1831.2 The Popular Literature xyf Fratice. 41 



lovers from the cabalistic pages of the Grand Albert. The example, 

 however, of foreign literati was not wanting to induce them to tread 

 in a new path, and to rouse them from their indifference. In Germany, 

 a grave bibliographer has made the popular literature of his country the 

 subject of profound researches.* The north has distinguished itself for 

 its zeal in discovering those literary monuments of former ages, which 

 exist only in the tradition of the writer's fire-side, and in the memory 

 of the villager and peasant. And very lately, an English author has 

 published a most curious dissertation on the Nursery Rhymes, with 

 which, from time immemorial, nurses have soothed the cradled infant to 

 sleep. 



These works, which would be sufficient to establish the importance 

 of the plebeian muse, might naturally excite astonishment at the dis- 

 regard shewn to it in France. And, on the other hand, if the number 

 of initiated were sufficient to establish the merit and importance of a 

 class, if the principle of majorities could be applied in appreciating it, 

 if a writers first object should be the number of his readers, there can 

 be no doubt that this disregard will meet its full condemnation from 

 a consideration of the facts which we shall now attempt to describe. 



If we considered only the number of works, the names of which 

 appear during the last fifteen years in the Journal de la Librarie, and 

 which, from their price, and the subjects to which they relate, appear 

 doomed to be inaccessible to the common people, we should be tempted 

 to draw perfectly opposite conclusions from these premises. The fol- 

 lowing are the numbers : — 



1815 3,357 



181(i 3,763 



1817 4,237 



1818 4,837 



1819 4,568 



1820 4,881 



1821 5,499 



1822 5,823 



1823 5,893 



1824 6,974 



1825 7,605 



1826 8,273 



1827 8,198 



1828 7,616 



1829 7,823 



1830 6,739 



96,086 



Of these 96,086 works, one-fifth are in one volume, two-fifths in two 

 volumes, one-fifth in three or four volumes, and the remaining fifth is 

 composed of reprints, containing from fifty to eighty volumes, of which 

 5,000 copies were printed. 



• The ponular works of CJerinany, or exact appreciation of the small works on 

 history, meaicine, and meteorology, which chance has preserved among the people 

 to the present time, by .J. .T. CJa,'rres, lleidellierg, 1807. One volume 12mo., con- 

 taining the analyses of fortv-eight jjopular works. 



MM. New Series. Vox.. XII.— No. 07. G 



