OUR PARIS LETTER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 420, 30 July 1880, Page 3

OUR PARIS LETTER.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Paris, May 20.

The Picture Show continues to be unusually attractive thie year, and seems to be very well appreciated by the provincials, to judge from the thousands that excursion trains bring daily into the city. It was the First Republic that threw open the exhibition to foreign artists, and the present has greatly extended the privilege. Alphonse Karr declared that each annual picture show cost him five head-aches, he having to criticise tho Now, some of the pictures arc curious : One artist devotes his talents to hunts of the wild boar ; he always represents the dogs with only three legs ; this might be natural at the close of the hunt, but on setting out the dogs are guaranteed to have four sound limbs. There is one true repentant Magdalene, not full of enchanting youth and beauty, but a wreck—the true period of contrition, and that nobody can blame her for taking the road of " never too late to mend." There is a likeness of a pot of jam, which would bo a bait for 20 school boys. Tho portrait of a lady in the desert exhibits her in possession of a whip and spurs, miles oi horizon,but not a snood. An oxhibit that has admirers consists of a roll of rose-pnper inside one of gold, and l«»th ejicased in one of blue. The dnys of Karr are the same as now.

The now Ci/uncil of Superior Education has h<'ld its first meeting for the despatch of business, and is grappling with tho reform of classical studies. Happy boys of the future, who will not be chained to break their heads over Latin nnd but will be taught living' languages, and above.all compelled to devote' imieli attention to physical education. Tho want qK this hae preyed fatally on French youth by making them nervous men. People may live a few years longer now than, heretofore, bat it is by almost artificial meant?, and by a reliance on mind rather than on the body. It is. observed th»t inability to smoke, to drink; or eat" pork .are hipris of physical decadence, or of highly strung nervous const itutions. The French never smoked more than at present, I'lit.the tobacco is not.strong ; they drink nu>re beer and iibsinthe relatively thnn wine ; they have long tie."ii accustomed to tho morning dram, tver lever, but of late, they are; commcncinj? to appreciate the nightcap in the form of hot grogs, beer, coffee and chocolate. They patronise no drugs such ac morphia, laurel waters, chloral, opium, or potassium preparations; indeed, Parisians sleep well, with this difference, 1 that if they go to bed later, they get up later. As for tho pork tests, never was the .great friend of it, Anthony, held in greater reverence ; every day some new preparation of pig is offered for sale, and Charles Monselet, in hie collected edition of poems, has added some fresh stanzas to his "dear angel, of whom every part is good."

A poor negro lms been fished up after ten days' residence in the Seine. In an old sardine box, hermetically sealed, he stated he wns from Abyssinia, a country he escaped from to come to Paris to make his fortune, failing which, ha drowned himself.