English and Foreign.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VII, Issue 452, 4 March 1857, Page 5

English and Foreign.

THE WHISPERS; OF PARIS. ;

(From tho • Leader.'

All real political discussion in Paris has been, carried on in whispers, since December, 1851. But, besides political .discussion there has been a perpetual current, of anecdotes, epigrams and rumours, passing from salon to salon, and of course, hostile to Louis Napoleon. Within the last few weeks, however, this kind of warfare has been carried on more bitterly and more universally than at any period since the coup d'Stat. Much that is said may be invented simply to multiply "the pins that prick the empire." But the floating talk of Paris represents a body of public feeling which the Government, at least, does not ignore, and somany hard truths are indicated by, the reports of the Emperor's madness, illness, and melancholy, by the stories of attempted assassinations secret executions, kidnappings, and by the sarcasms of the epigrammatists,, that not a little may be learned from a collection of the Whispers of Paris. A favouriLe process is to select a passage from the Emperor's works, and to append to this a commentary supplied by the events of the day. A happily-chosen fragineat was handed, about last week. It was composed, not by Napoleon 111., but by Louis Napoleon, in the prison of Ham: —

Taxation will become unejndarable: If it be devoted to the creation, of useless offices, To the ejection of barren ino'.uajehts; To the ihaiiitenaiice, iii t-.jheof peace.'ofa military force, more costly than ; that; which conquered at. Austerlitz. ■' ..-,

This texto leads off a catalogue of public wjrks, constructed at an enormous expenditure, of State lacqueys 'profligately overpaid, of military establishment's kepti.iip in numerous „disl tricts of Prance,, merely to perpetuate the victory, of-Louis Napoleon over the French people/ It may be supposed' that this allusion to the* French as conquered, and held in subjection; which is literally -the ■ truth, tells upon, a national sentiment which is something better than vanity. ;; *.;■.'■;-'■: :■■■*', . : '..-; Then, the degradation of the civil orders of the people :in the presence, of; the military power is keenly fel£ by the: working-classes especially. One of the new sayings is, ''A Zouave can do ; no wrong."At theatres, casinos, singing-cafes, in'i omnibuses, diligences^: railway ••■ carriages,-, the: soldier is a privilegedl; being. Notoriously, the garrison of Paris isrcoristaritly.treated.-withlarri gessesj feasts,' supplies of tobacco and cigai's; so that the men; conscious ?that they are the props of the empire, and will be favoured, even should they -offend, with the indulgence extended to spoiled children; treat the citizens en oeritables . peJcins. -; ; -■:. -a^ ■!■•./ .\-,/Xu ir: -; ,•.-.■....,....,

Some of the French journals have reproduced, with particular solemnity, the report of a police, case at Liverpool,■ where an individual named Gore, a butcher by trade, was condemned to a fine or twenty days' imprisonment for wrenching off the tail of a live sheep. The journalists congratulate themselves on the circumstance that France.; too, has her human laws for the preventionl of cruelty to animals. Of course,the private supplement to a paragraph of this nature, is to the^effect that" Louis Napoleon violated thesß laws when he" aFslsted'" it the disembowelling of horses, and the laceration of bulls at Bayonne. But the Emperor must have his campaigns. He sent home no bulletins from the Crimea; he conquered the bull ■ (or saw it conquered, for he is more gentlemanly than Gommodus), on the Spanish frontier; and now there are nine days' campaign on the banks of the Oise, in the forest of Compiegne—three days' stag-hunting, three days' shooting, and three days' theatricals. The Imperial party, carries on its Chevy Chase in "soft morocco boots, plumes, and habits of sylvan green:" even the Empress, who rides with two officers carrying guns -behind her, condescending, from time to time, to take a shot at a bird. These pleasantries occupy his Majestj in the intervals of that -"affliction" which MV Magne declares has been caused iii: the imperial, heart;by the ominous condition of the public funds. There are those who, without putting too much faith in M. Magpie; corroborated his. statement, and affirm that Louis Napoleon is afflicted—by epilepsy: the climax of rheumatism, whisper sopae • by morbid terrors; others say; by insanity, according to a third class of authorities j -while rumours equally positive attribute

the Emperorls continual absence from P^ris to the. necessity of hiding his wounds! It is needless to say how much exaggeration is introduced into these reports, which carinot all be true. True or not, however, they indicate the popular feeling. The Emperor has a meagre form and a weary face—he mounts his horse with difficulty—he takes a cordial before, and a bath' after every hunt and review—he employs now Grassot, now Hyacinth, and now a matador, to amuse his melancholy. These ,are among the secretly circulated bulletins not issued from St. Cloud. But at St. Cloud it is found necessary to make war upon rumour," so that the * Moniteur' adduces proofs of the Emperor's sanity, announces his enjoyment of complete health, and publishes the text of a special treaty to increase the securities against his assassination. In one day are posted up six condemnations to death for " attacks against the person of the Emperor." Meanwhile Marshal Castellane arrives at Court co confer with Louis Napoleon, it is said, on the means of suppressing the formidable secret societies of Lyons and the south. The police; with discriminating clairvoyance, detect disaffection in private houses, and hurry abbes and others to prison. And an eclipse of the moon takes place, and a poor poet is arrested for writing in a prophetic spirit an allegory on the subject of eclipses in general!

: An Antiquarian Discovert at Jerusalem.—Mr. J....M. Bellew, who, has been recently staying at Jerusalem', has written a very inter- ; esting letter to the ' Times,' in which he states that he'has been admitted into the sacred precincts of the Mosque of Omar'(the site of Solomon's Temple)—aii honour'not usually conferred on Christians; While walking ■on■ a: grassy platform, planted with olive trees, 'in the neighbourhood of the mosque and of the south-eastern corner of the city walls, he made a curious discovery. He writes:—"l observed a small opening in the ground, where evidently a block of stone in ah arch had fallen in, discovering a vault beneath. In the chamber in the foundations of the south-east corner of the walls (where, by the way, the Sheikh gravely showed me the recesses in which Zacharias resided, and the ' cradle in which he rocked the infant Christ' —a Roman niche, cut in mai'ble, and laid, on its back upon the ground ; the circular head, as is common^ being carved like a shell, and suggesting to the ignorant Mussulman an appropriate place for the head of the cradle), and in the very remarkable vaulted passages" under El Aska, it is impassible to resist the conviction that the masonry, gigantic as the blocks of stone and pillars are, must, at least be of Roman, perhaps even of Jewish construction. In examining them my mind recurred to the vault beneath the olive trees, and it struck me that it must be much on the same level underground as the south-east chamber and the El Aksa, vaults. I accordingly examined the whole of that platform of olive trees very minutely, and I was enabled to satisfy myself that from the south-east corner of the walls, arid from the Mosque El Aksa, the whole area stretching towards the Beautiful Gate is one mass of vaulted chambers. : I came upon one vault, adjoining the walls, where the roof had broken in," and into which I vainly begged to be permitted to descend and explore. Enough, however, appeared in various directions to prove the existence of a series of vaults, and I discovered that the olive trees above have in places struck through the roofs with their roots; they have then descended through the chambers beneath, and again taken loot in the-solid earth." Mr. Bellew considers that these1 vaults were necessary for the purpose of forming an artificial levelbetween. the various hills, on which to build the Temple or any other edifice.

The Champs Elysees in Febbujiet.— Oh! what a luminary it is, compared to the lukewarm dinner-gong we honour in England with the glorious name of Sun ! Though it was the end of February, he was shining evidently in total forgetfulness that it was not June. Shining, warming,, lighting, extracting: such vaiiety of exquisite colour from the thousand splendidly-drest ladies who walked and strolled and lounged about the open alleys in the wood, that it is quite possible he fancied he was bestowing his favours on a prodigious bed of flowers. On the beautiful lake floated gay boats with many coloured sails, carrying cargoes of bright-hued parasols and radiant bonnets; and richest glistening silk. -In the road rested: or. slowly moved forward barouches and britzkas^

and chariots and phaetons, all with bright panels and glittering wheels and gorgeous linings, with horses trapt with gold and silver, and reins of spotless white; while behind hung suspended a bunch of peony or tulip, six feet high, with immense calves to its leg 3, and a cocked hat on its head, and sometimes even a velvet-sheathed sword at its side. Then the horsemen —gaiety of apparel is not left entirely to the ladies in France. There were green coats, and blue coat?, and olive coats so shiny that they looked like pink, and grey coats so brilliant that they looked like white; and still the cavalcade passed on; and beauties caracoled on long-tailed steeds ; and bewhiskered men galloped past on stronglegged chargers, and, countless as the combinations in a kaleidoscope, they formed in lines, in squares, in circles ; and ever over all shone that cloudless sun, and beside them sparkled that waveless water. And on seeing all that brilliancy, all that show, and all that wealth, I said to old Busby, " Who are all these ?—where does all the money come from ? There's more appearance of riches here than in Hyde-Park in the height of the season." Old Busby -will certainly have a concussion of the brain if he shakes his foolish old head with such disdainful jerks much longer. He shook his head as if he had been a mandarin for many years in a grocer's window, and said, "My dear, how you are blind ! These are nothing but a set of humbug foreigners; swindlers every man; all adventurers on the Bourse or founders of the Credit; Mobilier; lords to-day, beggars to-morrow, and galley-slaves the day after. But what then ? the spectacle is the same to us. These same carriages will be here this day week—so will these horses—so will these ladies; but the proprietors, mark you, will be different. That fellow's clerk will succeed to his fraudulent compagnie and his britzka, and he himself will be marker at a billiard-table. That other fellow, will be shot in a duel by a co-forger of Government bills, and his AndalusiaiTTiiare will be ridden here by some gambler whose loaded dice are not, yet discovered. But the Bqis: will be as gay,, the lake as charming, and tiie sun as bright. "I have been intimate/ said\ Busby in a very foreign accent, "with some English squires on their short-legged Suffolk.cobs,\whose rent-roll would buy the fee-simple of all (the vagabonds here." "Come, Come, Busby," I said, " you are such a root-and-branch Englishman, you'll allow no merit to any one but a regular John Bull like yourself. There must be some foundation for all this display. It is impossible there can be so much glitter without some gold." " A guinea well beat out," replied. Busby, "can cover a square therewith gilt leaf, and look as well—perhaps better—than if' it were solid. But, the fact is, this whole show is as unreal as if it were presented, on the stage.. The same dresses and paste jewels and property di'inkingcups go the round.of all the.actors —-Hamlet's feast to night, Macbeth's supper to-morrow; but the goblets and dishes the same. Some day or other the indignant pit will jump across the orchestra, and find out what rubbish these, sapphh'e crowns and diamond sword-hilts are made of." "More fools the indignant gentlemen in the pit,".l said, "if the brilliancy is the same as if the hilts and crowns were real." "Ay—but don't you see," said Busby, "that Macbeth has raised, ten thousand pounds on the. security of the inestimable dagger with which he murdered Duncan, and the Boyal Claudius has bought a house in the Champs Elysees on the strength of such a display of plate." "Well." I rejoined, "Macbeth has the ten thousand pounds; Claudious has the house." Bosby looked on me with a paternal expression of pity. "My good friend," he said, " the ten thousand pounds, you see, were in the notes of an insolvent company—the house was mortgaged abovo its value. It is on the profits of these two speculations that tltefour swindlers are astonishing us here to-day. For the man who got possession of Macbeth's dagger is living on the reputation of its jewels; and the .man who got Claudius's service of plate is feasting on the fame of the acquisition ; and the owner of the house in the Champs Elysees has a carriage on account of the size of his fort cocker; and tb« villain who got the ten thousand pounds'is eupposed to have realized the whole sum. There will be art awful crash some fine day when nobody expects it; and I advise you to do~ as 1 have dbne, draw all your money out of the Eentes —and, indeed, "out of the funds too. Little and safe, that's my motto.— MackweocTe l&agazine*. . '..'"■'•■