LITERARY NOTES. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. Paris, July 25.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2059, 17 September 1885, Page 3

LITERARY NOTES. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. Paris, July 25.

Mrßj-m-'BU'LOI', does not admit that the French nobility is a dose boiough, or a caste. It seems tlie union of family parchments, of genealogical tiecs moir 01 Jess authentic, with sacks of crowns is as commercially active to day, as in the time of Louis XlV— ,i monaich who detested iraimfactm era and tiaders, as he did Parisians-" lien a bioken down nobleman niained the heiress of a f.ibi leant, "to mamiie his title, This desire of the rich parvenu, foi the penni less Duke, Maique-s, 01 Viscount, has survived revolutions, because springing from even the he ut itstif The motive of the union between anstoei.its and plutocrats, is economy, the desire to su-,-stain the house. Demociacy lovs noth ing ; the value of a title has not fallen ; on the contraiy, it is still good for exportation ; it atti.'iets colonial and Ameuean girls ; a titled baclului has on!} tochooso, in France as elbewheie ; no matter what branch of industry the bride may belong to,|no matter whethei she be, plain or pretty, she is his for his picking A giand name is the commercial age, is) like Latitte, Clos-Vougeot, or Margeaux wines— which base a lole locality for production. The amateur must pay foi the monopoly. Titles versus cash form a bai ter that has become a custom. But the rich middle-class ladies cede nothing to blood, more or less bine, in point of cultivation and manners ; and it would be difficult to detect the difference between an improvised duchess, and a grande dame whose quaitenngs are lireproachable. These marriages are more or less political ; the nobleman transforms to his advantage the tinanci.il potency of the age. When a member of the industrial class thus respires in an aris tocratic atmosphere, he discovers what he wanted on the eve— piestige and space ; he no longer elbows among the feverish crowd. The experienced eye of woman can alone detect the paivemi , under impertinences and airs of the false gentlemen. A noble lady, \t.g -kiting on thiee thousand francs a year, once observed of millionarics, " they are p'>ople of nothing ; they have worked all their life. ' Decadrnre, in the eyes of such a lady commences with work. And yet how the Messieurs Jourdain would be less grotesque, did they but listen to their wives before donning the travesty of aristocrats. It is only when the grand seigneur, dating from Pavi.a, Matignan, or yesterday, approaches public life, that he experiences how low he is quoted in popular estimation. There seems to be an undying interest in the manners of the eighteenth century. M. Gustave PesjardiiH, in the Petit Trianon, contributes some curious chapters to this subject, and above all, to that side which relates to the life of Marie Antoinette. He gives the history of the construction and of thegionnds, of the botanic garden, specially creat-d by Jassicu, and of the comic opera dairy elected by Mitjue, to humour the caprices of Her Majesty. There are also most interesting desciiptions of the fe"tes and theatrical representations given at the Trianon, and valuable details on the ta'-teand arts of the period. The woik is historic also, as it lajs bare the frivolous, the almost licentious life of the unfortunate queen at Trianon, and the compromising friendships she formed while closing the dooia against her heavy and wearisome husband. It results from all the grave accusations directed against Mane Antoinette, that while they cannot be precisely bi ought home to her, they fully justify the severity of the judgments passed upon her, and that she sliowed herself worthy of her character, her rank, and her birth only the day when she fell, and suffered a punishment which as an expiation was out of propoition with her faults M. U. Monoil, takes a sober view of Victor Hugo's carer. In the extraordinary honours associated with the poets interment he sees a little of the national instinct for the theatrical, which unconsciously dominates his fellow countrjmen, while nttnbuting a large part to that national vanity intended to I'lonly FrjQce in Hugo. To estimate the importance of h wiiter, not only must his literary talent be judged, but also his acts, and the role be filled As a dramatic poet, Voltaire is not Biipeiiorti Kacine ; nor as philosopher, to Descartes, nor as an historian, to Montesquieu, and yet he exercised a. greater influence during his epoch than they did, and so incarnated the spirit of his age as to eclipse them in glory. Sunilatly with Hugo, his influence doei not spring exactly from the beauty of his wOl ki, as from the role bo played, and the power he wielded in politics, as well as in literature. It was thus, that while living he had become a kind of national monument ; criticism was suspended respectfully to allow his declining years to enjoy pacific glory. He became for not a few, a demi god ; and they canonized him before bis death, as the symbol of France of the current century, the sonorous echo of the most g.-neious sentiments of humanity. He enchanted all the political yehools in I'iante, but there wai ever the rcvolutionaiy spiiit in his works. It is thus, that in his drama. Heinani, Marion Pelornv, and Ruy Bias, the most beautiful Miles aie allotted to the insurgents, to the conspnators, to the vassals even ; he there claims popular rights, and fh<*ellates the crimes of royalty and ministers. It »vas his hate against the Einpiie which achieved his fortune. His exile to Guernsey made him the symbol of the republic. There upon his rock, he was for the imperial Don J.ian, a statue of the commander predicting the day of divine vengean «). The multitmiv. in its imagination accpted the Channel Islands as the antithesis of St. Helena. In the literary point of v lew, his great merit is to have levied the poetic form of the French linkage; he has been the renovator of Parnassus ; he hasienewed the stiingsof the French lyre while agumenting their number. He was neither critic nor servant, and had but little esteem for scienc" But he saw clear into the past, and his imagination has clothed disappeared epochs wich animatiou, and vanished characters with life. He is far from being great as Homer, Dante, and Shakspere, but like them he is unique in his kind, in the creation of image?, and draping almost the impossible with reality. Dr Blanchard, without going as far back as " the missing link," maintain that "all men without exception possess a tail," and quotes the demonstrations of Paul Bu»a to support his assertion. Lord Mouboddo long ago made the same observation, adding that it was modesty made man conceal that appendaec. However, the tad of man is so rudimentary, undergoing no augmentation, that it is concluded ordinarily we have no tails. Dr Blanchard states the human embryon in one of its stages presents a caudal appendix in no way differing from other mammifera or leptdes But after the thiid month, the tail retrogrades in proportion as the spinal marrow de \elops downward ; at the fourth month it disappears, because the spinal marrow remounts into its case— to remain on a leyel with the body— which is the second or third of the vertebra;. Hence in mammifera, the more the spinal manow ascends, tho smaller is the tail ; . as for example, in the wild boar, pig, j rabbit and several species of monkeys. Por contra, the more it decends the longer is the tail, as in the ox and the squirrel. The bat approaches most to man in respect to a tail ; it is lar^o in the embryonic stage, but disappears rapid y with the ascension of the spin il marrow J)e Maillot cites the case of DelaCiontat, the intrepid enemy of Turkish pirate* famous us much for his biavory, as f< r his piolonyed vtrteb.e, or tail. His brother had a similar development. One barsabas and his sister, were similaily endowed, and the latter was so annoyed with the deformity, that she entered a convent. De Maillet saw at Tripoli, a

negro named Borneo, who had a tail si\ nil In » long— in .inom.ily lieiedit.ity in liw family. In ISO 1 ) Professor (.iosselm amputated the tail of a male infant aged six weeks and w huh was ncailj 2\ inches lout,'. J)r (Jievo temovod the till of a lad eight wicks old : it possessed mobility and was ovuul with blight h.ui Or Cone, testifies to a Chinese youth ot 8 >ears, having a tail "> nitJios long, .mil Dr Lissuer had a patient with a cuadal appendix half an mull longer. Respecting teith Dr. Blanehard re inaiks : — "Man ia the only inaminiferons animal whose teeth are regular and 1111 interi upte<l. When the canine teeth protiude, such is a sign of iufeuoiity of race, as with the aboriginals of Austiaha No existing inaminifor has preserved the type of its primitive dentition, so 1 npnrtant have been the changes. In deed the snpeuor laces of humanity— the Kuiopeans, aie, respecting teeth, in a period of transition approaching slowly the time when the two jaw bones shall have only fourteen teuth in each. In white people the wisdom teeth, which appear at seventeen years, or at a more advanced age, have only two roots, and that are smaller, as compared with black races, with whom they aic voluminous and possessed ef three roots. The tendency of wi«dom teeth is to diminish in size, due either to our dependence on cooked food, or to intellectual development, which in augmenting the skull has to encioach or draw on the face. In hydiocephalus it is well-known the augmentation of the cranium reduces the face. In regard to Esau traits, the examples of pei sons covered with hair are numerous. In Burm.il) a 'mother gave jirth to a male child who, when ten months old, had a thick moustache and beard ; later, the features became covered with hnr. At St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, there was a giil aged I' 2, whose neck, bust and aims were ho coveied with hair as to resemble a monkey. Piofessor Lombroao had a female patient of the same age, with a beaid and moustache; the whole body was also similarly covered, sa\etlie bauds and feet Then there was the Russian peasant, the "man-dog," exhibited in 1875, whose face and head, back and legs were covered with a brown, woolley hair over an inch long. Imperfect teeth always exist with these anomalies. Pio fessor Topinard states the Amod tribes are veritable Esaus, being covered with hair G\ inches long. Reranger, the French Bums, has at last his statue in "that Paris full of gold ami misery," where he was born. He avowed himself that had he a choice in the selection of his bit tit-place-, he would have chosen Paris The idea of the statue roverta to Ganibctta, who was a great admirer of the composer's bacchuT, epicurean and erotic ballads, but the practical realisation of the statue is duo to Coquelin, the actor. It may not be generally known that six months after their marriage Bernnger'b parents separated, and that he was born at the residents of his grand-father, a worthy tailor. He was sent to Burgundy to be nursed, the land of Piron and Re"tif. He is an illustration of Dog berry's philosophy that reading and writing come by nature, as Beranger never knew how he learned such accom plishmenta ; he had an aversion for school ; but he was nevertheless sent to one in the Faubourg St Antoine, for a short time. It was from the roof of the school, under a lovely sun, that he witnessed the demolition of the Bastille. He was in turn waiter, printer, cleik. till he finally drifted into his natural calling— poet. He commenced to rhyme at twelve years. An admirer promised to have htm made a pige to the coining new king, but he refused to promise never to sing the Marseillaise in the Tuileries. He narrowly escaped having to sing blind like Homer and Milton, owing to an explosion to an infernal machine in his father's house. The RouapartUts claim him as theirs The truth is, Berangerjwas asincereiepublican, but he was dazzled by Napoleon's glory, which he accepted as that of Fiaiue itself The illusion clung to him till death, hut seemed for him in July, IS,V7,a Hugo funeial by Napoleon the Third, as the nntiou mourned for him as if foi a Mire Aurelius. Li'cien Bonaparte, in order to encourage Rbrangor, abandoned to him his own pension of Academician. It was when in deepest misery and the occupant of a garret, that Bt-rangor wrote his gayest ballads, and it is by such light hejrtedness under misfortune that he has kept his hold on the French masses as well as by the fertility of his", own ideas, for he is the songster of his country, as La Fontaine is ita fabulist. As he snid himself, " the people is my muse," and he remained faithful to that device -the popular and national ballad writer of France. He was elected in 1848 a deputy for Paris against hia wish. On entering the Assembly, he delivered the only political speech he made in his life ; " For once I demand a favour from my country, to be allowed to resign." In private life, Beranger was the soul of honour, a sure and oonstant friend, with a weakness of advioe giving. His tastes were simple. Out of his modest income, he allowed an annuity to two old ladies. Liiettc is among his most popular songs, as Mon Habit is among his most quoted. The former is the symbol of the loves and follies of youth, and ii the favourite fife march of the sohool battalions. Lwctte is an imaginary creation. His humourous, perhaps erotio, songs are the Roid'YvefoC, his first and most finished, and Madame Gngoirc, both full of rhyme and reason. The Hiroiuhllc* and the Bon Vieillaul arc sentimjntal ; the Jiuhemienn and the Vieitx Vagabond are very perfect. We skip hia Napoleonic odes. It has been onid Berangor made songs, not odes ; that his images are confused and crowded ; laboured and calculated, who remembered Horacu iv his ideal— not a bad classic. He has been called a gieat coquette fiom the capiiciousness and contradictions with his oidinaiy pood sense. Hut Pegasus never was trained.