A FRENCH VIEW OF ENGLISH CIVILIZATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 9, 20 June 1884, Page 9

A FRENCH VIEW OF ENGLISH CIVILIZATION.

(Special Correspondence of the Pilot. 1 ) ._ _, Pariß, March 25. BKGLISH civilization, Frenchmen say, consists in massacring innocent men and enslaving those who are free. « Gordon," says a writer in Mgaro, " departs for the Soudan. He is a great adventurer, inspired, a prophet. He has abolished slavery ; he shakes, as a divine promise, the chains which he has broken. What a man ! Suddenly, he issues his famous proclamation : ' You are all free ... to be sold as slaves ! ' What a buffoon 1 England itself is moved ! Gordon replies by one single phrase— 4 It is for the good of England ! ' And on the spot there is silence I No one moves ; not an objection, not a murmur. He has said : 'It is for the good of England I ' And all England bows down its head. And England approves that which it denounced the day before. And the Opposition itself has not breathed a word. What a people ! " This clear-minded Frenchman sees through the blatant boastings and pretended disinterestedness of the English. Their selfishness is revealed to the world. "Have you ever," he asks, « beheld egotism so stern and so fierce ? They pretend to be generous, and disinterestedness escapes them. They have never measured anything save by the measure of their interest.'" Then he turn* to the burning questions : " Look at Ireland ! Behold India 1 Endemic misery and the feudal regime in the dawn of the twentieth century. The laborer dying of hunger and the Sepoy at the cannon's mouth I Resistance the most legitimate, the most natural to their autocratic policy, military or commercial, takes in their eyes the character of an injury, and the least revolt becomes an outrage which must be washed out in blood. Think of Alexandria already set fire to by the Arabs, and burnt again last year by the English. They are the first bombarders of the universe !" . .J^ 6 seaßOn of art exhibitions is about to open in Paris, and visitors throng the studios on the public days, Munkacsy, who has had a special studio constructed for his colossal pictures is at work over a year on the Crucifixion of Christ between the two thieves. The chief attraction in the studio of Carolus Duran is the portrait of a young American lady, represented seated, exquisite in color and masterly in execution. c remarka We discourse pronounced againßt lay instruction in the Chamber by Mgr. Freppel, Bishop of Angers, has been published in pamphlet form for distribution. It is a discourse that, from the excellence of its arguments and its abundance of proof, will be of great advantage to Catholics and to honest-minded Frenchmen.