The Express.
London, England, 1856-12-25 00:00:00

REDPATHISM IN PARIS.

(►aoN AN

PARIS, Duo. 23.
There is an old story of one of our comedians who
arrived in Paris on a day when all the theatres were
closed, and when the bills consequently bore in large
letters the word " Relache." The worthy, not being
particularly strong in foreign tongues, concluded that
it was an excessively popular piece, and requested his
friend to obtain it for him, as even in those days the
French stage furnished one dramatists with materials.
Foreigners who walk the streets at this time of year
are equally puzzled at finding the advertisements,
the placards on the walls, and the tickets in the shop
windows, extensively beaded with "Etrennes," an
ominous word for every French Paterfamilias, and
for every unlucky wight whose fate it is to be what
they call repandu in society. One bright specimen
of our countrymen suggested that it was some popular
kind of sweetmeat, because he had seen it at a con-
fectioner's in the Passage des Panoramas; and the
guess was not a bad one, for these New Year's gifts
used in the olden time, in the days when we
first " d.d " our Paris, to be chiefly packets of
bonbons, except in the case of the grumbling con-
=l,who cared for nothing but the white money.
y-the-bye, the concierge of Paris is jast what
he wed to be, growling, grimy, and given to mend
shoes in a dark hole in a corner of the courtyard, or
ander a staircase. The " embellissemeatan have not
le
t reached him, and even in the lively new
of the Rue de Rivoli, he has made con-
siderable progress in getting himself and his
den into the 11.1010 condition as they used to
be, when filthy narrow streets occupied the site of
the brilliant shops of to-day. But in one respect ',
he has marched with the times—he expects to so
be paid more for everything be does or is supposed 131
to do for you, and since you pay 5,000 francs for your si
bachelor quarters on the fourth story now, for which fk
you only paid 2,000 francs formerly, he expects his is.
dogma at the new year to rise in proportion, and so,
everybody dreads the time of the Etrennes. It ge
Y the bugbear of the day ; it divides men's is
clads with the Neufchatel question, and is of r
kit more direct interest to all those not concerned is
k the fluctuations of the Bourse, a class, lam 1111..
every to say, remarkably small now-a-days. You g
1111sember that time was, when a cornet of booboos 11.
wall that was expected as a general rule. It was g
not very expensive, was graciously accepted, and • st.
bachelor was quits for all the soirees, Aci., for the I.
past year, and eligible for thew of the Anno Domini m.
that was commencing. But that was in the days .9,1.1
when royalty disported itself in the streets with a it".
cotton umbrella, and used to have easy little gas- es.'
siping dinner parties at the Tuileries. It wain the it
time of Mr. Smith.* Maio now areas chi/ font sA
cola. We have the Cent Garde, and the new Leant
all covered with carving, and imperial %saw as
equally covered with gold lace, and new shreds, and
a new regime, and new everything. And we have, ir
moreover, our new banks, not like the old ones, where is.
Coatis' and Drummond's drafts used to be
bat palaces where grim officials in livery let yOleitlit
in no time what a nobody you are compared with
themselves, who bask In the light of such very su-
prior porcelain as M. l'Administratenr ; and you to
walk up stairs covered with soft carpets, and are 14
utterly confounded by whits and gold balusters, and or
handrails covered with crimson vehet (Utrecht). et.
And when you are sufficiently impressed with all ;
this, you seat yourself oe some more crimson velvet
(Utrecht) in the waiting room, and in the course of
an hoes you get your audience of the great potentate
himself, or of his subordinate, and are politely bowed
into some more crimson velvet (easy chair this time,
but Utrecht still), and finally you come out with a
vague notion that the world is all crimson velvet
and green carpets, and white and gold deocteatiom.

Well, the Enemies are all on the same Kale, and fes•
so the given of New Year's gifts in Paris have come .o
to pie& Ti. still present bonbons, bat no cornets
mews ilios MO be in a box, and you are a bold mt.
OW% mains la tie social scale, if you dare present Lt.
slut Uhl& eels Inn than fifteen or twenty francs, ri:
mikoloo Mho 'intent& And if it be a question of es.
prossollbs • child with a toy, it is a mechanical
se
eme—i shokoy who plays a fiddle, or a goat se.
who due everything but est and digest, or some
trifle costing you sixty or eighty franca. Thrice that go
sea mast be expended if you are intimate in the so
Mass, and wish to do a politeness to madame. If you E
do goer Etreones grudgingly, woe be to you—you are so
taboo, and will be invited to meet the clerks of
IL le financier, or the cousins from the country, so
er others of that stamp, who occuionsay fall on IS
the heads of Parisians, and pat them to their wits'
ends to find amusement for the terrific visitors. In te
Path everything In Paris has got to that pitch of
nt splendour, that one can hardly noel the
reetrribefors 1830, when old Charles Dix used to
*bow his front teeth so graciously to his loving sub-
jects. The elaborate pavilions of the new Louvre, when
the architect seems to have solved successful) y the
problem of patting the greatest possible quantity of
decoration into a given space, is the type of our new
Paris. The object appears to be to do everything in
the most costly manner; and where the money teas
from is a puzzle. Men seem to me to be living as
they did in the days of the first revolution,
when the maxim wee—" Let us live today, for
the axe may fall to-morrow." In every direction the
idea appears to prevail that since no one knows what
may happen, it is as well to enjoy the utmost attain-
able luxury while the means of supplying it still
exist; and at the bottom of this feeling is, to my
thinking, the Rouse. The newspapers are gradually
getting into the hands of the great speculators, and
their chief interest lies in their amounts of what
passes in the Rue Vivienne; everything seems to be
sacrificed to that portion of their intelligence. Men
of yesterday are living like printing; their new houses
are Hoed with marble, and gilding, and painting, and
statuary. Their offices are like drawing-rooms, and
the bees of the hive, the working demo, hod it no
easy matter to make both ends meet—a state of things,
in Paris especially, which is anything hat safe or
satisfactory. Wh I see any of these samples
of the Plutocracy of France I cannot help looking
upon them as blue-bottle flies—very big, very noisy,
very. shiny, but sprung from a very unsavoury
°rim and impregnating everything on which
alight with the on& of corruption.
M.kingt due allowance for the general and
rapid increase in the wealth of France and
Frenchmen, it appears to me that there is an aunt-
' tural sad dangerous amount of tension in all this
luxury, and although I am • firm believer in the
greatness and prosperity of the future of this
I Auld be glad to HID them discount it a lit=
and shires* themselves rather to establishing their
midis on a firm buis than to dazzling as by the
sploodsmor which strikes every visitor by its oiliest,-
eality. whits the goverment and the municipality are
studying inessmantly the means of reducing the eat
of the ationsariso of life, it seems strange that one
oleos of the inhabitants of Paris should be as
devising new modes of parading their luxury Wm
the eyes of their fellow-citizens. It will end in the
creation of two climes, the very rich and the very
poor, unless it be checked; and how perilous such a
division of property is, the history of France has indi-
cated pretty clearly.

BOEING OP TEE ISTHMUS OT SUES.—CAIRO, DEC.
U.—Orders ban been gins for collecting on the banks of
the Nile ell wwwwary Bitterish for the fornatien of a fresh
water canal. The weeks will begin es soon as the saboid-
log of the waten will penalt—that Is to may, about the end
of February.

The Academy of Sciences have just elected Sir
William Hooker, of Kew, ea correspoadiag Number for the
seethe of botany. Six other candidates were brought for-
ward.

SIMMS SOCIETIES IN MODENA.—Thie Meuaggoro
of Modes* publishes a meteors just preammeed by the
military commission sitting at Massa, eendortneing one
to imprisonment in irons for life, slather rimier
to twenty years of the same punishment, sad a third to
are years' hard labour is the galleys, f.ur having belonged
to a secret society. ♦ fouth is deelsred unsound in mind,
and ordered to be shot up in a ated-bosoo; sad tea more
are sequitted for west of proof.
TOR OREM' NORTH'S!. FlAUD3.—After a length-
said erseimation of winsome at Clerksawell
yesterday, for the purpose of completion the ease, the pri-
soners Itsdpath, Kent, and Hogdea. were committed for
trial. pail was tempted is the sue of Hogan.