nor do we know that it is so now, even under the best of Republics. There are strange tales abroad, even allowing for the exaggeration of Rumor with her hundred tongues. One thing, however, is clear; that the _Presse_ was a liberal paymaster to its _feuilletonistes_. To Dumas, Sand, De Balzac, Theophile Gautier, and Jules Sandeau, it four years ago paid 300 francs per day for contributions. The _Presse_, as M. Texier says, is now less the collective reason of a set of writers laboring to a common intent, than the expression of the individual activity, energy, and wonderful mobility of M. Girardin himself. The _Presse_ is Emile de Girardin, with his boldness, his audacity, his rampant agility, his Jim Crowism, his inexhaustible cleverness, wonderful fecundity, and indisputable talent.