on than Dauriat flinging the reins to his man as he stepped down.

"'Tis the publisher, Coralie," said Lucien.

"Let him wait, Berenice," Coralie said at once.

Lucien smiled at her presence of mind, and kissed her with a great rush
of tenderness. This mere girl had made his interests hers in a wonderful
way; she was quick-witted where he was concerned. The apparition of the
insolent publisher, the sudden and complete collapse of that prince
of charlatans, was due to circumstances almost entirely forgotten, so
utterly has the book trade changed during the last fifteen years.

From 1816 to 1827, when newspaper reading-rooms were only just beginning
to lend new books, the fiscal law pressed more heavily than ever
upon periodical publications, and necessity created the invention of
advertisements. Paragraphs and articles in the newspapers were the only
means of advertisement known in those days; and French newspapers before
the year 1822 were so small, that the largest sheet of those times was
not so large as the smallest daily paper of ours. Dauriat and Ladvocat,
the first publishers to make a stand against the tyranny of journalists,
were also the first to use the placards which caught the attention of
Paris by strange type, striking colors, vignettes, and (at a later time)
by lithograph illustrations, till a placard became a fairy-tale for the
eyes, and not unfrequently a snare for the purse of the amateur. So much
originality indeed was expended on placards in Paris, that one of that
peculiar kind of maniacs, known as a collector, possesses a complete
series.

At first the placard was confined to the shop-windows and stalls upon
the Boulevards in Paris; afterwards it spread all over France, till
it was supplanted to some extent by a return to advertisements in the
newspapers. But the placard, nevertheless, which continues to strike the
eye, after the advertisement and the book which is advertised are both
forgotten, will always be among us; it took a new lease of life when
walls were plastered with posters.

Newspaper advertising, the offspring of heavy stamp duties, a high rate
of postage, and the heavy deposits of caution-money required by the
government as security for good behavior, is within the reach of all who
care to pay for it, and has turned the fourth page of every journal
into a harvest field alike for the speculator and the Inland Revenue
Department. The press restrictions were invented in the time of