The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-24


which the effort is expected, are left palpi-
tating, but without sufficient life of their
own. This condition is owing to the stupen-
dous Capitalization which the revolution cre-
ated, the first empire developed, and all sub
sequent reigns strengthened, and which,
radically transforming the organism
of the nation, has finally almost
entirely drained the provinces of brains, i'm
pulse, and self f-directing power. ALI autho-
rity-military. judicial, or administrative
all political or intellectual leadership-all
higher talent, in whatever branch of mental
activity-has been turned into that one grand
reservoir, Paris. All French men of emil
nence in the ruling spheres of national life
are Parisians by education or in consequence
of their public career The country is accus-
toned to receive from that all-directing
centre its administration, it's guidance, its
convictions, its intelligence, its impulses,
its very hfe-blood. All this, again, was vastly
different at the time when revolutionary
France was invaded and menaced. There we're
life, independent vitality, and animationin all
herlimbs, and the common focus, Paris, served
to unite and regulate the national forces
without anywhere exhausting them. Nay,
Paris at that time received its inspiration, its
greatest intelligence, its violent impulses in
main part from the country, which teemed
with talent and passion. The first armed re-
sstance to the absolutism of Louis XVI came
from Dauphine and Bretagne. Provence sent
to Paris the most powerful orator of the time,
Mirabeau, and the almost equally eloquent
Girondists, Isnard and Barbaroux. Verg-
MAUD, Guadet, and Gensonne, the fore
most leaders of the Girondist party, came
from the department from which
it derived its name their able and noble
hearted associate, Lanjuinais, from Rennes
Buzot, from Evreux; Petion, from Chartres
Roland, from Lyons. Bretons formed the
club out of which that of the Jacobins was
developed, and the most terrible of terror
lists, Barere, Merlin de Thionville, Billaud-
Varennes, Fabre dEglantine, and Robes
pierre himself, with his two nearest asso-
ciates, st. Just and Couthon, were provin-
cials, as we're also the most conspicuous clerical
observation-disclosures widely different in cha
racter-the Able Gregoire, Bishop Talley-
raud, and the Capucin Chabot. Nine. Ro-
land and Charlotte Corday came from the
provinces, and SO also "the organizer of
victory" Carnot, and its great promoter, the
'Marseillaise." For such abilities and pas
sions it is vain to look to the country districts
of the France of to-day, while Paris is iso-
lated, paralyzed, and perhaps on the eve of a
surrender. Patriotic endurance, blunders on
the part of Prussia, and the Intervention of
disease or of foreign powers, may still restore
France in her integrity; but salvation through
repetition of 'the miracle of 1892" seems
to us as little possible as salvation through
the appearance of another Joan dare.
FORSYTH ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
From the A. Y. Tribune.
There are few things which are easier to
write about and more difficult to comprehend
than French politics. There are not great
many in this or any other country competent
to thread this maze of promise and failure, of
paradox and catastrophe, ofhope and despair;
but one of these select persons is undoubt-
edly Mr.. John Forsyth, who is the editor of
| the Mobile Register, a column of whose OBJ
| servations upon "France" is now before us.
Mr.. Forsyth is man who, during the actual
Rebellion, was not specially in the public
eye; nor did we ever hear of his killing and
eating anybody during those truculent and
hungry times. But now that Secession can
relieve its mind upon a peace basis, there is
not more savage Secessionist in all the
| South than editor Forsyth, nor
any newspaper man whose ink is more
like blood, or whose pen is more
like sword. This evidently is one of those
gentlemen who are heroes in the abstract,
and do marvellous execution by cannonade
of the Kings English. Thus Mr.. Forsyth
speaks with exquisite felicity of 'condensing
the essence of events into what Schlegel first
had the happy thought of naming The Phi
losophy of History" "Condensing" an
|
extraordinary power; but this is the first time
we ever heard that Schlegel was the first to
speak of ''The Philosophy of History.
Bolingbroke long before Schlegel spoke of
history as PHILOSOPHY teaching by example,
but then his Lordship could never have re-
ferred to history as illustrated by such O
writer as MIR. John Forsyth poor gentle
man who is as feeble in thought as he is flabby
in expression. "The present abject 'condi-
ton of France has filled the bosom of Mr..
John with profound sorrow.'" He informs
us (now the reader is about to be treated to a
bit of his style) that the ''second Emperor of
France has been led to the rock of destruction
on which the first had been wrecked" and
moreover that 'the wind of revolution has
hurled him back within its destroying vor-
tex"-which we call remarkably good writing
of the kind, j. g., of the fiercely fiabby kind.
The Philosopher of Mobile, we must confess,
is not so calm as might be desirable-we might,
indeed, consider him to be in a passion when
he tells us Qn speaking of respectable old
man, well known to the world as Nj. Victor
Hugo, that he 'has risen, like all rotten
waits, on stormy waters; embittered by exile
and soured by age, he demands once more the
realization of his monstrous dreams ei
license, which he impudently calls liberty.
This is the way in which gentleman write!
who assured us, in the beginning of hi
essay, that he was about to treat US to full
draughts of the very purest philosophy
We must say that it is disappointment
Nor does it seem to us when Mr. Forsyth
calls the French Republicans fvultures,
and the Prussians ''the descendants of the
barbarians whom Attila led to the sack o
Rome" that he says anything decisive O
the result of the war. 1t is wrong, O
course, for these Prussians to Thunder a
J | the Gate 0f fha Qanifal of arts anianaa and "a