OUR PARIS LETTER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2802, 28 June 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

OUR PARIS LETTER.

(l'UO)t OUK OWN UOBBKSI'ONDKNT.) Paris, March 29. A few days more, and the ex-chancellor will be ancient history. There are some curious pulsations in public opinion, respecting Prince Bismarck. Thus, there is a mild indignation against him, for having created the belief, that the European world rested on his shoulders, and now that he is superseded, or cornered into resignation, which ?—the world just the same, keeps the even tenor of its way. Another sotto vocc indictment against the great departed is, that he failed to measure the brilliant capacities of Emperor William, and endeavoured to keep him in administrative leading strings. Doubtless Germany owes her unity to Prince Bismarck. However, many competent observers are of opinion that that unity leans somewhat on one side, due to the Chancellor simultaneously coquetting and persecuting socialism. At all events, between his arbitrariness, and the Emperor's spasmodic philanthropy, they have given an impetus to socialism, that promises to shake more countries than Fatherland.

A writer advocates that a slice of the Budget, section navy estimates, be applied to making Paris a seaport, and thus reuder the capital its ancient com mercial importance. This new conquest would be more valuable than the grabbing of distant islands or territories, where modern politics plant its used-up public men ar-d political hacks. One thousand years ago, it appears the people of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, led by Seigefroid, beeieged Paris with 700 ships and several barges that extended a dis-tinoe of six miles along the Seine. Twice the Sc indinavians repeated this maritine and riparian invasion. Cesar in his commentaries alludes to having, dining a wintar, built 500 wooden ships in the environ* of Paris, which he equipped in the following spring. This fleet with armies, baggage, horses, provisions, &c. dropped down the Seine, passed by Dieppe, touched near Bologne-sur-mer, crossed the Straits of Dover, and conquered England. It is not by making Paris a sea-port that the greatness of the city can endure, retorts an anti-canalist, who his evidently sunk money in Pauama —its predicted 4000 years. The capital is doomed to destruction under the slow and terrible hand of time, which niin?s dynasties the most solid, cities the most opulent, and realms the most powerful. It is a consolation to learn that on its iJ"~°-and dust new peoples will rise. Paris is also threatened by the agitations of mortal disease, and in due time will have to eucounter the convulsions of death. Its frightful opulence is the cause of all this, which tenJs moro and more to be concentrated in the hands of a few, that the city, like a body no longer able to sustain its strength, will collapse, and so perish.

Ex-Premier Tirard was truly a Spartan ; his successor at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, M. Jules Roche, not finding c?en an old pen handle in the office, went out and purchased three gold ones ; the office-chair being used up—so many ministers have wriggled in and out of it—that he invested iu a new one for 160 francs. Are we nearing the time, when seven half-penny loaves will be sold for a penny. The struggle for life it would seem, is simply one of starch. M. Ferdinand Colin lays dowu, that the chemist who can make starch out of the uniou of carbonic acid and water, will have secured an inexhaustible supply of bread. M. Meyer also asserts, that he who can transform cellulose—the fibre of wcod and straw, and which have the same chemical composition as starch, into the latter, will have saved humanity. Vive I'ttmidon. M. Lumholz, a recent Norwegian traveller iu Oceauia, begs his readers to remember, that " Australia is not a small island." It happens to be ouly tweutyfonr times larger than Norway itself.