BRITISH BLOODTHIRSTENFSS.

|A determination of the movements of the star Aforurns has been made by Dr Elkin, the astronomer o! Yale College, and formerly of the .Cape of Good Hope. From his long series of observations on its'parallax, he has arrived at the conolusion that the star moves with the inoonoeivablo speed of 381 miles in a second, whioh is 21 times faster than the motion of the earth in its orbit round the eun. The star isJ3O far away from ns that its light, whioh travels at the rate of 190,000 miles in ajseoond, takes 181 years to reach the earth. The perseverance of euoh observers as Dr Elkin is thus gradually oorapelliog the heavens to reveal their ssoretß, and to make a knowledge of them familiar to everyone. A man named Rhodes was charged at the Bow street Police Court with stealing postal-orders worth £20,000. On the house where Rhodes lived being searched by the ' police, no fewer than 2289 letters and postcards were found, the former having contained cheques, postal-orders, and money-ordera, the letters being concealed in a box. One^Coheque was worth £10,000. The prisonerjeonfessed his guilt, and explained that the thefts had extended over a year, and that he had spent the money in betting and horse racing. Rhodes was committed for trial,

FRENCH. VERSUS LONDON TASTE.

Writing to a metropolitan journal, R. H. Sherrard, dating from the French capital, Bay's :— ln respect of blbodthirstineaa the Parisians compare most favourably with the Londoners. - In Paris, the only people besides the journalists and the riff-raff of the Roquet quarter, who manifest any interest in capital execrations are the alcoholic monomaniacs of the caf 6a de nuit, and amongst these a large per cent of Britishers is always to be found. In London your great publio gloats over a doing to death, or else why the cries of the newspaper hawkers, why the sickly legends on the newspaper bills in largest of capitals, why the tremendous Bales of newspapers on such days, why the different successful permanent exhibitions of waxwork figures of murderers who have undergone the last penalty, arranged in gloomy shadows of gibbet and guillotine ? Yonr morbid, unimaginative Anglo-Saxon delights in blood, delights in the sufferings of others. Tour literature showß that, but about that I need say little, for the question of bloodthirstinesß in English literature of to-day was amply and ably discussed in the Pall Mall some months ago. It is a fact, however,, that books about crime and its detection 'and its punishment, which in Paris would not get beyond the porter's lodge — if so far — enjoy in London immense circulation amongst all classes. Your weekly jtaperß teem with horrors. In nine oat of every ten short stories published in England theiast sentences are about " condemned to death," " penal servitude for life." and bo forth. We have little of this in Paiia, and what there is. is discredited. And your theatres — melodramas everywhere. Here in Paris the melodrama is completely out of date: the melodrama pure and simple, is never played, because it does not pay to play it. Even the Ambigu has of late made a new departure. We are not .interested in hangmen, and prison-warders, and deteotives, and convicts; you are. And' prize-fights, and street-fights, and knockabout performances whioh so delight you seem to Parisians brutal, and to be avoided.

' ' A man named Gilbert, who was arrested by the Marseilles police for having no visible meanß of existence, turns out (cays the Paris correspondent of a London paper) to be the Communist who commanded the firing platoon whioh shot Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, in, 1871. He was at that time a staff-captain under the orders of General Dombrowßki, and with his own hands gave the venerable prelate the coup de grace. Gilbert, who narrowly escaped execution, was transported to New Caledonia, whence he returned after the general amnesty. On being questioned as to the awful events of that Banguinary week in May twenty years ago, Gilbert declared that his own life would have been forfeited if he ' had refused to carry out the decree of execution pronounced upon Monseigneur Darboy. '■ Much curious information is given in respect to country newspapers in America by Mr E. W. Howe in the Century Magazine. He asserts that it costs more to produce the newspapers of that country than the people pay for them; and that there are 6000 of these sheets issued by the Kellogg Company, printed on two pages oat of the four, and as the company prints 100 editions weekly, local publishers have a wide range - of choice accorded to them. Most of 7 the provincial dailieß are issued at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and six columns of stereotyped telegrams are sent to them from New York by express train, at a weekly cost V-.jof £2 Bs, besides 6s for carriage. The circulation of a country paper is generally under 1000, and rarely reaches 1600. It consists of four eight column pages, two of whioh are supplied from a distance ready .printed. Mr Howe tells us a good story of a bright fellow who took a printing plant out to Dakota, but found no Then he trict farming, and the crops failing he issued a smart little paper from an imaginary town, giving it a name, and creating men, women, and institutions, "He criticised imaginary plays at imaginary theatres, he criticised imaginary judges of imaginary ■ courts, he ridiculed an imaginary society, and generally hit off popular delusion bo well that his paper attracted attention, and 9 town was finally built on his farm." Although as a nation the Americans are supposed to have unusual confidence in newe» - " - ; papers, Mr Howe states that this is not the case, and that the people refuse to follow '-' H a : their lead,' in that . respect resembling the • boywho cried out, "The. more yon. holla,