The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-19 00:00:00

FRANCE.

A letter from Paris says :—At last the question
which has considerably agitated some parts of the
press seems settled. The King of Prussia is to come
to France in the beginning of October, and the inter-
view is to take place at Compiegne. If one is to be-
lieve rumour, all kinds of questions are to be consi-
dered; and there is even a talk of a preparatory
journey by the Prussian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
There is to be a serious talk about Denmark and
Schleswig and Holstein, about eventualities which
might lead to a Scandinavian kingdom, a word about
the Polish question, and more than one about the
kingdom of Italy; in fact, about everything in
general, and some others more in particular.
All those on edits are only so far of some import-
ance for the present as they show a tendency to
turn people's eyes to that side which has hitherto
not attracted much attention.
All those meetings of associations and " Vereins"
all over Germany, under different names and with
different objects, show more or less that the frantic
disease of nationality which makes such progress in
Europe has not spared the sober Germans either ;
and although the form is mild, and the German con-
stitution is not very favourable to it, there are unde-
niable preliminary symptoms, which have by no
means escaped the attention of their neighbours on
the left bank of the Rhine. The assiduity with
which these symptoms were chronicled would
be alone sufficient to show this,—the pa-
triotic example of the Duke of Coburg,
in placing his army under Prussia; the
suspicion that Baden, and perhaps others, might
be inclined to follow; rumours of the great impend-
ing changes in the internal government of Prussia,
extension of suffrage for the elections, and freer
movements of the municipalities, with the intention of
rivalling the much-talked-of Liberalism of Austria ;
the subscriptions for a national fleet ; and, lastly,
the prominence given in the late concentration to
the 7th Corps d'Armge, composed of men from
Rhenish Prussia and Westphalia, together with the
dinner by the King, and his allocutions.
With the exception of the subscriptions for the
national fleet, which rouses now and then a slight
sneer on German national liberality, these symp-
toms are recorded without much comment; never-
theless, the impression is that they are the precursors
of a new spirit, which ought not to pass unob-
served. This had probably a good deal more to do
with the importance attributed to the journey of
the King than any positive information on the
object of the journey.
Every one knows that France is the land of
fashion, and what a wonderfully capricious deity
Fashion is. No contradiction is too strong for her,
—she does not care for it, strong in the feminine
argument, " I will." Ultramontanism is now the
fashion among the upper ten thousand, and those
who would like to be thought some of them. This is
natural enough, as a line of distinction, which is diffi-
cult enough to find in this land of egalite. But what
seems rather unnatural is that while they cry down
on one hand Italians and all others who are eager
to establish their nationality, they have been al

along the most ardent partisans of Poland, likewise
in search of her nationality. All others are demo-
cratic and revolutionary, this latter alone is sub-

This double thesis, sufficiently absurd in itself,
becomes doubly so by the manner in which it is
upheld by the clerical papers.
M. de Montalembert, who has lately been in

Hungary and Poland, takes up the cause of Poland

in one of the last numbers of the Correspondent,
and the article has been reprinted under the title,
"A Nation in Mourning."
Certainly M. de Montalembert has the talent of

turning into gold whatever he touches. His own
strong convictions and fiery imagination throw un-
consciously the halo of poetry over the most prosaic
subject ;—how much more over one which must com-
mand universal sympathy ! It would have been
difficult to present the cause of Poland in a brighter
light and plead it more eloquently ; it is only a
pity that he does not keep more in the back-
ground the too palpable motives of his enthusiasm,
so that in the end one has to ask oneself—ls he
pleading for Catholicism or Poland ? And this
doubt, if it can be called so, spoils considerably the
effect of the whole, so that it looks now and then
like a poetical religious theory, upplying not unfrc-
quently the bed of Procrustes to historical facts in
order to make them fit in.

A short resume may not be uninteresting to your

readers.

The article begins with a retrospect on " lost illu-