move for absolutism is at once the measure of his gigantic hopes and his miserably incapable means. It will
have the fate of all he has tried. He has flung over the socialists without winning the aristocrats. He has
sacrificed the war party without recommending himself to the bourgeoisie. And now, rejected for the present
by all, he leans on—M. Briffault ! Alas! poor Louis Napoleon.

And Pio Nono! Still more alas, and well a-day, for poor Pio Nono!

An encyclical letter of the forlorn Pope recants all the hopes and efforts with which he began his popedom.
The Cardinals are again his masters, and he is the self-announced willing slave to the College of the Propaganda.
He denounces the new traffic of book-selling (by which bibles are sold as well as communist tracts), affects to
hold up his hands in horror at socialism, and calls the ladies who tended the wounded in Rome by the name of
prostitutes! Nor does his holiness scruple, in this production, to couple the advance of communism in
Italy with the operations of the British and Foreign Bible Society in England,—a comparison which will
probably help to open the eyes of some people in this country to the peculiar sort of interest which is taken
in us by the College of Cardinals.

In America the whig President has delivered his Message to the democratic majority in a tone which
party circumstances necessarily render somewhat ambiguous, as it is unquestionably moderate, but of which
this country certainly has no reason to complain. If any regret is to be expressed that General Taylor and his
government should avow themselves partisans of prohibitive duties for protection as well as revenue, it is for
the argument it suggests against all federative governments, wherein it would appear to be so difficult to levy
the expenses of the general government other than by means of customs. It is also somewhat ominous that
not a word of slavery appears in this Message, when we remember that the claims of the new territories
for admission within the Union, now pressing and imminent, are likely to revive that question in its most
dangerous aspect.

On new year's day the President of the French
Republic distinguished the occasion by an Act of Reconciliation
with an estranged branch of his family—he
created his uncle, General Jerome Bonaparte, a Field
Marshal of France; the first creation of the rank which
has been made since the revolution of February.

Considerable sensation was excited in Paris by the
appearance, on Sunday the 6th, of the first number of a
weekly political journal entitled "Le Napoléon," which
had been announced as being under the patronage of
the Elysée, and which contained a direct attack upon
the majority of the Chamber, in the following terms:—
"With regard to the feeble majority given to the late
measures of the Government, certain journals, whose
intentions are open to doubt, advise the Ministry to
retire. They pretend, in arguing on certain customs of
the past, that, after such checks, Ministers who respect
themselves can no longer remain in office. These
journals are, or feign to be, ignorant of what is now the
position of the responsible head of the Executive
Government. In the new order of things, so long as the
Ministers enjoy the confidence of the President, they
meet with no check. Once for all, we inform the obstinate
defenders of the old constitutional routine, that the
chief of the State will retain his Ministers in spite of
jealous attacks, and that the deplorable fact of
ministerial instability will not be produced again at the will
of parliamentary ambitions." This paragraph appeared
on Sunday night in the "Patrie" and the "Moniteur
du Soir," in the place where semi-official articles are
generally inserted, with the word "communiqué"
attached to it, as an indication that it came from the
Government; but in the Assembly on Monday the
Ministry denied all responsibility with regard to the
articles which had appeared in the "Napoleon."

On the 14th the legislative assembly commenced the
general debate on the organic bill concerning Public
Instruction. Its chief opponents were M. Barthelemy
Seffilaire and M. Victor Hugo. The former attacked it
as a measure which would ultimately lead to the
destruction of the university,—an evil that would leave the
State unable to prevent the imparting of doctrines
subversive of its own constitution. It would create a
monopoly in primary instruction, most for the advantage
of the clergy, since the members of the religious bodies
devoted to teaching would be those who would principally
obtain diplomas as teachers, although the laical
teachers are to the clerical teachers as 40,000 to only 3000.
Referring expressly to the Jesuits, M. St. Hilaire
declared his opinion that their re-appearance in France
as a body would be illegal. M. Victor Hugo made a
speech in favour of the voluntary principle in religion,
interspersed with declamations against priestcraft and
the Jesuits. He exclaimed:—"The clerical party is
alarmed at Socialism; it sees the waves rising, and it
imagines that it will have saved society when it shall
have combined material resistance with social hypocrisy,
and placed a Jesuit wherever there is not a gendarme."
The bill was an attempt to petrify human thought; to
arrest France in her onward course; its authors, fatigued
with glory, genius, science, and knowledge, stood fast
and proclaimed immoveability to the nation. To such
men he proclaimed in warning accents, that amidst the
movement of all around, their opposition would produce
the most lamentable renewal of revolution. M. Hugo
was boisterously applauded by the mountain; and was
so much interrupted by the right, that the President
declared himself restrained from acting as he would
otherwise have done in curbing M. Hugo's Anti-Catholic
eloquence. The bill was supported by the bishop of
Langres, who characterised it as a measure of peace,
concord, and compromise. The debate was continued
on the 19th, when the bill was warmly supported by M.
Montalembert and M. Thiers. M. Coquerel, the eminent
Protestant clergyman, said that he was unable to find in
the bill either real peace or real liberty. The question
of the second reading was carried by a majority of 268.

On the same day, the bill for transporting the insurgents
of June to Algeria, was passed by a large
majority.

At a meeting of the cabinet council, it has been
determined almost unanimously that no intervention in
the affair of Monte Video shall take place, even should
the government of that republic offer to pay the expenses.

Accounts from the French departments speak of the
immense quantity of snow that has fallen, and which
has occasioned several disasters. Travellers lost their
way, and a rural letter-carrier was found dead in the
snow. In many cantons of the department of the
Ariège the snow has risen to the coping of the houses.
Many persons have perished in the avalanches, which
are frequent; and whole flocks of sheep have been swept
away. In the Jura the communication is completely
interrupted, and many persons have fallen a prey to the
wolves. In the streets of several towns the snow is
more than three metres in depth. In the Saone and
Loire, the wolves, impelled by cold and hunger, boldly
enter the villages; and in one a woman was devoured
by these animals, almost at the door of her house. In
other places the bells had to be pealed during the day
and night, in order to serve as a guide to the traveller
and to the field-labourer.

A villain named Aymet has poisoned a number of
persons at Paris. On New Year's Day, he sent packets
of pastry and bon-bons to two women; employing boys
he found in the street to deliver them. The recipients
did not know who had sent the articles, and which were
eaten by many persons. All were soon after attacked
with the symptoms of poisoning, and suffered much; an
officer of the National Guard and a girl died. Aymet
had formerly seduced one of the females to whom he
sent the confectionary, had been imprisoned, and had