ten
years. Point to the man of power or position in the court or State, who
owes it not to the press! Where is the statesman who is not, or has not
been, a journalist, or the savant, the philosopher, the philanthropist,
the poet, the orator, the advocate, the diplomat, even the successful
soldier? The sword and the pen are emblems of the power of France--its
achievements and its continuance; Sir Bulwer Lytton says,

"The pen is mightier than the sword!"

But I have left you, dear reader, perambulating the dim corridor--so
dim that your eyes can hardly decipher, although it is now high noon,
the various signs upon the series of doors in the wall on your left,
designating the various rooms of the editorial corps, for to the
editorial department is devoted the second floor of this extensive
edifice. The last door in this prolonged series bears the name of the
chief journalist. You ring a bell, are bid to enter, and the apartment
is before you. Immense windows, rising from the floor to the ceiling,
and opening upon a balcony, which overhangs the Rue Lepelletier, afford
abundance of light for your eye to detect everything in the room by day,
and an immense chandelier with gas-burners and opaque shades, pouring
forth its flood of mellow radiance, would facilitate the same
investigation yet more at night. Beneath the chandelier is spread the
immense oval slab of the table. At it sits a man writing. Well, let him
write on, at least for the present. Beside him, pile upon pile, pile
upon pile, rise papers, wave after wave, flood upon flood, nothing but
papers; on the floor beneath his feet, on the table and under the table,
before him, behind him, and all around him, naught but papers, papers,
rising, rising, as if in wrathful might and stormy indignation, while
the very walls are lined with papers in all languages, from all climes
and governments, and of every age and dimension, deposited in huge folio
volumes and arranged in huge closets, along one whole side of the room.
From the four continents, yea, and from the islands of the sea
likewise, has this vast army come. In those tall closets extending from
floor to ceiling might be found the full files for years of every
leading paper in every part of Christendom, affording a treasury of
reference, universal, unfailing, exhaustless, of knowledge of every
conceivable description, rapidly found by means of exact and copious
tables of contents.

Upon the other side of th