[Sidenote: MAGAZINES AND OTHER PERIODICALS]
During the Old Monarchy, France made great advances in practical
philosophy, but scientific knowledge was still confined within very
circumscribed limits. The Revolution has enabled scientific and
literary men to diffuse their acquirements over the surface of the
Republic. A short review of the leading periodicals of the day will
demonstrate their respective objects.
The first of those periodicals, in point of respectability and talent,
is the _Journal de Physique_, edited and conducted by one of
the ablest and most virtuous men in France, Dr. de la Metherie. I
have already mentioned he had been imprisoned during those days of
persecution, when it was the fashion to oppress every man of worth
and talents. But to this hour no ground has ever been given for
his arrestation. He is now Professor of Mineralogy in the College
de France, and receives for this £100 per annum. As editor of the
_Journal de Physique_ he receives £200 a year, and this is the
whole emolument his literary labours bring him.
The _Annales de Chimie_ is a publication which merits attention,
and I believe every eminent chemist in France contributes to its
contents and reputation.
_Annales de l’Agriculture Française_ is published by Tessier, and
is now advanced as far as the twelfth volume. It is one of the best and
most valuable publications extant in the Republic, and has afforded
great encouragement and information to the cultivator. Although Tessier
is the editor of the work, Monsieur Hugard is the principal manager.
He is an honest, indefatigable and learned man. He was brought up as
a practising farrier in his father’s shop, to which circumstance he is
indebted for the beginning of his knowledge (now that of an expert)
upon the diseases and treatment of horses and other cattle.
He has a sound and vigorous intellect, looks as plump and jolly as John
Bull, and possesses all the good nature of that character.
_Annales Statistiques_ is likely to prove one of the most valuable
productions of France. It is extremely well printed on good paper, and
a number appears every month.
_Bibliothèque Commerciale_ is a new work determined to diffuse
information upon subjects of commerce and navigation.
_Annales des Arts et Manufactures._ This is a periodical
publication, accompanied by a number of engravings.
The editor is one O’Reilly, an Irishman, once a pronounced and violent
Jacobin.
[Sidenote: CITIZEN O’REILLY]
As citizen O’Reilly, in the year 1792, he succeeded in expelling
two Englishmen from White’s in the Rue des Petits Pères, because
they opposed the maniac Irish propositions of Citizen Lord Edward
Fitzgerald and the two unhappy Sheares, all of whom met a tragic fate
in Ireland.[8] O’Reilly, however, remained in France and thereby
saved himself from the fate which his deserts fully entitled him.
The Colonel Commandant of Tyrone in Ireland during the rebellion,
informed me that Citizen O’Reilly had been hanged. I was therefore not
a little astonished one day in Paris, when about to sit down to dinner
at a party to which I had been invited, to see my old friend enter
the room, quite _debonnair_ and dressed or rather masked _à
la française_. In this land of magic I had been so accustomed to
see supposed dead men once more in the flesh, that I eyed this ghost
for a considerable time before addressing him, but he hearing my name
mentioned, at once exclaimed: God bless me! is it you, Mr. Yorke? do
you not recollect me? “Upon my word, sir, yes; you are so much like a
gentleman of my acquaintance who had the misfortune to be hanged four
years since in Ireland, that I could swear you were the very man.”
After some explanation, I found he had escaped the hands of Jack Ketch,
and is now, as he expressed it, “a French citizen and no subject of the
King of England.” He seemed desirous of taking every opportunity to
affront the English and asperse our Government.
This man would not have occupied so much of my space did I not know
him to be one of the rankest conspirators against our country. He ran
away from England on account of the debts which he had incurred as
one of the proprietors or managers of the Opera House, and set up in
Paris as a _persecuted Irish patriot_. From the year 1792 to the
present hour he has been ceaselessly engaged in plots against England,
and his hatred increases daily against our country to whose genial
soil he knows he can never return. He has fought against England in
the French armies, and glories in the fact. He is a favourite with
Bonaparte in consequence of his suggesting a new plan of gun vessels
for transporting an invading army to our shores. He is an ardent and
active member of the Irish Club in Paris, and avows his heart and soul
are bound up in the hope and desire of emancipating Ireland. After he
left the army he returned to Paris and commenced the periodical work
I have already mentioned. It is in high esteem, and its sale must be
great or his means of subsistence amply supplied by the Government, for
he has a press of his own, lives in style and keeps his girl.
_Bibliothèque Britannique_, printed at Geneva, has a great sale in
Paris. It is edited by Messrs. Picter and Mourin, and contains a digest
of the most valuable philosophical treatise in our language.
_Mazarin Encyclopædie ou Journal des Sciences, Lettres et Arts_,
edited by A. L. Millier, keeper of the antiques and medals in the
National Library, is considered one of the most valuable periodical
journals in France.
_La Decade Philosophique, Littéraire et Politique_, appears three
times every month, and has the greatest circulation of any other
periodical work in France. But this is no evidence of its superiority.
It is a farrago of modern philosophical trash and impiety. It is a
critical review, a poetical repository, a novelists’ magazine, a
political register, a literary advertiser, a theoretical reporter, a
herald of folly, a base and servile declaimer in favour of the ruling
power, and a recorder of obscenity and atheism.
Ginguené,[1] member of the National Institute and the Senate, is the
avowed editor of this political decade. This person, before the era
of the Republic, was employed as a secretary by Madame Necker. Being
patronised by Marmontel, he soon became a man of consequence. He
next became the tool of Mirabeau, then the spaniel of Danton. Then a
first-rate Jacobin, a hireling of the Directoire, and now a humble
servant of the First Consul. Such a career deserved a rich reward in
such a Republic as this of France.
[Sidenote: TOM PAINE]
He was accordingly preferred to the post of Director of Public
Instruction, but he solicited a more brilliant destiny, and was
accordingly turned into an ambassador and sent to Turin to assist
General Bruno in preparing the dethronement and exile of the
Piedmontese sovereign. On his return to Paris he has been temporarily
gratified by a membership in the Conservative Senate, and the
editorship of this periodical, a lucrative situation.
I could mention many more interesting literary works and periodicals
of the highest literary interest, but I have commemorated enough works
of uncommon merit, edited and produced most of them by men of great
ability and furnished with means and opportunities of increasing the
knowledge they already possess. It is but a tribute of justice which
every man owes to superior genius to declare that in point of real
science, experimental philosophy and literary merit, “France is without
a rival.”