The Sun.
London, England, 1850-10-23 00:00:00

THE SUN,

PARIS IN MAUCH, 1850.
(CONTINUED.)
The French seem divided in two classes ; those who
wish to be centralized, and these who wish to be
functionaries. When a deputation came to Napoleon,
his frequent answer was, Vouz serez organises: and
there is a proverbial aspiration, Let me be an officr,
if only of a Mill! (qua je sois officier, d'un
moulin!). You have seen their windmills—it is not
necessary to be Don Quixote to take them for scare-
crows. M. H. de Tranchere said in the Assembly, there
was one functionary to every nine inhabitants. It is
found that a vingtaine or trentaine of little minds are
stronger than one large mind : better have accurate
returns of moral filth, distinguishing that collected by
clerical or military scavengers, than by a single great
truth or touch cf nature induce every man to sweep
before his own door.

Unfortunately the only people who neither wish to
be officers nor officered—the men of principle—the
main spring or molla motrice of France, are—the
Fauxbourgs St. Antoine and Marceau! Poor Tasso
in his curious and candid Paragone dell Italia alla
Francia gives them an indifferent character : Parigini,
uomini oltre a tutu gli altri vilissimi; and the airy
Gascon, Montaigne, says just as much, knowing them
still better. Paris, a city with about half the popu-
lation of London, has more than twenty large
theatres—the ouvreuses de loges do the most effectual
part of the not least valuable police—at these theatres.
" When the Fauxbourgs come down," that is, when
they come down into the streets, in the tempest of
primitive passions, with hunger, eldest and strongest of
the passions, what will the poor ouvreuses de loges
do? About as much as Guizot, that secritaire ambu-

lant, par negotiis neque supra', the ex pedagogue,
more culpable than all the Polignacs, who misguided
the second childhood of the king of shuffiers.
Your Frenchman has no personal interest in order
public, but thinks some one else has. With us every
male becomes a JUROR—on great occasions a special
constable, and when not wanted goes home to " his
sea-coal fire." In France, all who don't wish to be
officers must be officered : you see, besides troops
horse and foot, guards national, guards mobile, gens
d'armes, gens d'armes mobilised, agents of police equiva-
lent to sergents de ville, and a whole hierarchy of secret
agents or mouchards brought up to the art from
their youth. All these messieurs are wasting
their time—all compromising their safety, and with
all this apparel Louis Philippe, after Madame Ade-
laide's death, never knew what was passing in his
own house.

An ingenious writer, or joint stock of writers, under
the names of Stendhal and Bombet, professing to treat
of Handel and Rossini, spoke of " the ten Ministers
of some Italian Court who had not among them so
much business as one French prefect." Many of the
functionaries are attorneys—chaque offaire demande
un homme par ce que chaque homme demande une
place; les papiers se multiplient.
With us, nepotism or Grey ism forms the exception
—a Ministry might be formed without them—here
centralization is the rule—if they had more liberty
they would have more order. They palliate hatred
with a scanty Greek pallium of decency till the
monstrous moral nakedness comes to view. " This
passion for uniformity arose out of arrogance and
impatience—in science it would have stopped re-
search, in religion it produced persecution, in politics
despotism. The flowers of the field mock our hard
words, the trees of the forist deride our classification."
In such a state of things all is negative, personal,
verbal, ephemeral ; success to the lukewarm, the cor-
rupt, the mediocre, who would rather appear in
everything than appear well in anything, who can do
nothing but undo, who would rather do mischief than
do nothing, because they would rather do anything
than not do somebody. Hence the diabolic nouns,
Testi, Gisquet, Praslin, Petit, Sophy Dawes, Par-
mentier, Bresson, Cubiares, Libri, and Guizot captain
of the host—by way of indulgence he " may wear his
rue with a difference."
The chateau at Versailles, as every one knows, is a
tissue of gilding, marbles and paintings, in which
nothing rises to high art and nothing sinks to
mediocrity.
Here is a panorama of triumph, an immense port-
folio of highly-coloured pictures as large as life, in
which the petit caporal appears often, but never too
often. Here must be at least a mile, 1,760 yards, of
magnificent apartments, perfectly free from damp and
dirt, all restored and supplied by Louis Philippe at his
own expense. The construction and preserva-
tion of such a palace as Versailles shows the
prodigious, yet, perhaps, misapplied industry of
the French ; and, as usual, a physical
condition comes in aid of the moral sentiment. Paris
(Lutetia, from lutum) and also Versailles, stand on
quarries containing gypsum, or sulphate of lime.
Of these there are two sorts, one the famous plaster of
Paris, or pierre a plidre, the; other, mallon, very si-
milar, but easily worked, soon hardening, and of the
purest white, so that stones and mortar of the best
kind are found close at hand. In the same manner
Brighton, a small fishing village, by its flint and chalk
has grown into a town of 30,000 inhabitants, as the
Bath stone originated the cities of Bath and Wei's,
with the exquisite tracery of Glastonbury.
The mechanical genius of Frenchmen is familiar to
those semicentenarians who remember the " French
prisoners" at Norman-cross and Yaxley-barracks,
with their naval models cut from mutton bones and
their cannon hammered out of halfpence. Every
bourgeois now has a clock superior to that which be-
longed to poor Mary Antoinette at Versailles, and
they will make you a gtiod watch no bigger than a
shilling. Mirabean had carved a slave-ship with all
its horrid details. Sir Walter Scott says,—" A small
taste for mechanics encourages a trifling sort of
self-conceit, founded on knowing what is not worth
being known by one who has other matters to employ
his mind upon ; In short, forms a trumpery, gimcrack
sort of character." Yet Sir -Walter was not thinking
of the French.
Here, no doubt, that most aristocratic count—
Alfieri, would have sniffed at the miserabile magnifi-
cenza ultramontana : yet Versailles is superior to
England. A little farther north you have Lapland
with still smaller houses and that little all roof. Gold-
smith says perhaps too favourably of the English,
tyrants of his own country which he deserted—
" latent on high designs, a thoughtful band . . .
I see the Lords of human kind pass by,
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye."
But of the French—
' rhe:sports of children satisfy the child."
Prevailing Poet. But, as a critic, not to be trusted
implicitly, for he would have destroyed, at one fell
swoop, all Italy—and all Shakspere !as may be seen
textually in the " Vicar of Wakefield" and the " Tra-
veller." He had:moved in some petty jealous scene,
and, born for the universe, narrowed his mind—the
hero of some bog, he had been at once insulaire and
montagnard. H. C.

COURT or CHANCERY.—There are now two Vice.
Chancellorships vacant—one occasioned by the death of the
late Sir Lancelot Shadvfell, the Vice-Chancellor of England,
in August last, and the other by the recent resignation of the
Vice-Chancellor Wigram, on account of continued indisposi-
tion. It is understood that one Vice-Chancellor only will
be appointed to supply the places of the two judges whose
offices have thus become vacant. It ris expected that the
Master of the Rolls, together with the Vice-Chancellor
Knight Brace, and the Vice-Chancellor who is to be op-
pointed, will be enabled to keep down the business of the
court, even:assuming that the Lord-Chancellor will be ex-
clusively engaged in hearing appeals.— Times.
THE COUNTY COURTS.—A new provision appears
in the Extended County Courts Act relating to actions
against officers of the courts. It is enacted that after the
passing of the Act no action shall be brought against any
high bailiff or person acting under him for anything done in
obedience to any warrant under the hand of the clerk and
seal of the court, until demand hath been made for a perusal
and copy of such warrant, and that the same hath been re-
fused or neglected by the space of six days after such de-
mand. Should any action be brought against the high bailiff
or other person connected with him, without making the
clerk of the court who signed and sealed the warrant a de-
fendant, the jury on the trial shall give a verdict for the de-
fendant, notwithstanding any defect in the warrant. If such
action be brought jointly against a clerk and bailiff or other
person, then on proof of such warrant the jury shall find for
the bailiff ; and if the verdict be given against the clerk the
plaintiff shall recover his costs against him, which costs
shall include the costs the• plaintiff was liable to pay the
other defendant. In an action under this Act the defendant
may plead the general issue, and give the special matter in
evidence on the trial. Hitherto it was sufficient that an
action should be brought against a high bailiff, but now it is
otherwise.
We are enabled to state that since the new Stamp
Act came into operation, on the 10th of this month, the de-
mandgreat as to add to, instead of
diminishing,
ofmthpasahmasoubnetenso
revenue derived from that source,
notwithstanding the great reduction which has taken place
in the tariff of prices. The number of railway transfers alone
has been much greater than any one ever anticipated ; and
it is believed, that ao far from falling off, there will be a
steady increase in the consumption of stamps as the advan-
tages of the new scale of duties begin to be appreciated.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is, we understand, exceed-
ingly gratified with the result of the experiment, so far as it
has gone; and it is believed that should the new scale of
duties continue as productive in the intervening period be-
tween the present time and the close of the financial year,
in the beginning of April, the Bight Hon. Gentleman will be
induced to make other reductions in the amount of particular
taxes which operate injuriously on the industry of the country.
SUICIDE AT THE HOUSE OF DETENTION.—THE
SOLITARY S S ' A T lElll. n inquest was held yesterday after-
noon by H. M. Wakley, Esq., at the House of Detention,
Clerkenwell, on the body of George Baker, aged 15, who
committed suicide by hanging hiniselt in his cell in that
(sr' it
the from,h
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thhainndgkpeerccuhliieafr.
prison on Sunday evening last. lie had been committed
in his conduct, and he had made no complaint of his treat-
ment. Ile had been in prison three times before for picking
pockets. The coroner then addressed the jury, and said that
in this prison and in that at Pentonville the solitary system
was adopted, and it was of great importance to inquire how
far that system had influence on the mind and brain of the
prisoners where it was adopted. During the 18 months he
had the honour of acting as, deputy-coroner, he had held six
inquests on suicides committed in prisons, three of these
being in Pentonville and three in the House of Detention,
in both of which the solitary principle was carried out,
while in the House of Correction and the other prisons not a
single suicide had occurred. After a short consultation the
j4r,y rettirtted A yeretict of Tegapcory iiaaanity."