As a knowledge of the circumstances under which a work of art is composed occasionally gives a clearer insight into certain of its peculiarities, so perhaps an analysis of the individual elements which go to make up the present Assembly of Versailles may give the reader a clue to the reason of some of its legislative measures, as well as to its possibilities for the future and its political tendencies. Such an analysis is made by the Rappel of Paris in an elaborate article, from which we must only cite a few points. The Assembly, then, contains, it appears, 2 princes (the princes d'Orléans), 7 dukes, 30 marquises, 52 counts, 17 viscounts, 18 barons and 97 untitled nobles, or those "n'ayant que la particule;" which last phrase we may explain to mean having the de prefixed to their names, without other titular distinction. Next, it contains 163 great landed proprietors, including the richest in France; 155 advocates; 48 leading manufacturers; 45 officers or ex-officers of the army, chiefly of high rank; 35 magistrates or ex-magistrates; 25 engineers; 23 physicians; 21 professors; 19 notaries or ex-notaries; 16 wholesale merchants; 14 officers or ex-officers of the navy; 10 attorneys; 5 bankers; 2 druggists; 1 bishop; 1 curate; 1 Protestant minister; and 10 others of sundry occupations. The difference in composition between this republican Assembly and our own Congresses is in some respects remarkable; for, independently of the very large and indeed altogether disproportionate representation of the nobility or titled classes, we observe a very great preponderance of rich land-owners, representing in their own persons the agricultural and vine-growing interests. Very singular, also, is the small proportion of lawyers, only 155 being classed as advocates, and the magistrates and attorneys swelling the number only to 200. In an ordinary American Congress at least one-half, and usually two-thirds, of the members are or have been lawyers by profession. The clerical representation seems to reach a total of three, all told, Catholic and Protestant; and as trivial is that of the retail traders and mechanics, of whom there are but two or three in all. We may add that a full-blooded negro member, M. Pory-Papy, came as deputy from Martinique. The standard of intelligence and political experience is rather high: it is said, for example, that no less than 33 members have been ministers. Altogether, the Assembly may be considered as rather fortunately constituted.
During the session of the medical congress at Lyons one day was set apart for the study of alcoholic stimulants. On that occasion the physician of Sainte-Anne asylum, Dr. Magnan, comparing the chemical action of alcohol and absinthe on man, drew the conclusion that the former acts more slowly, gradually provoking delirium and digestive derangement, while absinthe rapidly results in epilepsy. Then, producing a couple of dogs, he treated one with alcohol and the other with essence of absinthe, this latter being the active principle of the absinthe liquor which is commonly drunk. The alcoholized brute could not stand up, became sleepy and stupid, and, when set on his legs, trembled in an inert mass: the other dog experienced at once frightful attacks of epilepsy. Analogous effects are produced in mankind. Surely the "absinthe duel" which is said to have taken place at Cannes, when both the combatants perished after drinking an extraordinary quantity, may be strictly denominated a duel with deadly weapons. In the south of France, it is said, one person sometimes invites another to partake of absinthe by the slang phrase, "Take a shovelful of earth;" as if an American bar-room lounger, recognizing with grim humor the deadly quality of his liquor, should say, "Come and get measured for your coffin." The French expression has certainly, in view of Dr. Magnan's disclosures, a melancholy picturesqueness. This subject has to France a national importance, since, if the recent report of Dr. Bergeron does not exaggerate, the absintism introduced amongst the French army in general by the Algerian officers did its part toward producing that inertness and lack of vigor which generals often complained of in their subordinates during the disastrous invasion of 1870.
Richard II., in the play of that name, disheartened by his calamities, responds to all the encouraging words of his lords and followers with a bitter satire on the wretchedness of royalty:
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd; some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd;
Some poison'd by their wives; some sleeping kill'd;
All murther'd; for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court.
The unhappy monarch was destined to furnish in his own tragic fate one more illustration of his homily. His words come vividly to mind in reviewing the curious catalogue which a European statistician lately furnished of the number of sovereigns who have perished by violent deaths or been discrowned by disaster. The list, which must perforce be incomplete, embraces 2540 emperors or kings, who have ruled over 64 nations. Of these, 299 were dethroned; 151 were assassinated; 123 died in captivity; 108 were formally condemned and executed; 100 were killed in battle; 64 abdicated; 62 were poisoned; 25 died the death of martyrs; 20 committed suicide; and 11 died insane. Even these lists do not probably include all the unnatural deaths and dethronements that have occurred among the 2540 rulers thus tabulated, for it was often deemed politic to conceal the circumstances of a monarch's death, and history mentions many such instances in which the cause of death is doubtful; so that, for example, the 11 insane and the 20 suicides and the 62 poisoned doubtless do not comprise the whole number of deaths which ought to be included under those descriptions. Nevertheless, taking these figures as they are, they furnish a striking comment on King Richard's melancholy words; which, by the way, Richard's own conqueror and successor almost paralleled in his lamentations over the anxieties and perils that encompass the kingly state. We may add that the death of Napoleon III. at Chiselhurst has now, by one more name, increased the number of sovereigns dying in exile, while giving the whole subject a fresh interest.
The authority of Professor Godebski of St. Petersburg is given for the extraordinary statement that the Russian authorities in Poland have prohibited the contemplated erection of a monument to Chopin in his native Warsaw, on the ground that it might become an occasion for a political manifestation. M. Godebski was to have executed the statue, a plan had been submitted and accepted, musical admirers of Chopin had favored the project, Prince Orloff, Princess Czartoryska and many ladies of the Polish nobility had contributed the necessary funds, when the whole scheme was vetoed by Count von Berg, on the pretext already stated. Surely this was pushing caution to extremes, even in Poland. It was Chopin's fate to be driven from his country in 1836 by revolutionary disorders; but the very composition of the monumental committee, which was under the direction of Madame Mouchanoff, an ardent admirer of the master, indicated that the enterprise was an artistic, not a political one. Chopin, reposing between Bellini and Cherubini in the Père la Chaise, his chosen burial-place, has long since passed from the narrow confines of his Polish nationality to the worldwide and immortal realm of art. In pretending, thirty years after his death, that the genius of the artist is of less account than the accident of his birthplace, and in reviving against this memorial project the entirely secondary facts of the revolutionary epoch (when Chopin's career was not in politics, but in art), the Russian authorities are wondrously sensitive, to say the least. A chagrined friend of the sculptor has proposed that a piece of ground should be bought, a temporary wooden house built on it, the statue set up as if in a private courtyard or gallery, and the doors then thrown open to the public, while, after some days or months, the building could be taken down, leaving the statue substantially on a public square. But the prohibition which vetoed the original project would of course cover this stratagem also, and besides, it would be rather too petty a device to engage in.