Page images
PDF
EPUB

the proof afforded by facts and figures, that we squander money and increase taxation by continuing the present system. In the words of Talfourd, uttered with the shadow of death around him, we draw the attention of our Parliamentary Representatives to the evidence inserted in this Record, showing the necessity which exists for the extension of this Act of Parliament to Ireland: "It," said the dying Judge, "becomes us therefore who desire to maintain and promote the advancement of the moral feeling of the people, to endeavour when the circumstance of their early guilt, which very often has arisen from some sudden temptation, and does not imply any greater depravity than that which the corruption of human nature spreads amongst all, that we should take an opportunity, not of yielding up the educational discipline of the law-that we should take care not merely to punish but to reform, and to seek to avail ourselves of that opportunity which that first offence has given, to bring within the pale of sympathy, and within the pale of religion, that unhappy person who has a soul immortal as our own, and has entered upon a life-a life as long in this world and that which is to come,-and to whom our warmest sympathy rather than our indignation, ought to be addressed."

And if the beautiful morality of this sentiment will not cause our people, with the evidence of Prison officials inciting them, to demand the extension of the Act, we ask them, in the words of the Rev. Dr. Guthrie, in his Plea for Ragged Schools"do you fancy that by refusing this appeal, and refusing to establish these schools, you (the public) will be saved the expense of maintaining these outcasts ? a great and demonstrable mistake. They live just now; and how do they live? Not by their own honest industry, but at your expense; they beg and steal for themselves, or their parents beg and steal for them. You are not relieved of the expense of their sustenance by refusing this appeal. The old man of the sea sticks to the back of Sinbad and surely it were better for Sinbad to teach the old man to walk on his own feet."

To England and to Scotland we owe the legislative recognition of the Reformatory Principle; to ourselves, by demanding it, we must owe the extension of the Youthful Offenders' Act to Ireland.

To the Managers of Reformatory and Ragged Schools, and to the Chaplains of Prisons.

The Editor of THE IRISH Quarterly RevIEW will feel most grateful to those gentlemen holding any of the above positions, who will send him, on or before the 1st February, 1st May, 1st August, and 1st November, in each year, such short statements of the results of the School and Prison Discipline as they may consider useful. They shall appear in the Record, and thus important information, which might be known only to a comparative few, will be placed in a concise form before the general reader, and those too who are active in supporting these questions. All communications may be addressed to the Editor at 8, Grafton-street, Dublin.

OFFICE OF THE IRISH QUARterly Review,

8, Grafton-street.

Dublin, November 21, 1854.

PARIS CORRESPONDENCE.

No. I.

To see a great city is amongst the earliest aspirations of our youth. To tread that pavement of gold, to sit beneath those roofs of crystal so cunningly devised by the weird architect we erst called nurse, is a dream we all have cherished; and when enlightenment comes with the schoolmaster, our first fancy only assumes a more substantial shape. Stone and mortar take the place of glass-at least they were wont so to do, till Paxton put back the clock, and realized the nursery tale. What boy has not heard or read of the walls of Babylon, of the hundred gates of Thebes? Years roll on, and the boy, become a man, is content to pass beneath the arch that "dominates" the Champs Elysées, and to tread the boulevards which occupy the site of the ancient walls of Paris. The mere name wakens up associations that link the world we live in to the world of long ago. “August Athenae” had not long fallen from her preeminence, Jerusalem was still the home, had not as yet become the monument, of the chosen people, Rome had not seen the day of her greatest prosperity, when Paris existed, then the miserable hamlet of a rude tribe, now the capital of Europe. London is the chief city of England, and of "something more," but Paris is cosmopolitan. It possesses a more widely extended interest, and, in better times especially, presents vicissitudes which have made it the epitome of human history. The Huguenot war, the Ligue, the Fronde, Louis le Grand, Voltaire, the Girondins, Robespierre, the Directory, Bonaparte, Wellington, the Restoration, the barricades of '30, of '48, Napoléon Trois-faith even to fanaticism, turbulence, the power and splendor of a royal despotism, disbelief, liberty, vengeance, profusion with the mask of patriotism, victory, invasion, the old tradition for a place of refuge, the constitutional monarchy, the masses, and the "ére des Césars" for the second time in eighteen hundred years. London has no experience like to this. Her life has long been one of monotonous prosperity and civil prescription; Paris has tested, suffered, and enjoyed all things.

Its origin has been the subject of strange romances to the learned of the sixteenth century. According to those ingenious and intrepid gentlemen, ingenious in conjecture, and intrepid in its publication, a prince named Francus an emigré from the sack of Troy, escaped to

A

Gaul, and built a city, which he named Paris in honor of his uncle, the jeune homme charmant whose liaison with a celebrated beauty of his day originated the ruin of a great Kingdom, and the writing of a great poem, whose author did not live long enough to be admitted a member of the French Academy. These learned men of the sixteenth century established to their own satisfaction the genealogy of the Kings who succeeded Francus, recounted their exploits, traced the institutions which were cradled by one monarch, and coffined by another, and threatened to publish the secret memoirs of more than one lady of quality who figured at the court of the Trojan dynasty. They by no means forgot Francus in the interest inspired by the autobiophies "of the period," and, at length, acknowledged him to have been of the stock of Samothes, son of Japhet, and grandson of Noah. "Hence", as the showman says, the belief that the rafters of the Tuileries are made out of the ribs of Noah's ark. But, whatever has not been the origin of our city of Paris, for our knowledge of what it has been we are indebted to no less a personage than the warrior historian, Julius Cæsar. The Parisii were a nation of fugitives from their primal abodes, who obtained permission from a powerful people of Gaul, called the Senones, to establish themselves on the frontiers of the territory possessed by the latter, and on the banks of the Seine. When Cæsar entered Gaul, the old men of the Parisian tribe preserved the recollection of the settlement, which took place fifty years before, and of the treaty with their protectors. The river Seine traversed the territory which had been granted them, and, dividing in its course, formed five islands, of which the largest was chosen by the emigrants for their strong place in times of hostile incursion. It was called Lutetia-it is now the Cité, the centre of modern Paris, containing within its narrow limits the Church of Notre Dame, the Palais de Justice, and the great hospital of Paris, the Hôtel Dieu.*

* The terse eloquence of this simple and beautiful designation has been strangely degraded by the bétise I here record. I have seen a novel, which appeared in an Irish provincial newspaper, in which the author informs us that two of his personages-a bride and bridegroom, as well as I remember-" arrived at Paris, and took up their residence at the Hôtel Dieu." This genius appears to have had eccentric ideas on the subject of "taking his ease at his inn."

« PreviousContinue »