e educated
classes.

'You see _that_ in its management of the press. 'Montalembert, or Guizot,
or Falloux, or I may publish what we like. We are not read by the soldier
or by the _proletaire_.[1] But the newspaper press is subject to a
slavery to which it was never reduced before. The system was first
elaborated in Austria, and I daresay will be copied by all the
Continental autocrats, for no inventions travel so quickly as despotic
ones.

'The public _avertissements_ are comparatively unimportant. Before a
journal gets one of those its suppression has probably been decided on.
Every day there are communications between the literary police and the
different editors. Such or such a line of argument is altogether
forbidden, another is allowed to be used to a certain extent. Some
subjects are tabooed, others are to be treated partially.

'As the mental food of the lower orders is supplied by the newspapers,
this paternal Government takes care that it shall not be too exciting.'

[Footnote 1: The lowest class.--ED.]

_Paris, Monday, April_ 13.--Tocqueville, Jobez, Marcet, St.-Hilaire,[1]
Charles Sumner, and Lord Granville breakfasted with us.

The conversation turned on public speaking.

'Very few indeed of our speakers,' said Tocqueville, 'have ever ventured
to improvise: Barrot could do it. We have told him sometimes that a
speech must be answered immediately; and when he objected that he had
nothing to say, we used to insist, and to assure him that as soon as he
was in the tribune, the ideas and the words would come; and so they did.
I have known him go on under such circumstances for an hour; of course
neither the matter nor the form could be first rate, but they were
sufficient.'

'In fact,' said Lord Granville, 'much of what is called improvisation is
mere recollection. A man who has to speak night after night, gets on most
subjects a set of thoughts, and even of expressions, which naturally pour
in on him as soon as his argument touches the train which leads to them.

'One of our eminent speakers,' he continued, 'Lord Grey, is perhaps best
when he has not had time to prepare himself. He is so full of knowledge
and of inferences, that he has always enough ready to make an excellent
speech. When he prepares himself, there is _too_ much; he gives the House
more facts and more deductions than it can digest.'

'Do you agree with me,' I asked, 'in thinking that Lord Melbourne was
best when he improvised?'