Paris herself again in 1878-9 . h I grinned, on the other. There is a great dealmore Passage, supplementary to the original arcade. You godown some steps and thread a corridor, in which there is a largebookstall, abounding with the peculiarly rubbishing, and in manyrespects ribald, publications on which the mind of contemporaryFrance seems mainly to be fed, mingled with, however, and re-lieved by the admirable books of M. Jules Verne, the unimpeach-able stories of MM, Erckmann-Chatrian, and some cheap and goodtranslations of Livingstones Last Journals, and Mr. H. M. Stan-leys How I found Livin
Paris herself again in 1878-9 . h I grinned, on the other. There is a great dealmore Passage, supplementary to the original arcade. You godown some steps and thread a corridor, in which there is a largebookstall, abounding with the peculiarly rubbishing, and in manyrespects ribald, publications on which the mind of contemporaryFrance seems mainly to be fed, mingled with, however, and re-lieved by the admirable books of M. Jules Verne, the unimpeach-able stories of MM, Erckmann-Chatrian, and some cheap and goodtranslations of Livingstones Last Journals, and Mr. H. M. Stan-leys How I found Livingstone. The Explorer and the Discovererare both amazingly popular in France; and in the Exhibitionthere is always a curious crowd round a charming little terra-cottastatuette of Stanley in full Dark Continent costume, to theaccuracy of which, as a likeness, an autograph letter from thehero of the Lualaba-Congo bears witness. For the rest, the dis-play made by a Parisian bookstall seems to have been chiefly IAKIN HKItSKLF SOME LOUNGEES IN THE PASSAGES. brought together by John Bunyans Man with the Muck-rake.*M. de Goncourts unutterably repulsive La Fille Elisa in itsthirty-second, and M. Emile Zolas unutterably hideous LAssom-moir in its fifty-ninth edition; these two books, with reprints ofLe Nabab, La Femmc de Feu, and Mademoiselle Giraud maFemme, you see everywhere, even at the first-class booksellers ofthe boulevards and the Hue de la Paix. An illustrated edition ofUAssommoir, brought out in fortnightly parts, is enjoying atremendous sale; and the public are absolutely promised, at no THROUGH THE PASSAGES. 57 distant period, a dramatised version of M. Zolas professedlymoral, but ineffably-disgusting, romance.* In addition to suchnovels as these, the bookstalls exhibit a profusion of almanacs,among which the prophetic ones have decidedly the lias ; for theParisians, all free-thinkers as they may be, have not ceased to begrossly superstitious ; and there is annually a
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