Mrs. Baggs, Mr. Agneau is very severe upon so- | But remember it is not for you to echo that. It is ciety." your want of Christian charity for the good actions of others that the poet bewails. We consider him judged by that informant. At least, if it be only a fashion, is it not a good fashion? Suppose that it was the fashion to have all our rooms well ventilated. Mrs. Renfermé would then have her house built in that fashion, and so prolong her life and that of her family. Would it not be a good result? Is it better that Mrs. Renfermé should have a close, hot house, because that would show that she was not subject to fashion? Quite the contrary. If we can have so potent an ally as Fashion, what cause can afford to part with it? and when Fashion is well-directed, why should we undertake to sniff and destroy what good it may be doing? Dear young Agneau, there is not such an excess of unadulterated goodness, sympathy, and beneficence in this world that we can dispense with all that has the suspicion of taint. You are very forward and eloquent in satirizing fashionable charity; will you have the kindness to point out your own charities, fashionable or unfashionable? And, in default of finding them, may it not be worth your while to consider whether Mrs. Baggs, who gives six hours a week to the ragged children, is not doing more for the palliation and prevention of suffering, and consequently of sin, than you who curiously spy her motives, and laugh at the unusual spectacle of Mrs. Baggs in a charity school? Agneau has one more gun, which we will let him discharge. The young Agneau always forces us into this half-sermonic style. It is so easy for people to inquire, when they are asked to subscribe their sympathy or their money to some cause-whether Mrs. Jellyby is interested in the movevent? It is a witty way of saying no. John Baggs on the other hand, always says, "Well, I don't know about this particular thing, but, my dear Polyhymnia, I know that you will do some good with this money, and I know that there is a great deal of good to be done with money in the world. Take it !" Agneau sniffs, and says that it goes to impostors, and that a man has no right to waste his money; and Agneau gives eight hundred dollars for a twothirty-five trotter. Now if he really believes that the money goes to impostors, let him look into the matter, and see that it goes right. But if he only puts his hands into his breeches pockets, and says so without stirring a step to see, then Mr. Agneau merely makes his willful ignorance an excuse for his intentional avarice. IN these days of universal subscription for every possible object, we have heard a good deal of talk around our Easy Chair about the Egyptian Museum of Dr. Abbott, of which we have before spoken. It was early felt by many gentlemen and scholars most conversant with the subject, that the opportunity of securing to this country and to this city so unique He says that the condition of fashionable girls is and valuable a collection ought not to be lost. It peculiar. Like all other women, their natural con- was clear enough that the enterprise would be diffidition is marriage; but the claims of society are so cult. But the facts were these: During a residence exaggerated and artificial, that now, instead of mar- of more than twenty years in Egypt, whither he riage being a mutual help to the man and woman, foriginally went to serve as a physician in the army it has become a luxury in which only rich men can of Mehemet Ali during the Syrian war, Dr. Abbott indulge: consequently, as the number of men who spared no time or care in the accumulation of a mucan support luxuries is limited, there must be many seum of Egyptian antiquities, which it is impossible girls who are not married, and are yet so educated to collect under other circumstances than those of that every avenue of action is closed to them. They constant residence and close attention. It soon perish of ennui, and plunge with ardor into any became known to the dragomans and explorers of the thing that promises to distract and amuse them. ruins that this Frank was interested in every new Thus their charity is no evidence of real sympathy discovery, and that he would give the best price; with suffering, nor of a genuine humanity, but only for the best things. Consequently every thing came of a despairing ennui which snatches at any straw to him. He was receiver-general of the recovered of dissipation. "They are violently charitable," treasures of Pharaonic times, and his collection, says Agneau; they sew and cut garments, they annually increasing, became gradually one of the teach in schools, they carry soup and soap to poor sights and "lions" of Cairo. It is within a halfhouses, precisely as they dance violently and flirt. dozen years that he made one of the most interestThey have missed their destiny, and any thing they ing additions possible to any collection of the antican contrive to do is a pis-aller, a make-shift, a re-quities of any country. This was the ring of source against ennui." Amen; and then what? Are not the hungry fed and the naked clothed? Shall these offices be deferred because the hand that feeds and clothes is somewhat moved by personal and individual considerations? Is there nothing in such acts to benefit the doer? Even if undertaken to distract the mind from too intent a self-consciousness, may it not result in giving it that peace which it could not supply to itself? Charity is twice blessed, you know; it blesses the giver as well as the receiver. Besides, Agneau, before you condemn a charity whose good results you do not emulate, should you not at least be a little charitable to motives? It is a kind of charity that will not increase your pecuniary outlay, but it will greatly benefit your char acter. "Ah! for the rarity Cheops, who built the great pyramid which bears his name. It is a signet-ring, with the cartouche corresponding to the narrow coat of arms. Miss Martineau, in her thoughtful book of Eastern travel, says that the loss of this ring from some English collection would be "a national loss." All the other modern travelers in Egypt, as well as the most eminent of Egyptian scholars, unite in testifying to the great value of the museum. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who has achieved a just and large reputation by the work embodying the results of his profound Egyptian study and investigation, is especially warm in his praises, and had already offered a large sum to Dr. Abbott, on behalf of an English nobleman of the highest rank, for the purchase of the collection. But it was already shipped for America, and the Doctor determined to trust to the interest of the youngest nation in these invaluable relics of the eldest. He has undoubtedly been disappointed. America . cares as little for Egypt as Egypt thought of Amer- | however much the New Yorker may sniff at the unica. The filial sentiment is unknown to us. We happy workmen of other countries. We are not are so busy in improving what the Past has be- praising them beyond the fact. We know how often queathed to us, that we forget we owe it any thing. the opulent Library and the beautiful Gallery seem In our eagerness--and, it is true enough, our neces-melancholy mockeries of pinching poverty and grindsary eagerness to get money, we lose every thing ing toil. But if under such political organizations else. We get money, but we do not get comfort, such actual intellectual chances may exist, may nor ease, nor civilization. Several friends of Dr. they not also exist among us? Is there any secret Abbott, however, and many gentlemen of influence affinity between despotism and knowledge? You and means, interested more or less in the collection say, with intrepid ardor and great contempt, "Quite itself, and particularly interested in the fair fame of the reverse." Will you then explain how it is that the city, resolved that an effort should be made to this country is so slow to recognize the necessity of call public attention to the matter, and to secure the teaching people something more than reading and sum necessary to purchase and retain the collection. writing and ciphering? Those branches ought to Peter Cooper, Esq., whose name we record with be as natural and common as breathing, and never pleasure as one of the men whose use of money referred to except as matters of course. shows how truly he estimates its relative importance We New Yorkers have a complacent way of to other and higher possessions, and whose career smiling at Boston and other cities, and patronizingly so well confirms the truth that Lorenzo de Medici hinting that they are "provincial." But does a city was the Magnificent, not because he was rich, but cease to be provincial because it is large? New because he knew the use of riches, generously offer- York is, after all, nothing but a great trading port. ed an apartment in the new Institute now erecting It is a commercial city. What is the difference beunder his auspices in Astor Place, for the perma- tween New York and Boston, for instance? It is nent accommodation of the collection. A general size only. It is melancholy, if you choose, but it is subscription has been organized, a public meeting equally true, that in the great essentials of a metrophas been held, at which eminent men, both clergy- olis Boston is, if not superior, certainly not infemen and others, spoke warmly in favor of the pro-rior to this great and glorious counting-house called ject, and there is every reason to suppose that the necessary amount will be secured. New York. When a flourishing and opulent city so far scorns universal interests, and is so destitute of true pride that it can not see how often the best investment is that which produces no net pecuniary result, it may well claim to be a sharp, shrewd trader, but it shows nothing of the man. The amount required is only about fifty or sixty thousand dollars-the object is the purchase of an unequaled collection, illustrating, in a hundred ways, Scriptural times and religious history-a collection which would be the nucleus of a generous This opportunity, once lost, can never return. and extensive historical, scientific, and artistic Collections of antiquities are not to be imported at museum, which would give New York an elevated will, nor can any commission be sent out at any rank as a real and not a pretended and assumed moment to recover what is now offered. Think, too, metropolis among the great cities of the world. It how the Englishman who knows that Lombardis for precisely such purposes as this-for the con- street is not the true glory of London, and the Frenchcentration in one city of all possible sources of in- man who knows that the Bourse is not Paris, will formation and reference in all possible departments smile with secret scorn at the city which proposes of human study-that money is worth getting. With- to represent America, and, therefore, to encourage out this conviction and without this principle we and in every way support the human race and hulabor in vain to build a great city. It can not be man hope and improvement, and yet which treats done. A million houses and five millions of people with insolent and ignorant contempt the opportu do not make a metropolis. Athens was a small city.nity of achieving a permanently illustrious result for New York, if it had fifty times as many inhabitants as now, and stretched its stately ranges of tumbledown buildings for twenty miles along the Hudson, would be as far from a real metropolis as it is at this moment, when, if it should by any chance be ruined, the only remains of the slightest interest to the next age would be the Astor Library, and some of the humane and charitable institutions. For what is a metropolis? It is the head of the State, the fountain of learning, art, and intellectual influence. It is the brain of the country; the point to which its scholars, artisans, artists, of whatever kind, throng to consult the wisdom of experience and the inspiration of the moment. It is in the State what a Crystal Palace is among the workshops of industry. Athens, Rome, the truly great cities of antiquity, were great by reason of results to which wealth was only subsidiary. Had they been marts only, and not temples-had their people served Plutus only, and not Apollo and all the Muses, they would have shriveled out of history like Carthage. And what to-day makes London, Paris, Rome, and Vienna, each a metropolis? It is precisely the same thing. It is the devotion of money to humane and permanent purposes-to the endowing of libraries, galleries, and institutions of every kind, for the intellectual benefit of the population. This is true, its own character and fame. We take pleasure in saying this to the eager men who pause a moment upon their way to Wall-street, and lean over our Easy Chair, and talk about the great metropolis of America. JUST as our last Number was published, and we were resuming our seat for a fresh monthly observation of the world and its ways, one of the frightful fires occurred to which we have already alluded, and which are the blight and bane of New York. Why it should be so is only too clear. We pay heavy penalties for our freedom. The liberty of building colossal card-houses is one of them: and the consequent fearful destruction of life and property is another. We have no expectation of any improvement in the matter. In a country utterly devoted to money-making at any price, the controlling principle will always be, Devil-take-the-hindmost; every man will shrug his shoulders, and insist that it is none of his business-until-? Until his father, brother, or son is brought home crushed, mangled, and dead, and the happiness of his household is shattered forever. In a republic, individual responsi bility for the common weal is a duty, and it can not be escaped. In Paris a man says justly, "Oh! the government will see that Monsieur Voisin builds his house securely;" and all Paris knows that it stands as firmly as a city needs to stand, and consequently people live in the sixth and seventh stories with a consciousness of safety as great as the dwellers upon the first floor: consequently millions and billions of francs are not lost in conflagration or insurance every year; and consequently we do not shudder and sicken over the record of twenty men crushed by a falling house, of which only an upper story was burning. But if Monsieur Voisin builds a house in New York, we all hurry by as fast as possible while the process goes on, lest the walls should tumble while we are passing; and we know that if it stands up long enough to take fire, it will all sink in tremendous and disastrous ruin as soon as the fire gets well under way. So the flimsy structures flame and fall, and we read eagerly the sickening history, and shudder, and say not a word, and lift not a finger to arrest the evil. A few newspapers utter a manly and vigorous protest; there is a vague and transitory invigoration; then we all admire the exquisite Corinthian marble-front of the enterprising Messrs. Badger and Bat's new emporium of trade; and then begin again to bewail the victims of " that shocking accident" caused by its destruction. Intelligent foreigners are always struck, first of all, by the fact that our work in every kind is that which will just do. There is no conscience, no completeness. If the table will stand until one of the children runs against it; if the house will hold up until the family moves in; if the dust is wiped from the chairs where the visitors sit, it is quite enough. Then, when the accident happens, why, the thing did itself. Was there ever a mirror broken, or a choice tea-set, or a bottle of wine shaken, or a book inked by any body in the house, child or servant? Never. It always shook, broke, and inked itself. The same flimsy appearance characterizes every thing else. You think old Magog, the millionaire, has built a sumptuous free-stone house upon the avenue. Great mistake! Magog, the millionaire, has put a miserable thin facing of free-stone over an unsightly mass of stone and rubble. Or the splendid hotel of Gog, his partner, is a palatial structure of white marble? Error the second! The hotel is a whited sepulchre. If it holds up long enough for you to examine, you will discover that it is only a smooth marble complexion. It is a spar of white stone put edge-wise upon the street-front. If you go inside, you find the same foolish pretense: gilt and gauds are employed to hide the want of richness and elegance. A gentleman or a lady feels uncomfortably in the midst of this cheap splendor. If we are not mistaken the gentleman actually blushes. We know not where he could have seen such flaring mirrors, such vulgar carpets, such dazzling damask; but clearly he has seen it somewhere at some time, and he does not like to remember it as he seats himself upon the gaudy sofa with his young wife. The age of gold, of iron, and of brass; but is not the age of tinsel worse than any? It is not ludicrous only, but tragical, when it occasions such fearful results as we continually observe; and yet there is the very sublimity of ludicrousness and absurdity in the eager renunciation of one moment, and the comfortable resignation of the next. ""Tis n't my affair," say Messrs. Gog and Magog; "and it's so hard to tell where the blame ought to rest. You may investigate, if you choose; but you must really excuse us, it's steamer day." "Yes; but Mr. Gog, the hope of your age, the heir of your name, the light of your solitary home, in whose youth you lived again, the manly boy, the noble son, lies dead beneath the ruins. Good-morning." To-morrow it may be Magog's turn. It must be somebody's turn. THE spring air is melodious with the rumors of coming music. The great temple of the Muses in Fourteenth Street is completed, and upon the site of Metropolitan Hall-one of the most festal and brilliant public-rooms we have ever seen, and over whose destruction by fire this Easy Chair has already mourned-Mr. Lafarge, the proprietor of the late hotel of that name, which fortunately did not hold up long enough to be crowded with guestsin which case there would have been a loss of life too inhumanly shocking to consider-is erecting a hall, or theatre, or opera-house, which will serve as a chapel-of-ease to the greater edifice near Union Park. It is rumored that in this latter place Grisi and Mario will make their débût, if they make any débût at all in America. But after this long interregnum, how delightful it will be to hear music once more, and such music as we have not often had! To those of our readers who are less familiar with such matters, it may be interesting to know that Grisi has reigned queen-paramount of the Italian opera-although not of music since the advent of Jenny Lind-during the last twenty years. She immediately succeeded Pasta and Malibran, although undoubtedly inferior to the first in broad dramatic power, and to the last in passionate intensity and fervor. Her characteristic style is that which is best displayed in Bellini's Norma, which is beyond question her greatest role. She has a queenly person, tending to embonpoint, dark hair and eyes, a neck of alabaster beauty, and arms of famous form. She plays dexterously with Time, and, like the Countess Rossi (Sontag), cheats him deliciously. In fact the light reflected from his scythe only illuminates her charms. Mario, her husband-for we believe they are now married-is much younger, and the universally acknowledged successor of the great tenor Rubini, whose death was lately recorded. Like all power, the charm of a tenor-voice is hereditary only in name. Mario is not so great as Rubini, but he is the greatest and most exquisite of living tenors. He is personally handsome, after the Italian and barber model. He has rosy cheeks and delicate features, and clustering, curling black hair. He is altogether "a love of a man." Now, excepting the stability of New York building, nothing is so uncertain as the permanence of a singer's whim. We confess our doubts frankly, therefore, as to our seeing and hearing the great pair this side of the sea. If they should come, we hope sincerely that they will inaugurate the new opera-house. It would continue to it the tradition of European success; and undoubtedly their career in it would help to solve the problem which is at present the despair of the musical circles, whether the opera could be a permanent institution in New York. THE financial friends of this Easy Chair, Messrs. Dry, Sly, and Lye, of whom we have already spoken, lately began to buy Crystal Palace stock again with great eagerness. We, who were not homeopathically inclined, and did not care to be cured by a hair of the dog that bit us, looked very wisely when we heard it, but slapped our pockets, like wise men, and said, "Let's see!" of burning incense, and the multitudinous chant of acolytes-with streets gorgeously draped, and carAnd we have seen. We have seen Mr. Barnum peted with flashing colors, and strewn with bay placed at the head of affairs, and the stock rose at leaves and crushed flowers, and lined with a picthe announcement, even as the mercury in the turesque and adoring crowd of romantic beauty-in thermometer when the warm South breathes upon Rome a procession, which the Triumph of Aurelian it. We have seen Mr. Barnum, as President, pre- leading Zenobia captive did not surpass, is possiceded by banners and trumpets and shawms, pro- ble. And so in England, with the gauds of royalty, ceeding in state to re-inaugurate the Palace, which the ermine and trains and coronets of a nobility, was so imperfectly inaugurated last year by the the lawn robes of bishops, and the brilliant accesPresident of the United States. We have seen sories of gilded carriages and liveried servants, a close behind Mr. Barnum, walking in solemn pro-procession is possible. But in omnibus-jammed cession and in blue kid gloves, the Honorable Ho-Broadway, draped with threatening clouds, what race Greeley, one of the Board of Directors. We have seen, in the Palace itself, a mass of interested and curious spectators; and through the airy spaciousness of that exquisite building we have heard ringing the brilliant bursts of triumphal music, the sacred swell of anthems, the voice of prayer, and the glowing and genuine eloquence of impassioned and interested men. And as we saw and heard, we were ready to believe we almost did believe-that the temple was re-inaugurated to success, and not to failure; to a permanent, and popular, and noble influence. When one of the old Board of Directors said of his colleagues, "They are all the best of men, but too respectable," he said a true thing, and expressed what many felt to be the reason of the limited success of the first season of the Exhibition. The whole thing was begun and continued wrongly, under the old regime. Because the nobility and wealthy men of England had succeeded in the fulfillment of a most happy conception, by the united prestige of royalty, religion, and wealth, it was simply foolish to hope to do the same thing here within a year or two afterward. It was especially foolish not to see that, if the enterprise were undertaken at all-which did not seem at all desirable, since it was especially a thing not to be repeated-it must be done strictly according to our genius. To put it under the protection of certain gentlemen of generous education and refined social position, and who, in some degree, correspond to the class who supported the World's Fair in London, was by no means to insure success. The irrefragable social fact against which we are perpetually dashing our heads in this country, is that there is no aristocracy available for any other than purely social purposes. There is no permanent aristocratic interest and influence, às in England, upon which a man may surely count. The things that succeed with us are those which appeal directly to the popular interest, by showing that they are in charge of those whose names insure at least seven per cent. per annum. So we thought, as we leaned from the gallery of the Crystal Palace on the half-rainy May day of the re-inauguration. It was easy enough to see that we do not believe in pomps and shows. What a poor spectacle we produce when we try to have a spectacle! Is there any thing so dreary as a Fourth of July procession, except it be one going to re-inaugurate a Crystal Palace? We ought to give up the procession. It is not cognate to our institutions. A mass of figures, all of whose individuality is lost, and who are all draped in awkward black, is not festive, especially when they all have the sad, sallow face of the American. In Rome, with the scarlet splendors of a pompous priesthood, with violet, and gold, and crimson, and white-with golden vessels and silver vessels, with crosses, jewels, crosiers, and mitres-with swinging censers can a multitude of gentlemen in black coats do which will be at once so unseemly and unreasonable as to parade solemnly, with banners and bassdrums, to any possible point for any possible purpose? If they are truly sensible, they will take the cars at Canal-street, or the omnibuses at the Park, and say nothing about it. Of all melancholy and attenuated processions, that of the re-inauguration was the superlative de gree. But that was all that was amusing, or in any sense a failure. Mr. Fry's music was admirably performed, and the speeches were stirring. Especially that of Mr. O'Gorman sent constant volleys of applause echoing along the aisles. It was pleasant to hear such men, and to hear such sentiments. It was pleasant to believe that every thing which can be done to rescue the Palace from its decline will be done-that able, thoughtful, and practical men have it in charge-that the appeal is made to the practical genius of the country by men in whom that practical genius confides-and that a gentleman who has achieved such successes elsewhere has consented to try his power here. There has been some great mistake about the whole affair until now. Whether it lay as deep as the very conception of the enterprise, remains to be seen. If it is any where above that, it will now be removed. And, speaking with a full sense of the responsibility of an Easy Chair, we say to our friends in the country, that, in every way, the Crystal Palace deserves a visit and a careful study. The sight of the building itself well rewards a long journey. Its graceful intricacy of delicate lines, its airy dome, which it seems as if a breeze might waft away, and which, seen across the buildings of the city, lies in the summer air like a dream of the Orient; its space, its solitude, its society-all these combine to complete an architectural triumph. Yet that black coat which does not become a procession is a sharp and terrible critic. "What's the use?" it says, as it glooms about the Palace. Black coat! let us answer, the use to you, the measurable, practical use, is, when some shy and susceptible boy from your factory comes here, and, impressed by beauty and grace, and enamored of airy symmetry, returns and makes designs for your cloths which command the market and pour gold into your purse. That is the palpable and direct "use" of all beautiful and sublime things to a black coat, which is called Gradgrind, and demands the facts. But to that boy, that J. J. (as he appears in The Newcomes), a voice sweeter than ours shall sing: "So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And if you find no moral there, What moral is in being fair? The wild weed-flower that simply blows? It is very odd to find what an accurate idea one can get of "How things look the other side of the water," by a mere collation of the little by-paragraphs which are scattered over the columns of the foreign journals. Thus, we have Paris in our eye this morning (a blessed Spring morning, which almost tempts the geranium in our office to bloom before its time) as plainly as if we were there. We seem to see the brilliant Rue Rivoli opened up (as they tell us it is) as far as the quaint old Hotel de Ville. We see the new houses rising, with their sunny balconies, and their cozy entresols, on the site of the lumbering old shops which used to threaten every passerby with their leaning walls. We see the lighthearted masons, in blouses, clambering over the timber scaffoldings, and dressing up with statues, and clean cut cornices, and finials, the huge tower of the Jacquerie. And we remark (though the contrast shames us at home) that all the building material is confined within narrow compass, surrounded by substantial palings; so that no passer-by is in danger for his life, and no horde of carriages is brought to a stand-still by accumulated piles of brick and mortar. ing its area into still grander proportions, and stretching from the Place de la Concorde as far as the Rond Point. If this be done, people might well leave their war in the East, to look on the hugest building which cumbers Europe. But from what quarter are the tokens of industry to come, with which to stock such a palace? Russia will probably have no humor to be making show of her vases of malachite; and Austria and Prussia will have other occupation than the dressing of ormolu tables for a Paris fair. And if the Spanish breeze-which at our present writing is blowing strong-should grow into a gale, our M'. Cormicks, and Daguerreotype men, will be looking for prize-money on the shores of Cuba. And while this war-thought is upon our mind, we can not avoid a glance, in the way of the moralists, upon the strange and eventful designs which Providence seems to be putting in store for the two years which now face us. Hereabouts (meaning upon our shores), we have the Cuban soreness, never curing itself, and never getting cured; we have the Acapulco revolt, and men fighting, brigand-like, among the mountains; we have a Sonora Republic, set up by a gang of pirates, and not a State with energy or vigor enough to drive them out; we have the old vexed questions of Central America; and three-hours-long orations from his Excellency, Mr. Borland, which cover the Belize in deeper and darker fog than ever; we have, from our Home authorities, tremendous orders about diplomatic dress, and the men in plain clothes fighting duels, or dancing (by ingenuous confession) a dance of fools in Piedmont. Beyond the water, England and France are closing factories to drive the Northern monarch back, with his million soldiers, to his lair in the ice. Poor bed-ridden Turkey, galvanized into a liveliness which almost redeems her heathenism, is battling with Greek Christians, and sticking her crescent in the caps of French generals. Austria, before this shall have met the eye of the reader, moving her troops against her old Northern ally; and Russia matching the lost friendship, by promising an independent kingdom to Hungary, and a state and gov We have heard many times of projected reforms in these things; and once deceived ourselves into the belief, that by putting our name to a paper which declared its signers members of a reform party, who would, independent of politics, make the city government what it ought to be; we say, we innocently thought that the change would be wrought, and that thenceforward a man could pass from Bowling Green to Union Square under the safe care of some such patron saint as Mr. Westervelt. Still, how-ernment of their own to the Lombardo-Venetians. ever, we tremble, and venture on the journey with very much the same apprehension of danger with which Crusoe and his man Friday put to sea in an open boat. Thus, who knows but the extremes of Republicanism and of Despotism may coalesce, and Mazzini accept Russian gold, and Kossuth put on the coat of a Cossack? We throw out these fancies because they drift to us upon the tide of forecoming events; for who can tell, or who can guess, what shall be the fate, four years hence, of Sonora, or Honduras, or Cuba, or Hungary, or Turkey, or even of Russia? To pass again to the city of Napoleon, we find the walls of the New Palace Extension rising fast, and fast inclosing a court, which is to be the grandest and most splendid of the world. We wonder at it all the more, when we read, as we do, of the new onehundred-gun ships which are slipping every week from the water-ways of Brest and of Toulon; and when we hear of the tens of thousands who are tak-resist the aggression of the United States-a pleasing passage, at government cost, for the pleasant shooting excursion to the banks of the Bosphorus. Is the money of the new Emperor so plenty that the city can grow by a kind of Aladdin magic, and all the while his armies and his fleets keep pace with the over-rich neighbor on the other side of the Channel? Are we not to hold our breaths presently, with the tale of some sad crisis, which shall shake the Paris Bourse so hard, that the tremor shall reach even to Wall Street? Let the men of the money articles tell us. In addition to all this, why not name the terrible bugbear of the coalition of France and England to ant bugbear, doubtless, to many; and doubly so to its first entertainer (perhaps inventor), the late minister to the court of France, from Virginia. We do not profess great foreknowledge in matters of so uncertain complexion as those of European diplomacy; yot we do venture an expression of the belief that France and England, in common with the other powers of Western Europe, have entertained, and do still entertain, the thought of a mutual convention, in virtue of which the several states who are parties to the convention, shall be guaranteed in perpetuity their present boundaries; and, if boundaries, perhaps colonies. This will explain Napoleon's phrase, that "the age of conquest was passed Least of all would one expect to find the gigantic Palace of Industry climbing, day by day, above the trees of the Champs Elyssées; and not only this, but we hear even that the idea is mooted of extend-by." VOL. IX.-No. 49.-I |