MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 172, 24 March 1847, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Distressed State oe Trade in Paris. — The Rerforme says " Bankruptcies are of daily occurrence in Paris. Petty merchants continue to shut up their shops ; the pawnbrokers' offices are besieged with applicants ; the savings-banks will soon be empty, the hospitals are crowded ; 115,000 indigent depend upon public charity in Paris ; the prisous are full ; and the winter will throw about 100,000 workmen out of employment. Our prospects are indeed very sad." Among other indications of distress or of distrust among the population of Paris must be mentioned the return of the operations of the savings-banks of that capital for the week ending on Monday. From these it appears that the deposits in those banks on the 25th and 26th instant amounted to 608,562f. and the withdrawals to 888,423f. Marvellous. — It is asserted that after decollation the countenance betrays sensibility. Dr. Sue confidently states that when the executioner slapped the trunkless head of Charlotte Corday, both her cheeks blushed ; which he explains by giving it as his opinion that after decollation there remains in the train some degree of thought, and in the nerves a kind of sensibility. It is also recorded, upon very plausible authority, that when the executioner held up the head of Sir Everard Digby, who was hanged for the Gunpowder Plot, and exclaimed, " This is the head of a traitor !', that the head ejaculated, " Thou liest V* Lord Bacon declares that after ensu ration the tongue can speak. — Globe.

The Montrose Review says the following is j a true copy of a letter received by a schoolmaster in that neighbourhood : — " Cur, as you are a man ,of nolegs, I intend to inter my son in your skull."

The Boulevard dcs Italiens, *&c. — The Boulevard dcs Italiens, uuder its present auspices, assumes a pretty fair epitome not only of Parisian fashionable life, but of its traffic and its speculations. Upon any bright and sun-lit day of the season, all Paris that has any claims to elegance, all Paris of the Bois de Boulogne, the Opera, or the Pavtf, comes to produce itself there to the sun, and the public gaze, fearless of freckles or criticisms. There, at some time or other during the day, may be seen almost all that Paris contains of celebrities and of elegance, in equipages, horseflesh, and toilettes. There also may be found the full activity of trade in all that is pampering or ruinous ; and there also stands speculation before the entrance of the Passage de I' Opera, and calls around it its groups of its less favoured subjects ; petty stockjobbers, and gamblers upon change ; who swarm to the spot before the opening and after the closing of the Bourse, and if small in their speculations are at least great in selfimportance. Nor is the Boulevards dcs Italiens,ahhough comparatively free of very parvenu pretensions to importance, without its old monuments, to which are attached some of the thousand souvenirs of that flitting nightmare, Parisi in History. At a few steps from the Rue de la Paix, to the right, stands a build- J ing in the form of a rotunda, the heavily or- ! namented architecture of which bears the stamp of the last century. It is the Pavilion \ d'Hanouvre, formerly the petite maison of the ■ famous, or infamous Duke of Richelieu. Some eighty or ninety years ago it was an isolated retreat at the very extremity of Paris, a mysterious asylum for pleasure, debauchery, and crime", flkr from the noise and indiscreet curiosity of the town, and beyond the reach of surprise. At ajater period, the Pavilion of Hanover changea its destination, by a decree of the Republic ; the boudoir became a ballroom, the scene of private scandal, a scene of public scandal ; and the door no longer opened stealthily to let in the gliding forms of the dissolute partakers of the Regent's petits suupers, or the unblushing Marquises of the Court of Louis XV. but was thrown wide asunder to admit, pompously and publicly, the naked Divinities of the Directory, or the undressed Merveitteuses of the Consulate; those admirers of Mythological modes, one of whom the morning after a ball in the Pavilion, in which she had distinguished herself by the transparency of her costume, received a handsome casket with the inscription, " A dress for Madame So-and-so," and on opening it, found a fig leaf ! The Paviliou of Hanover, as if anxious to make up for its past follies, and throw a veil of oblivion upon its wicked pranks, has now taken most respectably to trade, and displays silks and satins to hide its withered face. A little further on flaunts a specimen of the most fantastic taste, which proves that extravagance is not confined to England, and that the Pavilion at Brighton has not monopolized all that is outre in kiosks, mandarins, and china vases. That mass of artificial rocks, containing cafes below, and adorned with Chinese pagodas, and squatting umbrella-ed mandarins, and zigzags above, leads to the Bains Chinois. Still further on, is the terrace belonging to the Artists' Club, that Pantheon of the innumerable geniuses of the day. which does not wait for their death to immortalize them. — Bentley's Miscellany.

The Marriage Ring. — The symbolism of the marriage ring has been frequently enlarged upon ; but, though the eloquence of Jeremy Taylor was directed to this subject even he -has hardly excelled the following sentence from an old writer : " The form of the ring being circular, that is, round and without end, importetk thus much, that their mutual love and hearty affection should roundly flow from the one to the other as in a circle, and that continually and for ever." The same author would seem to think the ring so consummate a piece of art that it required both a thoughtful designer and a cunning artificer to its perfect construction : the one being Prometheus, the other Tubal Cain ! The ring, which forms part of the Episcopal apparatus, was used at a very early period, being deemed a symbol of the spiritual union of the bishop and his cburch. A ring is employed in the ceremonial of an English coronation ; and amongst the treasures which each Pope transmits to his successor in St. Peter's chair, is a signet ring, called the fisherman's ring, because tradition declares that it belonged to the apostle, from whom the pontiffs derive the keys. It was much more the usage, at one time, than it is at present, to distribute. rings, in, great numbers, on the occasion of any notable, event. We are aware of ojily one instance of the usage c xisting now-a-days, and that is on the appointment of a serjeant-at-law. Rings, with mottos in Latin befitting the grave occupation of the distributor, are presented to

her Majesty, the Lord Chancellor, and the judges. A marriage was especially an event of a nature to he commemorated by gifts of rings. Antony Wood mentions, that Edward Kelly, a man of note in Queen Elizabeth's days, " was openly profuse beyond the limits of a sober philosopher, and did give away, in gold wire-rings, at the marriage of one of his maid servants, to the value of four thousand pounds." At the nuptials of her present majesty, Q,neen Victoria, some dozens of gold rings were presented to distinguished persons. A profile of the Queen, so small as to require the aid of a lens to perceive the truthfulness of the likeness, with a legend '* Victoria Regina," adorned each ring, Mourning rings were wont to be distributed at funerals ; and still a testator who would link himself to his surviving friends for "a little month" 1 after his departure, will bequeath them a ring with a memento mori inscription. From several passages in old writers, it seems it was fashionable for the fops of the time to wear rings with a death's head engraved thereon ; but we are unable to learn what gave rise to the custom. Thus in " Greene's Farewell to Folie," " the olde Countesse, spying on the finger of Seignior Cosimo, a ring with a death's head ingraven, circled with th:s posie, * Gressus ad vitam,' demanded whether he adored the signet for profit or pleasure." In the Strawberry Hill collection there was one of the seven rings givsn at the burial of Charles I. It had the King's head in miniature, and a skull in the background, with the lettters C. R. The motto was, "Prepared be to follow me." — Tail's Magazine.

Mexican Superstition. — Mexico has one fatal feature which makes the mind despair of her ever holding the rank of a great nation. However glaring may be the superstition of continental Europe, it is of a feeble hue to the extravagance of Mexican ceremonial. In those remote countries, once guarded under the Spanish government with the most jealous vigilance from the stranger's eye, every ceremonial was gradually adopted, of every shape and colour, which the deepest superstition, aided by great wealth, the influence of a powerful hierarchy, and the zeal of a people at once desperately ignorant and singularly fond of show, could invent. Rome, and even Naples, were moderate, compared with Mexico. The conveyance of the Host to the sick was, almost a public pageant ; its carriage to the wife of Santa Anna was accompanied by twenty thousand people. The feast of Corpus Christi exhibits streets through which thirty or forty thousand people pour along, of all classes of society, with thousands of soldiery, to swell and give military brilliancy to the display. At the head of the pageant moves a platform, on which the wafer is borne by the highest dignitaries of the church. Then follows, in a similar vehicle, " Our Lady of the Remedies," the blessed Virgin Mother, a little alabaster doll, with the nose broken and an eye out. This was the image of herself given by the Virgin to Cortes to revive the valour of his soldiers after their Mexican defeat ; and this the priests profess to believe, aud the populace actually do believe. The doll's wardrobe, with its precious stones, is valued at a million of dollars. The doll stops all contagious diseases, and is remarkably active in times of cholera. The anniversary of the " Miracle" of the " Virgin of Guadaloupe," is one of the "grand days" of the Fedeial Republic. The president, the cabinet, the archbishop, and all the principal functionaries of the state, are present, with an immense multitude of every class. A member of Congress delivers an oration on the subject ; and the Virgin and her story are no more doubted than the history of 1 Magna Charta. The story thus blazoned, and thus believed, is briefly this : — An Indian, going to Mexico one morning in the sixteenth century, saw a female form descending from the sky. He was frightened ; but the female told him she was the Virgin Mary, come down to be the patron of the Mexican Indians, and ordered him to announce to the bishop that a church must be built in the mountain where she met him. The Indian flew to the bishop, but the prelate drove him away. The next day he met the Virgin on the same spot, and she appointed a day to convince the sceptical ecclesiastic. She bid him go to the summit of the mountain, where he should find the rock covered with roses for the first time since the Creation. He carried the roses in his apron to the bishop, when, lo ! he found that on his apron was stamped a figure of the Virgin in a cloak of velvet spangled with stars of gold ! Her proof was irresistible, and the church was built. The original portrait is still displayed there, in a golden frame studded with precious stones, with the motto, " Non fecit taliter omni nationi," (He hath not so done to every nation ; or, more significantly, to any other nation). Copies of the miraculous picture, of more or less costliness, are to be found in almost every house, and all have the full homage of saintship. The Church of the Virgin, though not so large as the Cathedral, is of a finer style,

and nearly as* rich ; the "balustrade is pure silver, and all the candalabra, &c, are of the precious metals. — Blacktaood's Magazine.