as it was known that the Moniteur was big with such important intelligence, the ordinary course of perusal by successive applicants at the bureaux in the pavilions was at once abandoned as far too slow a process for the impatient crowds who gathered rapidly around as the fatal rumour was spread through the garden. Every copy of the official journal became forthwith a separate centre of excitement, if not of attraction. The individual who had secured it was compelled to mount the chairs with which the garden is supplied, and to read it aloud to the groups within hearing. When this was accomplished, a new audience and a new reader were readily found to supply the place of those who, forgetting the purposes of pleasure or of business which had brought them to the spot, were seen hastening from the palace to communicate what they had heard to their neighbours and their friends.

The first feeling produced by the appearance of these ordinances was a sort of stupefaction and surprise, which was speedily roused into contempt and indignation. It was some hours, however, before a distinct knowledge of the fact became general throughout the city. The circulation of the Moniteur, like that of the London Gazette, to which it is in some degree analogous, is in itself extremely limited, being almost exclusively confined to the public offices of the government, and to a few of the reading

rooms, and other places of general resort; and as it appears at the same hour with the morning papers, the information it communicates is seldom very widely circulated until the following day.

In the offices of the constitutional journals the effect produced was far from being uniform. The spirited proprietors of the National, the Times, and the Globe, resolved on immediate resistance to the arbitrary decree which declared the suspension of their professional freedom. In the course of the forenoon, second editions of these journals were printed and posted throughout the city, and, as they contained the obnoxious edicts themselves, with an appeal to the people, inciting them to resistance, and assuring them that obedience was no longer a duty, the vagueness of the rumours which had begun to circulate at an early hour in the morning was thus made to assume a definite and intelligible form. But since the truth must be told in this, as in all the parts of our narrative, it must not be concealed that the Constitutionnel and the Journal des Debats, La Nouvelle France, and several other journals, professedly liberal, adopted the more prudent course of passive obedience to the usurped authority of the government.

To the English reader it may be necessary to say, that these latter journals, but more particularly the Constitutionnel and the Debats, are, in point of circulation, at the head of the daily press of Paris, while the three that ven

tured to appear, are comparatively of recent origin; so that the risk they incurred by this open disregard of the royal authority, was one of person rather than of property. This distinction is here taken, from the striking analogy it bears to all the proceedings of this extraordinary revolution. It was, in fact, with the sans culottes of the press, as of the populace, that the movement originated. Those who had any thing but life to lose, were cautious in exposing it; and of such it may truly be said, that it was not their "consciences," but their property, that made "cowards" of them all.

If it must be admitted that the richer and more influential classes showed some hesitation at the outset, in throwing themselves into the breach which had been effected by their poorer fellow citizens, so neither must it be concealed, that several brilliant and redeeming exceptions were to be found among the modern monied aristocracy, as well as among the old noblesse of the country. It is true that the Periers, the Lafittes, and the Lafayettes, were not to be seen at the first sound of the tocsin; but it was not the fault of these noble-minded individuals that they were absent from Paris at the moment when the blow was struck. As soon as they became aware of the attack which had been made on public liberty, they hastened, as if by mutual agreement, from various parts of the country, to present themselves at the post of

duty and of danger. But-what is believed to be perfectly unique in the history of the world -they found, on their arrival, that the French revolution of 1830 had already been more than half accomplished, by the firmness and resolution of the humbler classes of society, without any incentive but an innate love of freedom, to prompt them to action and to lead them to victory.

The re-appearance of the ordinances, in second editions of several of the morning journals, accompanied by comments, of any thing but a flattering nature, produced a proclamation in the course of the day, from the office of the prefecture of police, authorizing the seizure of all printed papers which should be sold or distributed without the true indication of the name, profession, and residence of the author and the printer; and directing the arrest of the individuals concerned in the distribution. The keepers of reading-rooms and coffee-houses were also prohibited from giving out for perusal such journals as had been printed in contravention of the royal ordinances; and it was declared that they should be prosecuted, as guilty of the misdemeanours committed by the journalists themselves. At the conclusion of M. Mangin's proclamation, a hint was given at the nature of the While means to be employed in enforcing it. the principal commissary of the municipal police was, with his subordinate officers, directed to

superintend its execution, the colonel commandant of the royal gen-d'armerie was at the same time enjoined to concur with the civil functionaries, in so far as the force at his disposal was concerned.

The terms of this proclamation, like those of the ordinances themselves, evinced in the clearest manner the consciousness of the government, that their proceedings were totally unsupported by that moral strength which is founded on public opinion. Measures were immediately taken, in pursuance of the threats which were thus held out, to prevent, by actual violence, the appearance of those journals whose conductors had refused to submit to the interdict

imposed on them. The proprietors of one paper, the Journal du Commerce, adopted the middle course, between submission and disobedience, of appealing to M. de Belleyme, the president of the civil tribunal of first instance, and obtained a judgment from him, as against the printer of the paper, declaring that the ordinances were not obligatory on the citizens, because they had not yet been published, as prescribed by statute, in the Bulletin des Lois. The ground thus assumed by M. de Belleyme, was founded on a technical nicety, more consistent with the habits of a lawyer than with the wider views of a statesman, or the feelings of an injured citizen. But whatever may have been its basis, the direction which it gave was practically