The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-07 00:00:00

CORRESPO,

,OM PARIS.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
PARIS, Monday Evening.
The Siecle says—" We learn from our private
correspondent that the negociations between Prussia
and Austria are sufficiently advanced to render
useless the conferences which were to take place at
Prague. The general opinion in Germany is that
peace will be concluded in the first half of the pre-
sent month, that there is a perfect understanding
upon all the essential points between Prussia and
Austria, and that there are now only subordinate
matters to arrange. The Ministers of Foreign
Affairs of the two countries have given up the idea
of diverting the negociations, which will continue
between M. Werther, on the part of Prussia, and
M. de Brenner, on the part of Austria."
The German papers state that the Brunswick
Contingent is ready to march, and has received
orders to proceed by the Ilof railway to join the
second corps of reserve under the command of the
Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

The Gazette Officielle of Florence announces that
King Victor Emmanuel has agreed to an armistice
of four weeks from the 2d of August ; that the an-
nexation of Venetia to the kingdom of Italy is to
be made unconditionally ; that the question of the
frontiers is reserved for discussion during the nego-
tiations for peace; and that the armistice is con-
cluded upon the basis of the military uti possidetis.
The Italia states that the Italian frontier will be
established a little below Trente, at the summit of
a village, the name of which justifies the Italian
claim to it. This village has a name signifying half
Lombard, half German. If this be true, Italy will
obtain the valley of Guidiana, the northern portion
of the lake of Garda, with the town of Riva, Rove-
redo in the valley of the Adige, and all the valley of
the Brenta now occupied by the Medici division.
The Duke of Brunswick has been robbed of a
considerable sum of money. The Duke left his
hotel in the avenue Friedland about half-past eight
in the evening, and it is supposed was watched by
a servant whom he had discharged for misconduct,
and who knew where he kept his cash and valuables.
About half-past ten a woman, employed in the
kitchen, saw a man run across the garden and jump
over the wall. He was seen by a policeman, and a
cry of " Stop thief" was raised, but the man escaped.
On the return of the Duke, between one and two
in the morning, it was ascertained that a strong-box
in a cabinet had been broken open and its contents
carried away. The box contained a considerable
sum in gold. The police are of opinion that the
thief obtained entrance by a door which had been
accidentally left open. Since the great diamond
robbery the Duke has sent his jewels for safety to
the Bank of France.
A manufacturer at St. Denis has committed
suicide by rather singular mean's. In order to
" make assurance doubly sure" he provided for
death by suffocation with charcoal and also by shoot-
ing himself. He placed the barrel of an old-
fashioned gun in his mouth. The ignition was by
a train and coull only take place slowly. Having
lighted the charcoal he set fire to the train, and
seated himself comfortably in an arm-chair. The
ball penetrated his chest, but the surgeons are of
opinion that the cause of death was suffocation from
the charcoal. The deceased was a man of 55. He
had set his house in order very methodically. A
great many letters on matters of business were
found upon his table, directed and stamped.

A letter from Brussels states that the opening o:
the Exhibition of Fine Arts in that city is again post•
poned. It was to have been opened on the Bth o
August. The postponement is till the Bth of Oc.
tober.

M. Alexis Grosselin, one of the editors of the
Siecle, died yesterday after a long and very painful
illness.
It appears that Austria negotiated for Saxony at
the same time as for herself. M. de Pfordten, who
dined with the King of Prussia last week, represents
not only Bavaria, but Wurteraburg also. It is
stated that Prussia will evacuate Moravia and
Bohemia, preserving in the latter country, as a
guarantee of the payment of the 20 millions of dol-
lars by Austria, the territory comprised between
Troppau, Jagerndorf, and the Prussian frontier.
The needle-gun excites great interest and curiosity
among the Parisians. It is exhibited in the win-
dows of some of the gunsmiths, and attracts crowds
during the day. The Academy of Sciences has de-
voted a long sitting to an explanation of it by Baron
Seguier. The invention is claimed by several per-
sons. One of the papers states in the most positive
terms that it was invented in 1832 by M. Joseph
Nicolas Montigny, of Brussels. A great many im-
provements, however, have been made in the gun
since that time by M. Gallard, a Belgian, and M.
Roupelet, a Frenchman. The experiments with the
new gun to which I alluded took place. I was not
present at them, but they are described as having
been completely successful. M. Jarre, the inven-
tor, has not adopted the Prussian needle. The
mechanism is entirely French. It was fired 90
times in a minute, as tested by a watch.
The new Exhibition building proceeds as rapidly
as could be expected. Indeed, each week it pre-
sents a perceptible change. A great deal of the
preliminary work is finished, and the preparations
have commenced for the Installation of the products
of various distant portions of the world—China,
Japan, Morocco, Egypt, Tunis, and other places.
In the Egyptian section a fac-simile of the Temple
of Phile, the most beautiful of the ruins of Thebes,
is in course of erection. It will be copied with
extreme fidelity, for all the portions of the temple
have been moulded. This striking piece of
Egyptian architecture will appear exactly as it did
many centuries ago, for it is being prepared from
specimens found in the rooms of the Pyramids.
By the side of the temple there will be a kiosque,
in which will be exhibited a plan in relief of
the whole of Egypt, with the exception of the
sources of the Nile. In foreign countries preparations
proceed with much activity. Austria and Prussia
will both be brilliantly represented. how different,
how beneficent will be the contest of industry from
the dread struggle in the territory of Germany.
As to the secondary States of Germany, which were
to have been exhibited in a collective form under
the Federal flag, black and yellow, in consequence
of recent events, their productions will be re-orga-
nised in two groups. One of them comprising
Bavaria, Saxony, NVurtemberg, and the Duchies of
Baden and llesse-Darmstadt, is now in direct com-
munication with the Imperial Commission engaged
in making all the arrangements for the Exhibition.
There is to be a splendid flower show and fete at
the Pr6-Catelan, Bois de Boulogne, from the 30th
of August to the 2d of September inclusive. Various
allegorical cars, beautifully decorated with flowers
and plants, will traverse Paris in the course of the
day. One of the attractions spoken of is the tropi-
cal chariot to be drawn by dromedaries. Another
will be the hot-house chariot, where will be grouped
the most rare and beautiful flowers. In the even-
ing there will be splendid fireworks, after a grand
banquet. Donkey races will diversify the amuse-
ments of the fete. The riders will be dressed as
Amazons. In a reserved portion of the park there
will be a curious hunting match. Great numbers
of wild rabbits will be given to the men who can
catch them on foot.
A letter from Prague, dated July 30, states that
the " act" signed by the Emperor of Austria was
brought to Nikolsburg by Count Karolyi, the
Austrian Minister, on the evening of Saturday,
July 28. The essential conditions being accepted,
as well in regard to Italy as to Germany, the Pleni-
potentiaries of the three great belligerent Powers,
with M. Beneditti acting as mediator ou the part of
France, set to work immediately to terminate with
as little delay as possible the arrangements for the
signature of the Treaty of Peace.

FEMALE BEAUTY.—The plainest face is redeemed
by a lovely skin and colour; the most beautiful is not per-
fect without it. Paints and powders are absurd to the
eyes of beholders, and deceive none but the silly wearers
of those ruinous applications. A gentlewoman of rank,
from philanthropic motives, is anxious to impart to every
ono of her sex, rich or poor, the means of procuring the
most beautiful natural complexion by wholesome, simple,
effective, and inexpensive means.—Send stamped directed
envelope for particulars to Mrs. GRANTLEY, 4, Connaught-
terrace, Hyde-park, Lyndon, NY.—(ADTT.)

Shakspere I la Frangaise.
gavres Complete de W. Shakspere. Tomes XII.-
XV. Francois-Victor Hugo, Traducteur. Pag-

nerre : Paris.
Julius Cesar. Tragedie en 5 Actes. Traduite en
Vers Francais par le Chevalier de Chatelain.
Rolandi : Londres.
Oddly enough, at the very time during which there
has been growing up of late among the Germans a
sort of reaction against Shakspere, there has been

growing up on the contrary among the French a dia-
metrically opposite reaction—a reaction, that is to
say, distinctly in his favour. Schlegel's worship of the
genius of Shakspere has resulted in effect, within a
period of fifteen years after Schlegel's death, in a
depreciation of that genius so utterly extravagant
of its kind as to be only comparable in its way to

Lord Byron's derisive query addressed to Tom
Moore, " Do'ht you think Shakspere a d-d hum-
bug ?" Voltaire's systematic sneering at Shak-
spere as at a kind of Literary Barbarian (if those
terms can be regarded as in any way compatible) has,

within much less than eighty years after the death of

Voltaire, resulted, much more naturally, in a revul-
sion of feeling in Shakspere's regard among intelli-
gent Frenchmen, a revulsion of feeling so energetic
and absolute in its way as to lead some amongst them
to the very front rank among the number of
Shakspere's most sagacious appreciators. Con-
spicuous amongst these last-mentioned is the son of
one who is himself one of the very greatest of
French Poets and Dramatists—Francois-Vic-

tor Hugo (son of the famous author of " Ruy
Blas" and " Marion de Lorme"), from whose hands
during the last few years, England on the one side,
France on the other, has been receiving, volume
after volume, a very careful and highly elabo-

rated translation into the French language of the

complete works, Plays, Poems, Sonnets and all, of
William Shakspere. Steering exactly midway be-
tween Scylla and Charybdis in his avoidance
of an otherwise all-but inevitable shipwreck
to his translation steering midway, that is,
between the Scylla of an impracticable essay at
an imitation in French of the blank verse of

Shakspere and the Charybdis of a transformation
of that blank verse, in the very process of transla-
tion, into the rhyming couplet of the great tragic
dramatists in the French school of the Dramatic

Art, the Racines and the Corneilles—M. Francois
Hugo has with a simple audacity of his own done
Shakspere into French without any effort whatever
either at rhythm or at rhyme, done him into French
in plain and unpretentious prose, not only his
dramas but even his very satinets, even his twin
dulcifluous poems, even his " Rape of Lucrece," even
his " Venus and Adonis." No wonder, indeed, that
when so turned into French, by the clearest and
most lucid process of literal translation, the subtler
aroma, the ineffable bouquet, so to speak, of the
divine nectar, is found to have evaporated altho-

gether in the course of the decanting :
" Even as the sun with purple-coloured face
Had ta'en its leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chace,
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn."
So sang the young playwright in the opening of the
voluptuous love-ditty, laid by him at the feet of his
friend and patron the Earl of Southampton.
"A peine le soliel b, la face empourpr6e avait-il recu le
deinier adieu de l'aurore en pleura, qu'Adonis aux joues
roses courut aux halliers ; it aimait la chasse, mais, l'amour,
it en riait jusqu' au dfidain."
So sings, or rather so speaks, for there is no singing
whatever about it, Shakspere's latest complete trans-
lator into French. And, as with one stanza, so with
all. As with a single speech, in a single scene,
in a single act, in a single play—so with all
the speeches, in all the scenes, of all the acts,
of all the plays. To employ here a sufficiently
trite and trivial metaphor, a familiar and frivolous
figure of speech enough, and one adopted for the
moment merely with a view to the exacter illustra-
tration of our meaning, we might say again (as has
been so often said before of the lesser thoughts of
smaller men) that the thoughts or utterances of
Shakspere as they pass, one by one, before the gaze
of his new readers—these new readers of him in this
new French Version of his plays, and poems, and
sonnets, and songs—have been caught like so many
gorgeous butterflies, all radiant with purple and
gold, and glittering in the sunshine of his verse, their
true empyrean—they have been caught, one by one,
but their wings are draggled, the bloom is off them,
there is no sunshine, there are no more palpitating
vacillations in their chromatic pinions they
have been caught and perforated with a pen-
point, and stuck, each in its appointed place
upon the page, like so many wonderfully
curious but no longer ineffably beautiful
entomological curiosities. The truth being, as we
take it, simply this—that there is an insuperable
tlifficulty in the way of adequately translating
Shakspere at all, but more especially in the way of
translating Shakspere's blank verse into the French
language—for which the most careful translator in
the wide world could not by possibility, could not
certainly in reason, be held in any degree responsible.
In some sort it might even be asserted with abso-
lute confidence that, so far as relates to the retention
at once within it of accuracy and of beauty, the
poetry of Shakspere, but, above all, his blank
verse, is incommunicable in any other than in
Shakspere's own words, in Shakspere's own lan-
guage. In order to appreciate Shakspere, in order
in any degree adequately to appreciate him, the
German student, but still more the French student,
must himself master the English language so as to
read Shakespere in his own' tongue. And let
us add at once that the so reading him in the
original would of itself be a sufficient reward for
the labour of mastering another language. As
some one exquisitely said once of a bewitching
lady—To know her is of itself a liberal education !
So, precisely, it might be said in regard to the
mastering (whether by Englishmen or by
Foreigners it matters nothing) of the works
and genius of Shakspere—To know him is of
itself a liberal education ! And while we apply
this eulogium and together with this eulogium
its implied recommendation in its supremest
sense to the acquisition of the English tongue
for the purpose simply of thereby being enabled
to read, as they can alone be read apprecia-
tively, that is in the original, the writ-
ings of Shakspere—the same recommendation ad-
mits of being applied, though with a lesser signifi-
cance, to other writers and to other languages.
To the French language, for example, as the means,
as the only really adequate means enabling any-
one to read appreciatively either Moliere or Cor-
neille ! To the Spanish—with an eye in the
like way to catch a true zest for the ironical
humour of Cervantes ! To the Italian—for the pur-
pose of fully apprehending, now the hellish, now the
celestial grandeur of Dante, as he treads, with Virgil
and with his reader, the burning marl of the In-
ferno, or as they crush beneath their candled
feet the asphodels and amaranths of the Para-
diso. And so also might it be said—with more or
less significance, of course, according to their rela-
tive value—with regard to all the other languages,
whether living or dead, with reference to all the
other literatures, ancient or modern. Reiterating
our assertion, however, that through his own
words alone is Shakspere to be in any
way adequately appreciated, adequately expressed,
or adequately understood, we would turn now for
a moment, before closing these remarks, to the
widely contrasting effects of two among the latest,
and, in their very different ways, it is but justice in re-
gard to each of them to say also, two among the ablest
of his French admirers, appreciators, and trans-
lators—M. Francois Victor Hugo and M. le Che-
valier de Chatelain. The former, as already indi-
cated, contents himself with aspiring only to the
exactest accuracy of thought and of expression in
his version of William Shakspere. Aspiring, how-
ever, while so doing, to embrace within the
scope of his vision the whole of the volumi-
nous writings, in every shape and form, of the
Poet-Dramatist and Sonneteer. Of the extra-
ordinary skill already evidenced by the Chevalier
de Chatelain in transforming the blank verse of
Shakspere into the stately and sonorous rhyming
couplet of the French Drama, we have already
spoken through these columns in (as they stll ap-
pear to us) only lieutting terms o 4 commendation

—viz., when commenting upon the Chevalier's
successive and successful versions in French now
of " Macbeth," now of " Hamlet." Following
up those two really surprising adventures of
his with another quite as remarkable in its
way, this most indefatigable of all poetic trans-
lators from English into French, has now given us
a companion version of a tragedy of Shakspere's
much more readily harmonizing with the words, the
fashion, the manner of the rhyming couplet of the
French Drama than either the Scotch tragedy of
Macbeth, or the Danish tragedy of Hamlet--that
grand and classic tragedy, namely, of Julius Caesar,

the scheme of which might (had not such a
notion been confuted absolutely by the original)
have seemed far more suited intrinsically to the
genius of Corneille than to that of Shakspere.
Everything considered, however, we cannot but
eagerly accept each of these two most recent efforts
at the translation of Shakspere into French, for
what it is worth. Doing otherwise, we should be at
once ungracious and ungrateful—in the one instance
to a youthful and adventurous, in the other to a
veteran and most industrious man-of-letters, both
of them sojourning here in exile amongst us.
The former, meaning M. Francois-Victor Hugo,
on one of those Channel Islands, which his
illustrious father's genius is fast rendering
classic ground by the splendour of its later
Manifestations. The latter, meaning, of course,
the Chevalier de Chatelain, in one of our London
suburbs, where he has for years been interpreting
the Poets of :England, the least as well as the
grandest amongst them, to those among his own
lettered countrymen who can only enjoy the luxury of
reading them through the medium of his many
elegant translations. Curiously enough, by-the-%
way, there is a kindred error of judgment evi-
denced, here by M. Francois-Victor Hugo, here, in
his turn, by the Chevalier de Chatelain, in the
issue from the press of these their Shaksperian
Translations. And it is an error of judgment in
each instance so flagrant in its way, as—we cannot
call it by any milder term—a desecration
of the very shrine each of them is bent
upon honouring, that we cannot but protest
against it, in the homage to the memory of Shak-
spere, even, let us say, in the interests at once
of high art and of literature. Upon the very
pediment, as it were, of a monument to Shakspere,
for example, M. Francois-Victor Hugo has (in a
manner, to our thinking, wonderfully out of place)
inscribed the words " A Guiseppe
Prefixed to his translation into French of Shak-
spere's Julius Caesar, the Chevalier de Chatelain,
with a yet more daring violation of
good taste, as it appears to us, has
written a " Dedicace," addressed, we give his own
words, "A Mes Compatriotes Les Francais de
l'An de Disgrace, 1866." One syllable of comment
upon this would, surely, be superfluous. It is the
scrawl of Pasquin's pencil upon the pedestal of a
glorious national and historical monument. We
regret it, in each instance—nay, more, we reprobate
it as an indecorum outraging—nothing less than
outraging—the majesty of the genius and the
memory of Shakspere.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

RUSSIA.

ST. PRTERSBURG, Aug. 6.

Great enthusiasm prevails in reference to the
approaching visit of the American squadron. The
Russian fleet has gone to Helsingfors to meet it.
The principal bankers of this city have subscribed
fifty millions of francs for completing the railway
from Kozlov to Morschansk.

The cholera has considerably diminished.
ST. PETERSBURG, Aug. 7.

The South German States have renewed their
endeavours to obtain the intervention of Russia at
the Court of Berlin, but the Imperial Government
has not hitherto made any engagement to that
effect.

The old Russian party is very active in the
defence of Russian interests in the Danubian Prin-

cipalities.
The Czarewitch will set out at the end of the
week on a visit to Moscow, Novgorod, Kazan, the
Cossack territory, and other parts of Russia.

PRUSSIA. AND SAXONY.

DRESDEN, Aug. 7

The Dresden Journal of to-day says :—" Nothing
is known in well-informed quarters respecting any
intention on the part of Prussia to impose contri-
butions upon Saxon towns as, as alleged by several
German papers."
The same journal announces that special negocia-
tions for peace are about to be opened between
Prussia and Saxony.

HUNGARY.
PESTIT, Aug. 6.
NI. klaatal, a leading member of the Deak party,