Our Contributors.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 528, 5 August 1881, Page 2

Our Contributors.

OUR PAKIS LETTER,

(From oue Own Corrkspondext)

Paris, June 16.

A very important fancy fair has been held in the Tuileries gardens, .and deserve notice, not in respect to its success, which was magnificent pecuniarily for the charitable institution it served, but as an illustration of how kermesses, like l-ace courses, establish the equality of women. Under the second empire, the demi-monde and actresses received during promenades and carriage drives, the salutation of admirers ; later virtue viewed these attractive pariahs through field glasses. At present actresses take part in fancy fairs like lady patronesses, and tl:e latter not unfrequontly send their compliments to ascertain the address of the milliner or mantua maker of an actress. The opening of another casual ward in the city has proved a great success. The forlorn are not expected to pick onkum or break stones next day to repay the cost of the night's lodging ; and if any of the relieved, come on their feet again iv the world, they aro expected to send donations of bread. Among the casuals figure men of every color, race, and region ; misery has had its representatives from tho Sandwich Islands, Australia, and Fiji, it would seem that acrobats, actors, and the members of that world in g--ner:i!, sook the casual as

i a matter of eoui\?o ; the laborer or broken J down-- citizen applies for aid with a feelin;.; , of. blia;j!'j ; tho second, class of tippli-

cant is noted as being tlio most grateful. When a laborer refinds work, he never hesitates out of his first earned wages, to return with a few loaves for the institution . According to official statistics, the least criminal class in France are beggars, vagabonds in general, and idlers, whilo the tillers of the soil furnish the most of accused—the proportion being 7 and 85 per cent. 0 Virgil 1 0 fortunatm nimium I For every 100,000 of the total population of France, there are 12 accused ; in the department of the Seine, ot which Paris is the capital, the number of accused is 25, and the same for the Alpea Maritimes, of which Is ice is the chief town. For every woman accused, there are seven men. Bachelors contribute to crime to the extent of 50 per cent; married men but 28. The agriculturists commit the greatest number of crimes against persons ; civilians against property. It is between 20 and 40 years of age, that 50 per cent of the total crimes are committed, and between 40 and 60 years, 23 per cent. Zola has created a storm by classifying Victor Hugo as very much beneath, and not to bo compared with such men. as Littre and Darwin—the latter belongs to the living present, and are the incarnation or the wants and certainties of science. Hugo is a colossal rhetorical machine, for manufacturing big and empty words ; an old child spoiled by flattery, and who lives in all the phantasmagoria of the middle ages ; he has contributed but little to the truth of the age, he has merely sung for its joy. Zola advises the rising generation to avoid imitating Hugo, but never to forget Littre and the Positivist or natural school. Zola like the Greek philosopher, would banish poets from the republic.

A photographer while occupied in his dark chamber, was surprised to hear a knock at his sanctum, with the terrible formal demand—" open in the name of the law ;" the artist at once did so, and found himself in presence of a man with two revolvers. "Don't stir I" said he, and in a few seconds he found a policeman, who marched the lunatic to the asylum. A small picture has been stolen from the Louvre gallery; a visitor simply put it under his coat and disappeared.

The project of founding lyceums in Paris for girls is being favorably taken up. A company promises to erect four if the Government will accord them a mcnopjly for 50 years. The municipality is very much put about respecting a new necropolis ; prejudices" exist against railway funerals, or distance out of town ; affection and piety will go as far as the outskirts to annually visit lost ones, but a mile or so further, not at all. It is proposed then to have four cemeteries, following the cardinal points, and on the outskirts of the city ; the positivists urge that a portion of the Bois de Boulogne be converted into a burial ground—a memento mori, for the gentlemen and ladies of the lake.

It has been remarked, that French engineers, and the railway interests in general, displayed want of tact, in allowing the centenary of George Stephen to pass unnoticed, Thiers maintained—in j early life, that railways were good for Anglo-Saxons, but could never be more than an amusement for Parisians, Look how he has been punished ; a railway tunnel passes under that portion of the cemetery containing his tomb. We have had Dumas pere and have Dumas fits. Dumas grand pere is now announced in relation with the sale of the castle of Monte Christo.

Two congresses have concluded their labors ; one, the Monetary, provoked no interest and was opened dead born • the Metallists were delegated by their governments to talk as much as they pleased, but not to vote anything. Nations having a gold currency, refused to accept the addition of one of silver, while France and the United States, having a plethora of silver, and hence razors to grind, naturally wished to make white metal more valuable, by having it accepted as a legal tender. It is exchange, commerce, that determines the value of gold and silver, aud no Government could crutch up any fictitious value for either metal. The Anti-clerical Congress aims to suppress the 52 million francs annually paid to three different and antagonistic churches and so separate church from state, with the denunciation of the concordat thrown in. The country is not yet ripe for such a solution, and in any case it will be for the general elections to decide. Mr Bradlaugh telegraphed his adhesion; such good work he wishes, not God-speed for personal reasons, but success. He would have attende I the meeting only he was occupied knocking at the door of the House of Commons, where people with religion on the brain " wouldn't let him in," A delegate peasant stated, that his class feared the parish priest, simply because he was a paid functionary ; stop supplies, and the padre became a reed shaken with the wind. Senator Schoelcher, whose life-work is honorably connected with the abolition of slavery in the French colonies 1848, urged that women ought to be enlisted in the came, and at once a lady of uncertain age, Mile Deraismes was elected presidente, in the absence of Garibaldi, retained nursing his rheumatism, and Victor Hugo, grinding Alexandrines and deep in amateur carpentry. Gambctta deplored, that the progress of Republic No, 3, was fettered by the indifference, of the fair sex, but that lie does nothing to remove, as he remains still a bachelor ; now the difiicuky ahead of the separation scheme of church and state in France h due to the resolution of worn on w-t io b<; deprived of the clergy at bapi-isim;, marriages, and deaths, or to have no <;hurch

to resort to on Sundays, to ease their consciences in a five minutes meditation, to display a cluck of a bonnet, and join the Mrs Grundy committee later. Woman rray be ignorant respecting the ■doctrines of Infallibility, the Thirty Nine articles and the Westminster confession of Faith, but we not tlie less desire to see her true to the reputation •of being, " Last at His cross, and earliest at His grave."