The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-13 00:00:00

JANUARY 13, 1868.

Emperor's desire he resigned his post in order to
take his seat in the Upper House. The Count
enjoys high reputation as an excellent landlord
and agriculturist. He has introduced model farms
and improvements into his native district, and
administers his enormous landed property with
great ability.

Professor Edward Herbst, the new Minister of
Justice, is just forty-seven years of age. He studied
at the Vienna University, took his doctor's degree,
then became Professor of Legal Philosophy at
Lemberg in 1847, and was transferred to Prague,
in a similar capacity, in 1858. His entry into poli-
tical life began in 1861 at the Bohemian Diet, where
he was associated with Bring and Hasner in the
leadership of the German party. Herbst is not
only the hardest worker, but also the cleverest
dialectician at the Reichsrath and the Diet. No
one is equal to him in readiness of repartee, yet
his quiet and self-command often drive his oppo-
nents to despair. His experience and knowledge
of Austrian finance have been acquired in the
Reichsrath, and it is not to be denied that he is
among the severest critics of this department.
His achievements, however, in the field of juris-
prudence are still more extensive, and his advent
to the Ministry of Justice is generally approved.
Dr. Rudolf Brestel, who has had the courage to
undertake the most difficult post among all the
Ministries—that, namely, of finance—was born at
Vienna, in 1816. His chief studies in youth were
philosophy and mathematics. From 1844 to 1848
he filled the office of Assistant Professor of
Elementary Mathematics at the Vienna Univer-
sity, and became member of the Austrian Reich-
srath in 1848. He entered subsequently into
journalism, and has held the post of secretary at
the Credit Institution for Trade and , Commerce
since 1856. In 1861 he was elected to the Lower
Austrian Diet, and thence passed into the Reichs-
rath. He is known as a ready speaker, and a firm
adherent of the Constitutional party.
Dr. Berger, the Minister without portfolio, was
born in Moravia in 1816. Losing his parents early
in life, he had to encounter hardships while going
through the Gymnasium at Olmutz, but entered
with great zeal upon the study of mathematics
while attending lectures on philosophy. In 1834
he went to Vienna, where he studied law, but
still indulged his liking for mathematics by attend-
ing Littrow's astronomical lectures. Subse-
quently he devoted himself entirely to the study
of law, and took his degree as Doctor in 1841.
Several articles from his pen appearing about this
time in legal periodicals brought him into notice,
and in 1844 he was appointed assistant teacher of
natural and criminal law at the Theresian Rit-
terakademie. In 1848 he published "Press Freedom
and Press Law," and the same year was elected a
member of the National German Parliament by a
Moravian constituency. Frankfort gave him
opportunities of displaying his striking talent as a
public speaker, his speech against the proposed
offer of the dignity of German Emperor to the
King of Prussia arousing great sensation.
Returning to Vienna, Dr. Berger obtained the
appointment of advocate in that capital, acquired
a large practice, and was especially distinguished
in defence. Since that time he has published
several legal works.

PARIS UNDER THE SECOND EMPIRE
AND SOCIETY IN ENGLAND.

The Paris of the Second Empire is still the Paris
of the Revolution. In its morality, in its tone of
mind, in its popular literature it still belongs to
the darker epoch. The politic conversion of Na-
poleon, his obedience to the will of the nation in
regard to Rome must not be rated too high; at
all events it is not the conversion of that cynical,
self-indulgent society of Paris which thrives under
the shadow of the Second Empire. Paris is still
the city of contradictions and of startling contrasts.
Side by side with its fashionable society, so offen-
sive in its tastes and by its ill-disguised immora-
lities, live sedate and sober men and women of
the highest rank devoted to religion, and not more
conspicuous by their simple lives than by their sted-
fast adherence to principle. Writers of the highest
eminence, philosophers and politicians, unswayed
by the favour of Courts, stand aloof in numbers
from the corruption' and venality which surround
them, and which stand in perpetual fear of their
just influence on the country at large.
By the side of a press which, year by year, pours
out a flood of corruption, inundating with its
poisonous, anti-social, and anti-Christian princi-
ples not Paris only, but the provinces and the
lands which are tributary to France I for their
mental aliment, there is another press at work,
earnestly and successfully engaged in restoring to
the nation and to the nineteenth century the lost
heritage of knowledge in things human and divine.
Nowhere is Christian charity more self-denying,
Christian faith more transparent and energetic in
action ; nowhere are the influences of religion
more pervading in every relation of life over the
hearts and minds of numberless men and women,
especially in the higher grades of society, than in
the city where vice is a fashion and cynical in-
fidelity an open profession. In Paris there are
two cities—the city of light and the city of dark-
ness ; and the best proof of the progress of reli-
gion in the land so long lost to Voltairianism, is
the bitter struggle which is going on between the
two for mastery. Evil is being exorcised, and,
in its fury at being put upon its defence, waxes
not only wroth and insolent, but seeks a refuge by
endeavouring to plunge society into a mad vortex
of dissipation. The Second Empire hates extremes.
It sees in the triumph of the good the end of its
own reign of intellectual stagnation and moral
depravity ; but it fears still more the success of the
chained Revolution, for evil once more let loose
on the streets of Paris would be beyond the power
of a Louis Napoleon to control. Hence the policy
of the Second Empire is " bread and the games."
It detests nothing so much as earnestness ; the
mooting of serious questions troubles it like a
bad dream.

This desire to avoil at all hazards serious
questions which might rouse the energies of France
—for happily France is not Paris, whatever Paris
may say to the contrary—lies at the bottom of
the policy of the Second Empire. It is in the
interest of this policy to drown, if possible, the
voice of conscience and quench the light of reason.
What means better adapted to such an end than
the enervating fascinations and the luxurious pro-
fligacy of such a city as Paris, and of such a
society as it alone is able to bring:together, aided
by the encouragement and example of a dissipated
and extravagant court ! It is already become too
trite to remark on the manners of the ruling
favourites of fashionable society in Paris. Any-
thing more unbecoming can scarcely be imagined
than the rivalry before the public eye of painted
vice and the not less bepainted leaders of society.
The great world is becoming a stage, to which
the populace of Paris are admitted as spectators.
They cheer and hiss, they stare at and mob, they
publish criticisms in the newspapers of the beau-
ties, of the arts and wiles, of the dress and bearing
of these actresses of fashionable society. The
manners, as well as the license of speech of the
green-room, are invading the Parisian salons. The
privacy of life is destroyed as well as the sanctity
of home, and woman, to say the least, loses what
Schiller describes as her greatest ornament—
womanliness :

Des Weibes grosste Zierde ist die Weiblichkeit

The manners and tone of society under the
Second Empire, combined with other causes, have
not been without their influence upon England.
London is not so far removed from Paris as it was
twenty years ago. Twenty years ago French
scepticism and social " fastness" were both shunned
as un-English. No paper, for instance, of the clia,
racter of the Pall Mall Gazette, without at least
eliciting a storm of indignation, could have quietly,
as it did the other day in a review of the year, put
the question as a matter for consideration " whe-
ther any form of Christian faith be true." Such
open avowals of unbelief, which pass unchal-
lenged, are not uncommon now-a-days in what is
called the intellectual press. Statements of the
kind wnuld never be made in so uncalled-for a
manner unless public writers were conscious that

their scepticism was very generally shared by their
readers. Synonymous, whether consequent or not,
with this growth in the cultivated classes of un-
belief, a laxity in manners somewhat akin to that
of the Parisian Court is creeping over English
society. The cynical discussion as to the " disuse
of marriage," the flippant homilies on women in
the Satin day Review, besides other instances
which we forbear to discuss, are symptoms, if proof
were wanting, that the old decencies and respec-
tabilities of English life are on the wane. It is
impossible to look forward without misgiving to
the breaking up of the hold which Protestantism,
as a system of religion, had on the English mind.
The lapse from Protestantism into unbelief, though
longer delayed in England than in Protestant
Germany, is but too likely to lead to- a greater
social deterioration than is now to be found in
France, for the decencies of English life are no
substitute for the active defence of morality, and
the reinvigorating power which the Church in
France has always been able to bring to bear, even
in the worst of times, on French society. More-
over, there is this difference between France and
England at the present day : that the highest in-
tellectual activity of France—we are not speaking
of the lower literature— is rising from the slough
of infidelity to the knowledge of Christian truth ;
whereas, in England, the tendency in the intel-
lectual classes is towards rationalism. Protes.
tantism once dead can never revive ; there is,
therefore, no reinvigorating power at present with
sufficient means at its disposal to act upon English
society in such a manner as the Church in France
did when France fell a victim to Voltairianism.
Though, in England, it is to be hoped that un-
belief will not come with such overwhelming force ;
yet, as the means of protection and of restoration
are less than in France, the danger of such an evil
inflicting permanent injury is greater. What form
the threatened religious and social Revolution, if
it be not, as we trust it may, altogetheg, averted,
what gradations it will follow, it is not easy to
forecast. Old habits of mind, social traditions,
reverence for the past, the soberness of the national
character, are opposed to violent changes, and to
public exhibitions of irreligion or of immorality ;
but, in spite of these excellent qualities, indica-
tions are not wanting that the sanctities of domestic
life are being held in lower esteem, and that the
tone of English society is degenerating to that of
Paris under the Second Empire.— Westminster
Gazette.