The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-24 00:00:00

. ••001 lUUSI the '1 city, Ica o the circ put big prig bot res to I list pi% bet pit ro lal fol of an CI fr( th th an fa at th ct Pi in al Y' tt el 0 p tl i! 3 • ,1858. T must be followed np by others, to protect from pollution I verity believe that - if - people manifested less alarm the Thames , w hich ought to be an ornament of this great than they do at the discovery of new conspiracies, we cit y, and which must continue to be the 11111.111 highway of should have much fewer cl them than we have ; for t ea multifarious traffic. experience has demonstrated that plots invariably - - - come to the knowledge of the pelice, and conse quently their coneoctors can hardly have any other object in making them than to excite distrust in the durability of the Government. The (lover nment means to act up to the spirit of the new law for putting down the false assumption of aristocratic names and of titles ; but it will do so with as much tenderness as possible. Orders have already been issued to notaries not to give false names or titles to their clients in legal documents, and it is probable that similar instructi.ma will be sent to the drawers up of electoral lists, the col lectors of' taxes, and all other functionaries who have to inscribe people's names. This will give time and opportunity to the bearers of borrowed plumes to lay them aside ; and if they do not profit. thereby, they must expect the law to ba put in force. I believe that there is little doubt that the Emperor's intention, after putting down the spurious aristocracy with which France is overrun, n to organize, on certain fixed bases, the real titled aristocracy, and to add to it a creation of Imperial nobles. His Majesty's project is of no little difficulty, owing to the prejudice which exists amongst the " equality "-loving French against aristocracy ; but assuredly the success of it is desirable, inasmuch as the want of an aristocracy, enlightened, patriotic, and highspirited like that of England, has contributed as much as anything— perhaps more than anything—to the convulsions with which this land has been torn. An absurd statement has been made this day in political circles: it is that the English Cabinet has resolved to abstain from taking direct vengeance for the massacre at Jeddah, in order that France may not have a pretext fo: sending troops across Egypt to the Red Sea. French politicians must be " hard up " indeed for allegations against " perfidious Albion," when they descend to any sa very foolish. NVhy not read Lord Malmeshury's speeches with more attention—a duty on their part, seeing that they are addressed as much to France as to the House of Peers? Those speeches would have in formed them that regard for the sovereign tights of the Sultan, not petty jealousy of France, will dictate the policy of the English Cabinet. The Conference on the Danubian Principalities is still continuing its deliberations. Some petty dif ficulties, it appears, have arisen, but they have been removed. I subjoin the following plan of the harbour at Cherbourg, which may, perhaps, at this moment be interesting to your readers : gortiga et,outsponbente. FARIS, Thursday. THE approaching visit of the (Wesel to Cherbourg is the subject of general conversation. In the political circles it excites even more interest than amongst the public. The diplomatic body especially attaches the highest importance to it, and it appears that the principal diplomatists intend to go down to Cher bourg on the occasion, in order to obtain for their respective Courts the earliest and fullest details. Up to this moment no programme of it has been pub lished ; so that it is not yet positively known (by the profane public, at all events', whether the interview between the English and French Sovereigns will take place in Cherbourg itself, or aboard ship in the roadstead, but it is believed that the Queen will not laud. If this belief should turn out to be well founded, the public will be deprived of an interesting scene ; but still (Ito gathering of two large fleets of England and France, and the presence of a multitude of smaller vessels, flying flags of every hue, will form an extraordinary and an imposing spectacle. A French friend, who las just come up from Cherhourt, alter going along the coast to that place from Brest, tells me that if the Queen should land the Cherbourg people would be delighted, even though they have heretofore been as anti English as any in France, owing to the rude treatment their fathers have more than once received from ours. The same authority tells me that the Emperor's reception at Cherhonrg will be cordial in the extreme ; but that at Brest, and in almost all parts of Brittany, the chances are that it will be only lukewarm, not to sey positively cold. It is, I hear, trom anxiety about it in high quarters that the route to be taken by the Emperor in his passage through Brittany has already been more than once changed, and has not yet been definitively fixed. Brittany, yotiare aware, is the province iu which the landed gentry and the clergy exercise more power, and are more highly esteemed, than in any other in France ; and their political sympathies are more with the representative of the old Ringi of France than with modern Bonapartism. Sonic of the newspapers, I see, are hinting that the Empress is 'either in an interesting situation, or is ill. There is good reason for downing that her Majesty is the former, and 1 know positively that she is not the latter. Within the last few data the Empress has had gay parties at St. Cloud or the adjacent and wore charnperre residence of Villeneuve l'Etang ; and one of the parties, and a very merry one it was, was given ter the amusement of the little Imperial Prince and a whole host of juveniles. So far from being ill, the Empress, at ended by her ladies, frequently walks in the reserved park at St. Cloud to a late hour at night. Her Majesty, like most fair Spaniards, is partial to moonlight pro menades, and at Biarritz her nips at sea are naver made until the moon is high. Not a little sensation was caused in courtly circles two or three days back by the announcement in foreign newspapers that the Russian Prince, Anatole Demidoff, had died ; but it turned out to be a mis take. This personage is the husband of H.I.H. the Princess Mathilde, the Emperor's cousin ; hut the Princess separated from him many years ago, and with such marked on both sides, that no attempt at reconciliation has been made by either since. Though bearing the title of Prince, M. Demidoff stauila not high on the roll of Russian nobility, even if he be inscribed on it at all—tha title being a Tuscan one—and, therefore, the Princess made a mesalliance in espousing him. To be sure when she did so her family was in exile, and one of the least likely things on earth was to see it raised to the Imperial "rhrone of France. It is con sidered a strong proof of the good sense, modesty, and innate sense of justice of the Emperor, that lie has net made use of his immense power, and of his influence with the Pape, to release the Princess his cousin from ties that are hateful to her, and which he and all hia family regard with no favour able eve. The newspapers of the large town of St. Etienne, which have arrived this morning, bring a rather startling piece of news—the discovery in that town of a conspiracy for making hand grenades, similar to those of Orsini, the seizure of three such grenades, and the arrest of twenty conspirators. Assuredly sun a discovery is of grave importance; but the worst of such things is that the public always exaggerates them—always considers them as a new proof that France, in spite of her present calm, is a seething volcano, constantly menacing an eruption. DOCK NAPOLEON 111. 420 metres long, 200 wide, 18 deep. 7-! wol b "iioqr , 4 • FLOATING Docw Xlf TRAMC 6 Porr. Y. 4 0 f-. Z ig. TOR FITTING OUT VR3821.8. --.11 N.B.—The ROADSTEAD. metre is rather more than SI feet Eoglish: irreign anb Colonial 3nteligcnrt. FRANCE. The following remarks on the English press ap pear in the Moniteur de l'Armite : We have nut hitherto noticed the inconceivable attitude assumed with regard to France by a few of the English journals, and of which the Times is the most important and the most unreasonable. That journal, which comprises among its writers men equally distinguished for their honourable character and their talents, too often blends with the excellent articles they write the bitterest diatribes against a country whose alliance it had appreciated only the day before at its full value. The completion, so long expected, of the works at Cherbourg, undertaken by order of Louis XIV., and to which fresh impulse was given by Napoleon I. more than half a century ago, has been the signal for fresh attacks, and on this occasion the most unseemly irony gives its ignoble Rid t) the violence of party spirit. The time is long past, thank God! when an English Minister could at his pleasure deprive France of its only military port in the North Sea, and in our time no English statesman would think of preventing us from having a maritime establish meet on 41611 waist et t h e Channel worthy of being shown to our breve neighbours of Portsmouth or Plymouth. Each nation possesses, without any dispute or recripocal limitation, a naval establishment suited to its necessities and its power. Who can find fault becium this naval force has a secure place of refug e on its sea frontier? The unre fleeting , writers who sound the alarm-bell in England against an imaginary danger, by which that great nation will not suffer itself to be alarmed, would obtain very miserable success if at their voice the British coast should bristle with redoubts and cannon ; it in full peace a numerous army should be assembled on a coast that nothing menaces, and which is more loudly demanded by the exigences of the war in China and in India; if, in fine, Great Britain should exhaust the treasure destined for these distant operations, too really lrgent, in order to tranquillize the unfounded uneasiness of some ridiculous and timid dreamers. And on this load- tuissible supposition, if France, ►failing in her well•known • habitual fra . nlinevi and good hi;tlt, should cherish. as site is accused of doing, perfidious designs against a friendly power, what grgater triumph could those unskilful writers prepare (or her than to ruin the finances and wear out the population of the adversary which it is by ail meanu en deavoured to create, without having fitted out a single ship or assembled a single regitnenton that formidable coast and in that gigantic port, except dame tnat are to figure in the inauguration to which the Emperor Napoleon 111. has graciously invited Queen Victoria? The port of Cherbourg must necessarily be some day finished. The Emperor of the French was itanawd by a noble and courteous feeling, like all those by which he is animated, when he invited a British fleet to share with a French fleet the hdnour of entering the port the first, and in simultaneously display ing its flag. It is not thus that an honourable heart pro ceeds when it meditates hostile plans. We have reason to believe that these sentiments of medial nuderstanding have been loyally interpretel and accepted by her Majesty the Queen of England, and by the statesmen who sit in her councils. The Bound of the guns of the two allied powers united to celebrate this solemn inauguration will be the best reply to make to the declarations of the Times and its adherents, whom it m ty have met among the cosmopolitan demagogues impatient to find in an European war, which they will be powerless to excite, some chance of success fur their anarchical machinations. The Paris Union informs us that" Not a day passes without information being received of the couversion to Catholicism of a young daughter or son of the British aristocracy. These ifonversions are particu larly frequent in Belgrave•street, that immense and magnificent quarter of London, inhabited by lords and baronets." The Moniteur contains a very long report of a cortirn'ttee appointed some years ago to frame new rules for the management of the Imperial Library in the Rue better known by its name of world-wide celebrity, the "Bibliotheque Royale." The committee recommends, and a decree of the Minister of Public Instruction adopts, a great many changes in the personnel of the establishment, upon the principle of centralization of power and respon sibility, the suppression of useless, and the augmen tation of the salaries of useful officers. But out of regard to vested interests, the greater part of these changes are only to be made gradually, unless it shall be ultimately determined to grant full coni pensation to discharged servants. The great question whether the library is still to be open to all the world, notwithstanding the complaints that ignorant, idle, and destitute people crowd the library, either for the sake of shelter and warmth, or from morbid or idle curiosity, without any bona fide desire to study, has been resolved in this way :—There are to be two reading-rooms ; one, to be. supplied with about 40,000 volumes, comprising all the works likely to be asked for by ordinary readers, will 'oe open as heretofore to all the world. Access to the oth-or is only to be obtained by tickets. " T do not, as at present advised," says a correspondent, writing from Paris, "think that this arrangement is ob objectionable in principle ; but of course I assume that no vexatious difficulties will be thrown in ti e way of granting tickets, and, above all, that the re served room will not be in practice monopolized by functionaries and their friends. The mere fact of a man taking the trouble to apply for a ticket and to give a reference ought to go a long way to show that he has a serious literary object in desiring to be admitted." A nun named Moreau, hut whose name " in re ligion " was Sister Alexandra, of the convent of St. Joseph, at St. Julien de Civry (Saone et•Loirel, who died in November, 1855, constituted by her will the Abbe Beurier her residuary legatee, and, as her property was very considerable, it was calcu lated that, after deducting various other legacies which she had made, he would come into possession of more than 300,000 francs. Her family some months ago brought an action before the Civil Tribunal of Charolles to have the will set aside, on the ground that it was invalid, because it was made for the berefit of the " spiritual director " of the testatrix, because it had been obtained by undue influence, and because the legacy was not made to the abbe personally, but on the understanding that he would transfer it to the convent of St. Joseph. The tribunal, after hearing all the parties, came to the conclusion that there was nothing to prove the first two allegations, but that the third • was well founded, inasmuch as in a previous will she