DR RASTOUL.

The Argus gives the following sketch of the career of Dr Rastoul, who lately escaped from New Caledonia with 20 other Communists, in a boat they had managed to build themselves :—: — Dr Rastoul, who has just succeeded in effecting his escape in company with other dtportts from the Isle of Pines, was one of the most prominent members of the Commune during the memorable 73 days of 1871. He was a member of the Commission of Public Services, and distinguished himself by the vigour of his administration, and uniformly recorded his vote In favour of energetic measures. He is a native of Marseilles, is about five and forty years of age, and was educated for the medical profession. He commenced practice in Paris in 1860, having established himself in the Quartier St. Martin, where he soon became popular owing to his winning face and agreeable manners. He has the southern temperament, like Gambetta, and embraced the cause of the Commune with such ardour that he was selected as medicin en chef of the ambulances, When the Commune fell, Dr Rastoul was of course a marked man, and shared the fate of his late colleagues at the Hotel de Ville. It is a singular fact that most of these were either provincials or political exiles from foreign countrfes. All the revolutions in Paris from that of 1789 downwards have been the work of strangers. Mirabeau, Lafayette, Camille Desmoulins, Hebert, Robespierre, Couthon, Henriot, and Foquier Tinville were provincials, and Marat was a Swiss. The Provisional Government of 1830 did not contain a single Parisian ; that of 1848 only two. Of the eleven members of the so-called "Go vernment of National Defence," in 1870-1, MM. Ernest Picard and Henry Rochefort were the only Parisians ; and sixty-six: of the eighty members of the Commune were provincials. " In revolutions and in the events they bring about," observes M. Maxime Ducamp, "the true-born Parisian succumbs under the mass of provincials that surrounds him, and all the more easily that he does not even try to fight, He shrugs his shoulders, uplifta his arms, and exclaims 'Mon Dieu, what is to become of us ?' " The boiirgeois is a pitiful coward, and hence the facility with which revolutions are brought about by reckless and dare-devil dectassh from the provinces and from foreign countries, who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by turning society topsy-tnrvy.