A correspondent of the Trines who knows France unusually well,
and has made a careful study of the subject, published on Wednesday his view of the Boulanger mania. He thinks that, although General Boulanger is probably deficient in the stuff of which Dictators are made, being only a master in the art of seducing men, the situation is still grave. He is ridiculed in Paris; but he is the favourite of the common soldier,
and in the provinces he would probably sweep the board along the North-East frontier, the Upper Seine, the Upper Loire, and the country between the Loire and the Garonne. Here, and possibly elsewhere, he can command the clericals, the reactionaries, and the " dumb unknown masses of small cultivators," who are always for the strong num. The true sources of his power are that he is "Chairman of the League of the Discontented," and that he joins no party, but offers himself to each in turn, as a panacea for the evils of which it complains. The writer seems inclined to believe that it is as a foe of Parliamentarism that the General is welcomed, but he is not clear on this point. There is little new in this account ; but the writer adds a novel fact, that the papers opposed to General Boulanger are wholly unable to refrain from men- tioning him, often at great length, as their readers will have news of his proceedings. This tallies with Mrs. Cmwford's statement in the Universal Review as to the enormous rise in the circulation of the papers which have taken him up, particularly La Lanterne.
