The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-24 00:00:00

CORRESPONDENCE FROM PARIS.

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(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

PARIS, Wednesday Evening.

Very soon after the arrival of Mr. Layard in
Paris, he was admitted to a private interview with
the Emperor, and he has also had a long
versation with M. Drouyn de l'Huys, the Minister
of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Layard was the bearer of
a communication for the English Government ex-
pressing its consent to the collective note of the
neutral Powers. The result of the visit of Mr.
Layard is that England, France, and Russia have
agreed upon the terms of the proposal to be made
to Austria, Prussia, and Italy in regard to a Con-
gress, and therefore there is now very little doubt,
in spite of contradictions from many quarters, that
The Sun had the best authority and information for
stating that such a proceeding would take place,
with a view if possible to avert war. The leading
Austrian papers, nevertheless, speak of a Congress
as a " fantastic" idea. It is true that this was be-
fore the above facts were known. They will not
hear of anything pacific, and continue to remind
their readers that the Austrian army exceeds 800,000
men, of whom 270,000 are under the orders of Field
Marshal Benedek, who recently issued such a belli-
cose order of the day. A letter from Florence also
states that the proposal for a Congress has only had
the effect in Italy of producing greater enthusiasm
for war. The writer says that this enthusiastic feel-
ing pervades all classes. Colonels enrol themselves
as simple soldiers. Prince Pio, connected with
the House of Savoy, and an influential indivi-
dual, has enlisted as a volunteer under Garibaldi.
The Prince made this statement himself to
a friend. Five hundred young men of various
villages have armed and equipped themselves at
their own expense. The writer also relates what
he heard in an omnibus. Two peasants were chat-
tering together. " Who is your son going with ?"
said one. " With Garibaldi." " And yours ?"
" Mine goes with Vittorio" (Victor Emmanuel) was
the answer. They then cordially shook bands.
This conversation is given as an illustration of the
feeling existing everywhere. The ladies distribute
bouquets to the officers in public, and have some-
thing patriotic to say about war. At the same time
the Government is not inactive, for every day fresh
battalions are despatched to rejoin and reinforce
on the Po the army stationed opposite the Qua-
drilateral, the number of which exceeds 200,000
men. A fete is in course of organisation in Italy for
the sth of June, the anniversary of the battle of
Magenta. In short, in spite of the supposed media-
tion of a Congress, Italy is preparing for, and in
daily expectation (and hope) of war. The Italian
paper, the Italie, states that a mubscription has been
opened for the saviour of the Italian soldiers. It
is stated that the father of Komissaron, the man
who lately saved the Emperor of Russia from as-
sassination, and who was sentenced to hard labour
for life on the mines of Siberia for a political offence,
has just received a free pardon from his Majesty.
He will not only be set at liberty, but a handsome
sum of money will be given to him.
According to an ancient French legend there once
existed in Paris a house where savoury pies—sup-
posed pork pies and others—made of human flesh,
were eaten in great abundance, and relished as
keenly as the celebrated Perigord pies. This pork
pie establishment, which was situated on the Rue
des Marmousets in the Cite, has just been de-
molished like so many others for modern improve-
ments. Here is what was written by the Pere
Jacques de Breuil about this establishment :
" From time immemorial there has existed a report
that there was in the city of Paris, Rue des Mar-
mousets, a murderous pastrycook who used to
assassinate the people who went to his house, with
the assistance of a barber, his neighbour, who pre-
tended to shave the victims. Of their flesh he
made pies, which were more relished than those
manufactured elsewhere, because the flesh of man
is more delicate in consequence of the food upon
which he lives than that of the other animals."

M. Coulvier Gravier, an astronomer who studies
the weather, gives his opinion that the rest of the
year will be dry rather than wet, and that the
temperature will be higher than the average.
An exceedingly interesting discovery has been
made at Montreuil-aux-Peche. The workmen at a
stone quarry have found the left humerus of an
elephas priniogenius or mammoth. This bone is of
larger size than any heretofore discovered of this
animal, no longer in existence on our globe. It
measures one metre and the sixth of a metre in
length, and the circumference is rather more than
half a metre, from which 'it is supposed that the
animal was no less than six metres in length.
Anatomists who have examined this portion of the
skeleton gave their opinion that the animal had
muscles of a peculiar character, which enabled it to
make much more complicated movements than it is
in the power of the elephant to make. The skeleton
is so old that when it was placed in a horizontal
position it crumbled almost to dust, and great care
was necessary to preserve the fragments. By an
ingenious process they were made perfect again, and
the portion of the skeleton has been sent to the
Museum of Natural History, where nothing of the
kind exists. In the environs of this quarry many
remains of mammoths and hippopotami have been
found at various periods, and workmen are now oc-
cupied in seeking for other fossil skeletons of such
animals.

We have our sporting prophets in Paris as well as
in London, but on looking back to their predictions,
I find that they are all wofully out in regard to
the Chantilly Races. Not a single one gave the
victory to M. Delamarre's Florentin, which was in
the Jockey Club Prize. They all called him an
outsider, and spoke coldly of him, or " damned him
with faint praise." Marengo was spoken of as a
dead certainty by some. Others said that the only
horses which had the ghost of a chance were
Baionette and Czar.

The shock of earthquake felt at Marseilles and
elsewhere was also experienced in the town of Pig-
nans, in the department of the Var. An inhabitant
of that place writes to say that while he was walk-
ing in the street between nine and ten in the morn-
ing the earth trembled, and the effect upon him was
the same as if he had been intoxicated, as he could
scarcely keep his footing. This statement is corro-
borated by the accounts of other persons. The
earthquake also manifested itself with great vio-
lence at Toulouse, and at Chambery, in Savoy.
The sailors charged with the frightful murders on
board the Faderis Arca have arrived at Brest, and
will shortly be tried.
The most destructive fire that has taken place in
Paris or the neighbourhood has just occurred in the
immense carriage manufactory of Messrs. Desouches
and Co., Pont de POureg, Pantin. The workshops
which occupied 6,000 square metres exists no longer,
and their contents are almost totally destroyed.
The value of the property they contained is at
present incalculable. The soldiers and firemen used
the most courageous and active exertions. One man
is said to have perished in the flames. Three hun-
dred watermen are turned out of employ.

The weather is very peculiar. Yesterday it was
very dry and bright, but last night was quite a
December one. In the vicinity of Paris, at 10
o'clock, the thermometer was only just above freez-
ing point, and this morning there was frost in the
fields long after sunrise. To-day a violent cold
wind has prevailed, the effect of which was not sen-
sibly counteracted by the continuous sunshine.

The cashier of the Sous-Comptoir of the Rail-
ways, who absconded with three millions of cash,
has been arrested, and also a Paris printer. A
prince—the Prince de C. C.—is said to be impli-
cated in the transaction.

Le Chayivari says, tt Nothing is changed in
Europe. There is only another casus belli." A.
Paris paper gives the following as a specimen of the
way of managing elections in England :—The cook
says to his master (a candidate)—"
I could buy
that salmon." Master—" Why?" Cook—" Be-
cause an elector was bargaining for it." Master—
,think this story
" Take those bank-notes and buy the salmon of the
elector. Say it is for me." English readers may
probably of a sal non " very like a
whale."

MISCELLANEOUS PUBLICATIONS.

PROFESSOR WILSON'S ESSAYS—Critical and
imaginative—collected together in four handsome
volumes—have just now been published by the
Messrs. Blackwood and Sons, of Edinburgh. They
are in continuation of the noble and, by this time,
voluminous edition of the works of that great Athlete,
both physical and intellectual, who was the glory in
hislfull manhood and in his old age, of the modern
Athens, as he was previously,in his radiant youth
of thoselake districts with which his memory, no less
than the memories of three other poets, his contem-
poraries and friends—William Wordsworth, Robert
Southey, and Samuel Coleridge—will Le for ever
(so long as the English language and English litera-
ture shall last) be associated. "A mighty hunter
before the Lord," hardly less than Nimrod of old—
equally a conqueror in his way, whether armed
with
.the angler's rod and tackle, the sportsman's
fowling piece, shot -pouch, and powder-flask, the '
poet's pencil, the critic's pen, the punch-ladle of
Ambrose, or that monthly trumpet of Maga, whose
notes he could sound from treble to diapason as po-
tently as any one among all those who ever breathed
through it—the author of these wonderful books,
books running over with wit, eloquence, scholarship,
humour, sarcasm, pathos, wisdom, and fun, this
" fair-haired Hercules-Apollo," as he has been
happily dubbed by one of his biographers,
never could take pen in hand, no matter whether
it were steel or goosequill, no matter whether
he himself wore at the time tartan or
broadcloth, shooting-jacket, or plaidie, but, hey !
presto ! his foot was on his native heath, and his
name was Christopher North ! He was . a noble
creature ! A splendid specimen of the genus honto !
And so—every scrap of writing that came from his
hand, every fragment of a thought that fell from his
lips or from his pen, we find a welcome for, cordial
and spontaneous. No matter what his theme at
the moment may chance to be, or what the
form in which the whim of the moment in
duces him to embody it—Poem, Criticism,
Dialogue, Sonnet, Narrative ! Like the Ancient
Mariner, he hath his will—come he in
any shape he lists. And so—with all our enthusiasm
for his incomparable Nodes Ambrosianx, with all our
admiration for his " Christopher North in his Shoot-
ing Jacket," with all our delight in his didactic poetry
and for his tales about Scottish Life and about Mar-
garet Lindsay, we find a welcome hardly less eager
than that which we have already accorded to those
more famous works of his, with which to hail the
appearance in a collected form of these earlier
contributions of John Wilson, the great Professor
of the Edinburgh University, the greater Christopher
North of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—con-
tributions dating, many of them as far back but no
further than 1826—forty years, in truth, from this
present time, in other words more than one whole
generation ! To particularize among Essays so won-
derfully miscellaneous both in their character and
in their treatment, were nothing less than super-
fluous, would be hardly less than ridiculous,
everything considered, so widely do they range
from grave to gay, from lively to severe. Turning
over the leaves of the merely first of these four
goodly volumes, and glancing haphazard through
their contents, what do we find, or with what do
we not find there, as the pegs chosen by the
young knight-errant of literature upon which
to hang up the evidences of his genius
of his taste and of his erudition ? " Streams" and
" Gymnastics"--" The Lives of the Poets" and
" Death in the Pot"—" The Young Lady's Book"
and " Meg Dod's Cookery"—here " Health and
Longevity," there " Wordsworth"—now " Old and
Young North, or Christopher in London and Chris-
topher in Edinburgh !" Those who want a good
hearty laugh need only turn to his Essay in this
first volume "On Early Rising !" And so—hail !
and thrice welcome to these earliest effusions of
the genius of Christopher North ! We are under a
sense of obligation to the Messrs. Blackwood for
having had them thus hunted up and published col-
lectively.
THE HANDY-VOLUME SHAKSPERE—publishing
now in the form of a Shilling Monthly Volume,
issued from the press by the Messrs. Bradbury,
Evans, and Co., of Bouverie-street, Blackfriars—
is such a veritable treasure trove in literature that
we long to see the same plan, identically, carried
out in regard to others among the Immortals. A
Handy-Volume Milton—Pope—Byron—each the
very ditto to this lovely little edition of Shakspere
—would be as welcome to us as flowers in May, as
ices in the dogdays, as plum-pudding at Christmas.
" Intended in respect to its appearance and size"
Q.D. tells, in a brief preliminary announcement,
which followA immediately upon the title-page—
"to form a handy, readable series of volumes,
equally adapted for the Pocket, the Knapsack, and
the Railway"—the darling little Edition, as we
can't help calling it, is printed upon pages free
from notes, in type both clear and beautiful. "The
text has been arranged "—as it appears to us very
judiciously—" from a close comparison of the most
trustworthy editions such [Q.D. goes on to explain]
as those of Mr. Collier, Mr. Dyce, Mr. Charles
Knight, Mr. Staunton, and the Cambridge
editors—not omitting the folio of 1623—with the
primary object of obtaining a reading as nearly in
accordance with what Shakspere actually wrote."
Comprised with the compass of the First Volume,
are the whole of the five acts (each) of " The
Tempest," of the " Two Gentlemen of Verona," and
of the " Comedy of Errors." The paper is toned,
the type is exquisitely beautiful, the text is Shak-
spere inn et simple—Shakspere and nothing but
Shakspere. It is, besides all this, a very marvel of
cheapness as the result of a happy thought most
charmingly realized.

THE CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE—now publish-
ing in shilling monthly instalments by the Messrs.
Frederick Warne and Co., of Henrietta-street,
Covent Garden—is not merely, as it announces it-
self to be on its title-rage, " the only authorised and
complete edition with notes" of that famous
masterpiece —it is beyond all question the
very best edition of it that has ever made its
appearance. It is edited by its Author's distin-
guished son, the Right Hon. B. Disraeli, M.P. for
Buckinghamshire, and Leader of Her Majesty's
Opposition. In ten months, that is considerably
within a year from the date of its commencement,
it will be completed in three goodly volumes—a very
treasury of scholarship and information. Informa-
tion, often the most recondite, but always conveyed
to the reader in a manner the most delightful.

NEW MUSIC.—Mr. Cocks, of New Burlington-
street, is undoubtedly a most energetic music publisher ;
because no sooner have we completed the reviewing of a
long list of novelties than another makes its appearance
and demands immediate attention. Tho latest productions
are two charming ballads by Fraz Abt, " Would I were a
Warbling Bird," " A Forest Ramble," and two instru-
mental pieces, one on the airs in "La Sonnambula," by
Arthur Delasure, and the other " A Rustic Rondo," by
Immanuel Liebich. The later of the two is the most cha-
racteristic piece, and one no doubt which will become a
favourite. We have no choice with respect to them, so
we say " both are best."
SUCCESSFUL TREATMENT OF HYDROPHOBIA.—We
regret to have to record a case of hydrophobia in this
neighbourhood. In our last we mentioned that a dog,
which showed signs of rabies, had escaped from Mr. Higgs's
of Trescott, communicating the disorder to other dogs, and
doing other mischief. We learn that about a month ago
a:servant girl in Mr. Higg's service was tying up the dog
in question when the animal bit her on the right thumb.
She experienced no serious results until Tuesday week,
when her thumb, arm, and chest became considerably
swollen, accompanied with great heat, pain, redness, stiff-
ness, and numbness, the arm being so stiff that she was
almost unable to move it, Mr. Higgs sent for Mr. Pope,
surgeon, of this town, who saw the girl on Thursday, and
fDund her evidently suffering from hydrophobia, the result
of the bite of the ddg. On Friday night she became very
ill, biting dud tearing at almost everything near her, and
suffering much from convulsions. She repeatedly declared
that she heard the dog growling at her ; indeed, she dis-
played all the symptoms of this dreaded disease. As sur-
gical writers on the subject do not lay down any specific
mode of treatment in cases of this kind, Mr. Popo deter-
mined to cause profuse salivation in the patient, with the
view of neutralising the poisonous character of the saliva
of hydrophobia. This is a course of procedure not often
pursued, but its beneficial effects were soon apparent. On
Sunday the convulsions and the spasms, from which the
poor girl also suffered, had ceased, and there now appears
to be every prospect of her ultimate recovery.— Woh.er_
ham.pton ChrotiaG