The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-26 00:00:00

AY MARKETS.

SMITHFIELD.•—Meadow hay, £2 Os to £slos Od ; clover
do., £3103 to £5 15s ; and straw, £1 lOs to £llBl per load.
A dull trade.
CumBERLAND.— Meadow hay, £2 Os to £5 lOs ;
clover, £3 lOs to £ss 15s Od ; and straw, £1 101 to £2 Os
per load. A slow inquiry.
WHITECRIPEL..— Meadow hay, £2 Os to £6 10s Od ;
Cloves, £3 10s to £6 Os Od ; and straw, £1 lOs to £1 18
per load. A steady demand.

COURSE OF EXCHANGE.—YESTERIPAY.
Amsterdam
Ditto
Rotterdam — 11 181 11 19
Antwerp
Brussels — 25 45 25 50
Hamturgh
Paris
Ditto
Nlarseilles — 25 60 25 62/
Frankfort on Maine — 118 1181
Vienna
Trieste - 15 70 15 80
Petersburgh —31 a
Berlin —
Madrid
Cadiz — 484- 49
Leghorn — 25 90 26 95
Milan — 25 721 25 821
Genoa — 25 721 25 80
Naples
Palermo — 1171 118
Messina — 118 1181
Lisbon
Oporto
Rio Janeiro
New York — .. ••
Foreign Gold in Bars (Standard).... per oz. £3 17 9
Mexican Dollars
Silver in Bars (Standard) lf 0 5 11
South American Doublons

LACORDALRE AND GUIZOT.

We extract the following from a letter dated
Paris, Friday evening :

The reception of the eloquent Dominican monk, Father
Lacordaire, at the Academie Francaise, which I briefly
allud ;,. to in my last night's letter, merits a more ample
notice. As a literary event it has had no parallel for many
years. Ever since the establishment in France of a despotism
which, whilst it created liberty trampled upon public elo-
quence and placed literature under the ban, the reception
of candidates at the Academie Francaise has acquired a
certain degree of political importance. Cautious and guarded
as academical speeches traditionally are, the public has ever
shown intense eagerness to hear and read the eloquent ad-
dresses, whose tributes to liberty, eloquence, and moral
courage have ever been rightly interpreted as a protest
against the tyranny of the regime du silence, as
a condemnation of the moral torpitude of the
sycophants and renegades by whom it is supported.
But for the last 10 years circumstances have never
invested a reception at the Academie with the peculiar sig-
nificance attached to that of Father Lacordaire—a Domi-
nican monk, celebrated not less by his ardent faith and his
matchless elequence, than by his equally boundless attach.
ment to liberty, summoned to the seat vacated by the tleath
of De Tocqueville, the champion and historian of Demo-
cracy, at a time when despotism and liberty combined are
dealing the death-blow to the institution of the Papacy 1
Such a man, too, a fervent and yet a liberal Catholic, to be
welcomed to the only society where the voice of liberty is
still permitted to be raised, in subdued tones and at distant
intervals, by the representative of Protestantism, by the
champion of parliamentary government, by the fallen minis-
ter of a fallen dynasty, of a constitutional king! Such a com-
bination of circumstances never yet occurred ; and maynever
again take place. You may, therefore, easily conceive the
eagerness with which this day's ceremony was antici-
pated ; but you cannot so readily form an idea of the
anxiety evinced to be present and hear the speeches from
two such great masters in the art of speaking from their
own lips, instead of waiting until next day's paper. The
. _ _

all of the institute where the sitting took place holds 1,500
persons; there were not less than 10,000 demands for
tickets. As it was the place was crammed to suffocation,
and the very space railed off for " lea guarante iminortels"
was trespassed upon by some ambitious crinolines. A
great many ladies attended. I mentioned yesterday that
the Empress honoured the ceremony with her presence ;
doubtless as a mark of respect for the Church. The strange
coincidence of its falling to the lot of M. Guizot, as director
for the year, to hand her Majesty to her seat was much
commented on ; it was, at all events, one additional pecu-

liarity of this extraordinary seance.
Father Laeordaire wore, as is wont, his white monastic
costume.

Those who were not so fortunate as to hear the two
great orators generally give the preference to the speech of
Lacordaire. The Empress staid until the sitting was over,
and, I am informed, sent for Lacordaire and complimented
him on his eloquent address.
Another letter says :

" The reception of the Abbe Lacordaire at the Academy
to-day is the all-dominating topic of interest. The
Academy is itself composed of most distinguished indivi-
duals, who are not indisposed to mingle politics with lite-
rature. The Academy, as a rule, is an Opposition body.
Being supposed to be always in advance of the age, it has
counted amongst its illustrious forty, the strongest oppo-
nents of the-Bourbons and of the Orleanists, as it does now
.of the empire; only that the anti-Imperialists happen to
be made up of ex-anti-Bourbonists and ex-tenti-Orleanists,
fancying that they are still going ahead, while in reality
they are falling back. To give more piquancy to the pre-
sent occasion, it is the Protestant Guizot who is to re-
ceive with the customary eulogies the Dominican Friar
Lacordaire, prohibited even for one day from wearing
the costume of the Academician. The Abbe Lacordaire
wears the same white robe which adorned his handsome
person the day he took his seat in the Constituent Assembly,
beside the Abbe de Lamennais, amongst the Montagnards.
The political misery which makes such a strange pair of
bedfellows counts, no doubt, amongst the attractions which
set the Faubourg St. Germain in a struggle for tickets nine
months ago. No newspaper correspondent is at the Aca-
demy to .day, unless in the disguise of a duchess in gala
costume. Money would certainly not purchase a single
ticket, whatever lose might do. We must, therefore, won-
der, with the simple public, What will the Protestant say
to the Priest ? How will the impassioned Savanarola of
the days of 1848 deal with the " shy profundity" (the ex-
pression is De Quincy's) of his predecessor, De Tocqueville ?
More consistent in speculation than in action, the profound
writer upon Democracy had something to do during his
timid and vacillating administration of Foreign Affairs
under the Republic, with sending French Republican troops
to put down the Roman Republic. Is this the bright spot
the Lominicans will celebrate in a duet with another ex-
Foreign Minister, who abjures spiritual sticks by political
Pontificates ? Tocqueville treated Democracy as an advan-
cing flood, which no Canute could turn back; and he wisely
counselled society, in its own interest, to purify and prepare
the future ruling power by education, without stint or limit.
How M. Guizot would deal with the Democracy, and how
Father Lacordaire would educate it, will, we hope, be told
to the world to-morrow.