TOPICS OF TALK.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 259, 20 February 1874, Page 3

TOPICS OF TALK.

'Fjiom an inspection of the Licensing - ,Act, published in our issue of January '. Oth, it will bo seen that " every person who desires to obtain a publican's or f bush license, or the renewal thereof, ■• shall, on or before the first Tuesday in the month of March of every year, cause to be delivered to the Clerk of the Jiesiclom Magistrate of the district a notice in writing, signed by liim in the fbnrj in schedule'E, Accompanied by a certificate signed by at least ten householders in the district in the form appended to the Act." Forms should be obtainable at.the Court House.' We have not yet heard anything as to the appointments likely to be made for "the constitution of a District Licensing Board. -, This week tho Chinese have, been, very busy celebrating the* anniversary of• their New -Year. Slaughtering and consequent yellings of- pigs, firing of , crackers, and cackling of escaping ,V;, r fowls early in tho week gave some nint, ;* ; in.store. Several thouof Ghineso havo come and gone '-' irpm>t{iese shores; several thousands reuitwn.', -'Yet; how little we know of-,

these' people-7*their petty faults and | their hidden-. Virtues—their belief in i ' the perfectibility of the ter'impossibility of surpassing that which has been —and their siiperabun-, dant superstitions. . If the Chinese have gods they are symbolised in the defunct Emperors, Zao'u and Shun. To these men as models the highest "modern virtue is unfathouiably distant. It lias been well written, " The Book of Confucius is a Bible with a Paradise Lost, but no apocalyptic vision of a' Paradise to be regained." Beyond these ancient perfected Emperors, a vague notion of a Supremo Being exists —s'pokcrt- of by Confucius as Heaven, much in the same way as modern' nationalists speak of Reason, Nature. , Amidst much superstition and, practically, a consistent atheism, filial piety has been maintained to a marked degree. " The son still rises at dawn, enters with bowed head the chamber of his father, ministers to him *if he be sick, offers him his' morning meal, if he be in health, with obeisance, and-, respectfully supports, him when he rises for the day. The daughter still makes it her special care to rise at cockcrow, to Dut on her comliest garments, and thus dressed to repair to her mother-in-law to inquire how she has slept, to add more coverings if it be winter, and to fan away the mosquitoes if it be summer." "With all the retarding influences of a belief that necessitates any hope of future improvement on that which has been as a reach after what is impossible, the Chinese have at times caught a glimpse of possible greatness of intellect and spirit far beyond their then standpoint. Lord Jklgin, speaking at a Koyal Academy dinner in 1861, defined the distinguishing characteristic of the Chinese rcind to be—" That at all pointß of the circle described by man's intelligence it seems occasionally, to have caught glimpses of a heaven far beyond .the range of its ordinaryken and vision. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to military supremacy when it invented gunpowder some centuries before it was invented by any other nation. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to maritime supremacy when it made, in a period equally remote, the discovery of the mariner's compass. I caught a glimpse of the path which leads to literary supremacy when, in the tenth century, it invented the printing press. ."• . . . It has caught, from time to time, glimpses of the beautiful, in color and design. But, in the hands of the Chinese themselves, the invent tion of gunpowder has exploded in crackers and harmless fireworks ;'the mariner's compass has produced nothing better than the coasting junk; The art of printing has stagnated into stereotyped editions of Confucius; and the most cynical representations of the grotesque have been tht principal products of Chinese conceptions of the sublime and beautiful."

A clever sketch, evidently from life, ! showing the state of social life at the French Court, is-published in a late number of the ' Pall Mall Gazette.' For our readers' amusement, we extract the nith of the article : —" Monsieur le Due Dagobert de Sangbleu is a very, noble young man, who owns not, less than £B,OOO a year 1 , and makes this income look much bigger by .calling it two hundred thousand livres. Ho is ' emancipated,' which is the correct term for conveying that his parents have ceased to grace this earth and he ha.s attained his ' grand majority,' which means that, being five-and-twenty years old, he can marry without formality-than that of obtaining the consent of his grandfather and grandmother, or, failing such consent, of addressing to'these venerable relatives three ' respectful summonses ' .through a lawyer. AW the 1 world is aware that if, at the third respectful summons, the .grandfather and grandmother of M. de Sangbleu decline to relent, the Duke might marry without them, which does not prove, however, that these summonses are useless, for each of Ihcm brings a fee of fifty francs to the lawyer. We may be quite certain, though, that M. cle Sangbleu will never do anything without the permission of his grandfather, for he is most exemplary "in his works, having been admirably trained by a reverend tutor of the Society of Jesus in all the principles of three centuries ago. At nineteen he shed the blood of G;aribaldiaiis at Mentana, earning the Pope's blessing and the Cross of St. Sylvester ; in the late war he fought under Charctte on the Loire, helped to put down the Commune, and

received two severe wounds, one in the leg, the other in his most cherished hopes, for he had trusted that in cutting down M. Delescluze and Co. he was aiding to restore Henri V. Last autumn M. de Sangbleu.performedthe pilgrimage to Lourdes, and set a fine pattern to a thankless age bycarrying a lighted taper of five pounds' weight in a chanting pmcoßsinn. And now the Paris season having commenced, M. de Sangbleu has come to the capital to spend h's winter in fashionable but not reckless amusement, supposing we accompany ■ him in his ndventures ; depend upon it he will lead us into none but good company. First, ' he will; take s us ■ to one of' President ■ MacMahon's evening receptions at Versa'lles, though one-must not infer from this that M. de (Sangbleu has entered in;to any compromise' withthe "Republic, j You-have 1 bnly to- glance at M. de 'Sangbleu as he stands smoking his ipink after-dinner'"~c'igarette iu the i dining-room of his mansion , in ,the Champs Elysees to guess that here is a young magnate now who could never :have, been taught. Euclid by, demonstration, but only by a process of .'courteous affirmatives. Thus his tu|tor ' could never' have said' to him, " Monsieur le Due, I will prove to you that the three'iingles of a triangle iare equal to two right angles." He jWould;have said :." Monsieui le Due;: ■I give you my word of honor that the 'three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles ;" and to this:young iM. de Sangbleu would have nobly anthing is impossible to a man of'courage who' invokes the aid of Providence; but the-moment <you•■; pledge• your, honor to, this fact -that - is, sufficient.'-' Happy they,,who, in these unholy times can thus .subordinate the material sophistries of logic to the Higher dictates of the soul! But eight o'clock has struck, and, M. de Sangbleu throws down his cigarette, for it is time to be 'starting. A two-horse brougham with its lamps aglow grates on the gravel sweep outside ; the house door opens, a major-domo steps down with a fur rug, followed ,by a groom with a carpeted hot water can, and in another minute M. de Sangbleu Himself emerges," grandly swathed in a cloak of black Eussian fox-skin. He ensebnes himself on the springy, blue' cushions of the carriage, the hot water appara- . tus is pushed, under his feet, and the footman scrambles on to the box, saying, " A la presidence." Meanwhile •those of Marshal MacMahon's guests who are less fortunately. circumstanced than M. de Sangbleu have been streaming since nine o'clock by train and fly to the prefecture, which does duty as palace. There are not many ladies among them, for, apart from all considerations of grand genre or chic, travelling; by rail in a ball dress,' and scurrying for a cab in the same costume, with the additional risk of having to spend the night at a Yer- : sailles hotel if the last train back to ! Paris be missed, are heavy, drawbacks i on feminine loyalty. The Legislature have patriotically grappled with this state of things, and voted £12,000 for the holding of- fetes at the Elysee; but j the Versailles receptions will be kept up all the same, and continue as now to be haunted chiefly by men with here and there a Minister or deputy's wife fluttering am id th e throng like a butterfly among blackbeetles. The blackbeetles are very fine ones though, and possibly no official gatherings so select as Mdme. MacMahon's have been Been in Prance since 1830. Marshal MacMahon does not bustle. He stands on the hearthrug in the smaller of the two reception 7 rooms,. and waits there for such guests as may please to'' come and talk to, him after making j .their bow to the Duchesse desMagenta in the larger room. A smileless man, who would.look a. trifle dull were it i not for, the, keenness of his blue eyes, the Marshal appears to be stricken , with a chronic surprise at the singularity of his new position. Members , come and sound/him discreetly as to j his political views, and he does not seem to like it,, unless he has his Pre--1 mier by his side to answer for him; ! then ho plays chorus, as it were, and says,;" Just so,"-, with stolid emphasis —the implication being that these political views of his,are >all in the drill book, and summed up in the formula : 'AttentionP 'Eyes front!' 'Quick' March !'■', On the other hand, the Marshal will commit himself unreservedly as to the amount of law that should be allowed to a hare, a stagj or a partridge, and in this matter he is an ardent liberal. The gradual extermination of game in France is a question of hourly solicitude to him, and he is understood to. favor a bill which should prohibit shooting altogether for one or two seasons. Why cannot the Eeds get themselves included in the Bill ? It is ten o'clock, and the presidential reception is at its height, when M. de Sangbleu's name is' whispered to the Marshal's secretary, Count d'Harcourt; and now watch the entrance of this polished young Frenchman into the drawing-room, his unembarrassed gait, and perfect manner of bowing. There is no ungainly shaking- of hands to be disposed of. A. low inclination before the Duchess, who is a true grand dame, two steps backward, three bows to the Duchesses de Broglie, Decazes, and d'Audilfret-Pasquier all performed in less time than it takes to write —and then M. de Sangbleu does homage to tho Prime Minister, but once again without any of that graceless finger-grasping which qonverts a gallant man's arm into a pump-handle. A tasteful Frenchman's dress-coat is a whole symphony in cloth. It has no creases or twists; no discord in its universal harmony ;, and the little slip of red ribbon which knights like M. de Sangbleu are permitted to wear for their war deeds shows better on it than

an eighteen-penny worth of flowerß. Then when a Frenchman boasts £BOOO a year, and knows that all the ladies in the room-—especially the unmarried ones —are alive to the fact, and deeply appreciate it, he soars above the earth in that dress-coat of his, and becomes semi-godlike—bright, fascinating, . a fountain of , small-talk. There is no flagging of word<i in a French drawing-room, for guests of one host are supposed all to know one another and to be sociaVe without introductions. So when M. de Sangbleu has unearthed and saluted the President, who compares notes with him about the beet-root crop, talked a space with M. Magbe, who walks upright as a moral precept, and inveighed during five minutes' against Messrs. Darwin and Littre, in company jvith the Education Minister, M. de Fortou, who speaks like a well-bound missal, he glides among ; atroop of new-fledged and bravely garrulous prefects, from among whom he slips in due time, much refreshed, into a vortex of ladies, where he is detained, made much of, and , declared the paragon of-young men. .So much so, in truth, that-when the reception is over, one weighty political personage says, to another, " That young Dukede Sangbleu would be just the man. .to, contest his .department .against that retired brushmaker who believes in'M. Thiers." ""Yes;" answers the other, " and I'll write to his Perfect Tartine, it. Sangbleu is one of those iron youths of old France who are phenomena in these degenerate days. He "won't ■ reach his home till two, yet he will' be-out at'ten-to-morrow with the Chantilly hounds."-