oldenis_, _Samuel Brohl
et Cie_) which are remarkable for style, construction, and wit. M.
Alphonse Daudet, beginning early, produced in his first stage a charming
collection of _Lettres de mon Moulin_, and a pathetic autobiographic
novel _Le Petit Chose_. In his second, attempting the manner of Dickens,
he obtained with _Jack_, 1873, and _Froment Jeune et Risler Aine_, 1874,
great popularity. His later works, _Le Nabab_, _Les Rois en Exil_, _Numa
Roumestan_, _L'Evangeliste_, _L'Immortel_, shew, in their condescending
to the satisfaction of vulgar curiosity as to living or lately dead
persons, a great falling off. The capacity of M. Daudet (whose _Tartarin
de Tarascon_ with its sequel is wholly admirable extravaganza) cannot be
doubted: his taste is deplorable. Of still more recent novelists two
only can be mentioned: M. Georges Ohnet (_Serge Panine_, _Le Maitre de
Forges_, _La Grande Marniere_) whose popularity with readers is only
equalled by the unanimous disfavour with which all competent critics
regard him, and M. Viaud ('Pierre Loti'), a naval officer, whose work
(_Aziyade_, _Le Mariage de Loti_, _Mon Frere Yves_, _Madame
Chrysantheme_), midway between the novel, the autobiography, and the
travel-book displays some elegance and much 'preciousness' of style and
fancy.

[Sidenote: Journalists and Critics.]

[Sidenote: Paul de Saint-Victor.]

[Sidenote: Hippolyte Taine.]

After the Revolution the fortune of journalism was assured, and though
under the subsequent forms of government it was subjected to a rigid
censorship, it was too firmly established to be overthrown. Almost all
men of letters flocked to it. The leading article or unsigned political
and miscellaneous essay has never been so strong a feature of French
journalism as it has been of English. On the other hand, the
_feuilleton_, or daily, weekly, and monthly instalment of fiction or
criticism, has been one of its chief characteristics. Many, if not most,
of the most celebrated novels of the last half century have originally
appeared in this form, publication in independent parts, which was long
fashionable in England, never having found favour in France. In the same
way, though weekly reviews devoted wholly or mainly to literary
criticism have, for some reason, never been successful with the French
as they have with us, daily journalism has given a greater space to
criticism, and especially to theatrical criticism. All French criticism
subsequent to