Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1852-02-07

general tone OF SO much Of their erst but also from
that popularity of il which Frerch critics make their
boast II bears they truly say constant witness to
the national passion for abstS ideas That passion
deed anaes their be oks only but their discourscs
in the Senate in the pull and at the bar 1t takes pos
session of their clubs and of their private society
No asprant after wit wisdom in France make good
his preensions uDiess he knows how to scale the
scendenal peaks Of philosophy To this species OF the
sublime they ready TO sacrifice even the beauti
full The fine mental of Greece where the love OF
beauty national and universal instinct would have
rejected with unuterabe scorn those supersensuous
belishments with which Frenchmen especially in
times rejoice aorn their poetry history and their
rheterc truth such are as cheap and yu
gar as they are unbecomng Any of common intei-
gece may be easily trained any egerdemain the under
sandng-to the making of distractions, for example,
easily the making Of jokes or the making Of
The production of apophhegms is hard task to him,
and to him only who allows himself to utter words
without both definite meaning and profound conyc-
ton of the truth Of what he says The throcs and abors
of long life preceded the birth of each of the sayings for
which as many the sages Of Greece have been mmor
taxed But the writer of the newspaper which lies
your breakfast table Paris is without his pearls
of superaye wisdom scatter his account of
derdays review opera.
.sWhence then comes this national habit of quitting
the solid earth for the hazy cloudsl II is nothing else
than the love of that provisional doubt In which these
aeronauts find their pleasure and their glory BY the aid
of these meaphys juggleres of Words they submate
darken and dissolve all doctrines without the
press and formal contradiction of any They live In
gon of half meanings Of no meaningin state of
tented though perhaps unconscious skeptcsm Welded
political opinions, but daying with ALL they pass
in few brief years. through all the phases in which po
tca society has exhibited itself among men though
lacking *pure ideas with which to polish periods
and 10 daren counsel about EACH The France Of the
last sixty years has indeed been state Of chronic and
unnatural distortion. But her intellectual habits were
not and could not have been essentially different when
the hill and gardens of Ste Geneveve trenged with
the disciples Of Abeard when the booksellers shops
beseged by purchasers of the Garganua, when
the ladies of Versailles writing Cartesan letters
The enthusiastic popularity of their skepcal teachers has
from age to age been at thee and cause of that
of the national mind of which may read the
suits in every page of their national history That hsto
ry every where depicts people gallant gay ingenious
versatile and ardent beyond all rivalry and all examples but
it also sets before destitute than other Of
profound and mmuable conyctions and therefore less
capable than any other Of steady progress in the great
practical science Of constitutional governments people
who time the sport of any demagogue who
veil his selfish ambition under the of pure ides
and ut another time the victims of any despot who may
strong enough to trampe both the biologists and their
verbal science under his feet
Our readers will perceive that the truthfuness of tits
deineation is in respect weakened by recent political
events in France while the late usurpaton of the Rex
President has given and added disnctness to tie
last touch in the picture thus presented