combated by mind; vice could be de-spirit of satire which it were easy enough nounced; bad governments could be ex- to apply to this receptacle of the ashes of posed, and the wretched and the oppressed the dead, it must be admitted, that as France could communicate their sorrows and their did determine on consecrating this imposing desolation to untold millions of their fellow-building to such a purpose, nothing could men."

It is thus that David discourses, when he explains, to those he loves or confides in, the sublime productions of his master mind. He is always courteous, always polite, and even always affable; but when he knows that you regard him with feelings of affection and interest, his noble heart gives utterance to all its thrilling sympathies, and you hear some of those sublime thoughts which I have endeavored to embody and report.

It is a happy thing for France, as well as for himself, that, by his union to a charming and most admirable woman, he became possessor of a large and most adequate fortune. That fortune they both place at the service of their country; for whilst they live in elegance and perfect taste and comfort, they devote by far the larger part of their income, as well as of their time and energies, and of David's genius and talents, to aggrandizing and enriching the public places and museums of France by giant statues and colossal monuments of men and of events connected with the histories and glories of his native land.

possibly be more appropriate than the subject of this sculptured picture. And then of its execution it is impossible to speak too highly. The boldness, richness, variety of the figures, and at the same time their fineness of finishing, and beauty of execution, demonstrate, above all, the greatness and the delicacy of the mind of their author. For myself I have no sympathy for the Pantheon, nor for the ashes of those who have there been deposited; and often have I said this to the great and good David. But how ardent must be the enthusiasm of those Frenchmen who approve and sympathize with both! How often have I witnessed the old and the young, the poor and the rich, the ardent student and the grayheaded veteran, gaze with rapture on David's Fronton; and have seen the tears roll down their cheeks as they have turned from its contemplation.

David has a great love for the English, but not for England. By England he means her government, not her families; her institutions of a political character, not her hearths. On the contrary, he is enthusiastic when he speaks of her sylvan vilThe FRONTON of the Pantheon was another lages, of her honest, homely, and quiet of those original and glorious conceptions population; of her domestic scenery and of David which I have studied with him, pious love, of her noble charities, and the and was present when he concluded. There encouragement she offers to science, to the sits France over the entrance to the Pan-arts, and to civilization. But David betheon, "erected by a grateful country to great and noble men.' There she sits, receiving with delight their homage, bestowing with pleasure her favors. The old soldier shows his wounds and his children; the illustrious judge offers his judgments and decisions; Fenelon modestly rears his head, which is crowned with a garland of immortelles; the philosophers and the priests, the statesmen and the politicians, the artists, the poets, and the sculptors, men of science, of lore, and of learning, all approach the figure which represents France. To all who have distinguished themselves, and have thus, as her sons, not less distinguished her, she offers crowns and rewards and a rich assemblage of genius and virtue is there collected, all accurately delineated and carved out of the solid block with an accuracy of physiognomy which leaves no doubt whatever as to whom they are intended to represent.

Now without entering into the history of this Pantheon, and without indulging in that

lieves that the form of government which has been established in England, and copied, with certain changes, for the better or the worse, in some parts of Germany, in Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, and Portugal, is the one great impediment to the growth of democratic. governments and of pure Republicanism. If he could believe that these constitutional governments were the forerunners of those of a more democratic character, he would hail them as harbingers of coming good, but he looks upon them as substitutes or apologies for those institutions which he hopes will one day become universal, and which he regards as essential to the happiness of man."Behold all things shall become new," is one of his favorite devices, but those halcyon days which his genius or his fancy has anticipated are, of course, to be those of pure and unmixed democracy! The millennium which he anticipates is not one of a spiritual, but of a moral and a social character; and when he speaks of our Saviour he does so

with enthusiasm, but it is always of him as the first and greatest of reformers.

It

AFFGHANISTAN.

From Tait's Edinburgh Magazine.

In social life, David is almost perfect. O TRAMPLE to the dust the inglorious banner, Generous, forgiving, charitable, hospitable, humble, teachable, honest, high-principled, full of the milk of human kindness, and not possessing one iota of selfishness or of egotism, he is an apt illustration of that young man in the Gospel whom Jesus loved. But he also lacketh one thing, and that one is religion.

That once proudly waved o'er the ranks of the free;

is foul with the ensigns of blackest dishonor, O bury its folds in the depths of the sea. Shall henceforth the rose round the neck of the

raven

The shamrock be worn by the tyrant and craven ?
The thistle around the pale crescent be twined?
Dishonor with glory and fame be combined?

Is freedom no more than a name-than a shadow ?
Let the life-blood of heroes and martyrs declare,
That stained the rich blossom of mountain and

meadow,

When the sword of the despot was shivered in air.

mountain

Sell their hearts' dearest blood as a life-streaming
Hath guarded for ages the rest of the free,

fountain,

To feed the dark poison of Slavery's tree?

David is one of the most industrious men I ever met with; for although he is apparently constantly engaged in his profession as a sculptor, he is member of the Institute, and of the Royal Academy, and attends to all the duties which such member-Shall the sons of the clime, where the cairn on the ships carry with them. He lectures, he receives pupils, he carries on a large correspondence, he is constantly intruded upon by visitors, he gives large parties, he admits the non-formal admission of friends at all seasons, he attends to his domestic and so. cial duties, he reads, he belongs to political as well as to scientific associations, he is one of the political chiefs of his arrondissement, and finally, he is a mover, active and ener getic, in certain Republican societies. Arago and David think alike and act together, and Armand Carrel loved David as his brother.

Reader, if ever you visit Paris, either for profit or for recreation, go to the cemetry of the Père la Chaise, and look at the monument of Foy; go to the Place du Panthéon, and contemplate the Fronton, and then walk quietly to No. 14 Rue d'Assas in the Faubourg St. Germain, and see in how quiet, sequestered, and humble a manner, lives this man of genius and taste, of patriotism and philanthropy; then ring the bell, ask of the portier permission to see the workshops of his master; send in your card,examine well the carved glass cases of medallions, which are exact likenesses of great and distinguished persons, many of whom are Englishmen and English women; cast your eyes on the colossal figures which at the particular period you may call there may be engaging his time and genius, -and if, perchance, rather a short man, with a very large head, covered by immense quantities of hair, clad in a common smock. frock, with hands rough and rude, but with a physiognomy at once the most striking and benevolent you ever yet gazed on, should come across your path,-take off your hat, and do that man reverence-for

it is DAVID, and though he be a Republi can, he is the most truthful being in all Europe.

0

breathe not the thought, that when Liberty's

chalice

The Affghan is eagerly longing to sip,
The hero-descendants of Hampden and Wallace
Should haste the bright nectar to dash from his
lip:

Should plough the vast ocean, and breast the steep
highland,

Should lavish the wealth and the hearts of our island
Where the genii of tempest for ages have moaned;
To aid the dark hopes of a tyrant dethroned.

Yes! Victory's sunburst may flash on the standard

Ye bear to the front of Affghanistan's war;
But disaster and death, with your treasury squan-
dered,

For the honor of England were better by far.
But revenge is the war-word-the old English Lion
That yours from the heart of Afghanistan dying,
For glory insulted must drink of the tide

Lest cowards should mock at the fall of his pride.
The revenge of a felon! whose brow has been

branded

THE POLICE SYSTEM OF PARIS.

FROM THE REVUE DES DEUX MONDES.

Translated by M. J. O'Connell, Esq.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

(bureaux) wherein are engaged during the day and often the night 300 clerks, an outdoor service of commissaries, inspectors. and city-constables, agents of all orders, comprising more than 2000 individuals.

His territory, not very extensive, embraces but the department of the Seine and the Communes Saint-Cloud, Sevres and Mendon; but no other part of the kingdom contains a population so active and crowded, and his powers are more complex and numerous than those of any minister.

The following article, on the Police System of Paris, is one of interest and of great practical importance. All may read it with pleasure and pro fit: but, to the Common Councils and Police Offi cers of the several cities of the United States, and more particularly those of New-York, we commend it as of especial value. It was with a view to the latter-to instruct the public on the necessity of a Commissioned with political power, he reorganization of the Police of our Cuy to facilitate and improve the projects of the friends to this mea- is responsible for the security of the king sure in our Common Council-that the task has and his government-a magistrate, he perbeen undertaken by the Translator. A minute and forms judicial functions, takes cognizance of critical description of the most perfect system of crimes, misdemeanors, and offences, and Police, perhaps in the world, by one of the best in-hands over the perpetrators to the tribunals Chambers, leaves nothing in this respect to be de--an administrator of a department, he is sired. This is the opinion also of the Paris Cor- charged with the inspection of prisons, of respondent of the National Intelligencer, Mr. measures relative to the insane, of the poWalsh, who has recommended the article to his lice of the rural communes, of the provicountrymen in more than one of his letters. A few sion to remedy mendicity-a depository of paragraphs exclusively of local applicability have the municipal authority, he exercises all the police powers that it comports.

formed writers of Paris, a member of one of the

been omitted. The divisions are the Translator's. -ED.

The attributions assigned by our general To watch the plots of the enemies of the laws to the prefects of Departments and the government and to thwart their attempts, mayors of cities, are distributed in Paris without any extraordinary power, under the between the prefect of the Seine and the empire of a legislation which interdicts all prefect of police. In this distribution the preventive arrests-to assure order and pre- former has obtained the most brilliant porserve security in a city whose population, tion-to him it belongs to encourage the including the liberties, exceeds 1,100,000 arts, to support by means of vast public souls, wherein are congregated more than works, thousands of laborers, to succor in200,000 mechanics, wherein ferment the digence, to diffuse instruction, to preside most disorderly passions, wherein rendez- at the organization of the city militias. He vous the most dangerous banditti-to main- occupies the city palace, more costly, more tain freedom of passage in over 2000 magnificent now than the royal residence; streets, furrowed by 60,000 vehicles-to he receives the chief magistrate of the state collect all the elements of unhealthiness on the occasions of festivals given him by into a house of industry which brings within the compass of a few kilometres square more than 6000 noxious establishments, in the midst of an immense population hud. dled together in narrow dwellings-to facilitate the victualing, to promote the regular distribution of the necessaries of life in a centre of consumption wherein are annually ingulfed 140,000 quintals of corn, To the prefect of police is assigned, on 950,000 hectolitres of wine, 42,000 hectoli- the contrary, the most painful province,tres of brandy, 170,000 beeves, cows or all the measures of severity, the adminis calves, 427,000 sheep, 83,000 hogs, where tration of the prisons, the arrest of the ac5 millions of francs are expended in fresh cused, the transfer of the condemned. Exfish, 8 millions in poultry and game, 12 mil-posed to the malevolent prejudices of a lions in butter and 5 millions in eggs-such are in substance the important and delicate duties of the Prefect of Police.

He disposes of a budget exceeding 12 millions. There are under his command a guard of over 2500 foot-soldiers and 400 horse, a body of firemen of 830 men, offices

his capital; he addresses him in the name of the city, at the head of the municipal body; he is the master of ceremonies of the old Parisian burgesses, their superintendent, their architect. He attaches his name to new establishments, and is blessed for creations of public utility of which he is often but the passive executor.

blind and ignorant public opinion, to which the police appears an enemy, not a protector, he can never obtain but negative successes-forgotten if tranquillity reign, assailed, compromised, if disorder break out. His triumph is in the security of the public, a precious one in that the multitude are

entire lives, and their political positions
authorize in advance to pretend to it.
Its History.

happy to obtain it, but which they judge to be easy and natural the more of it they enjoy. He lives surrounded with prisoners, gendarmes, agents of the lowest order; his house, which there are at this moment pre- The prefecture of police has been created parations to render more suitable, is gloomy in 1800, at a period when a reorganizing and uncomfortable-all in fine conspires to power was everywhere placing authority give him a secondary rank in the hierarchy in its conditions of force and durability; of municipal powers, and to strip his title of splendor and dignity. However, if honor be the price of peril and grow with its magnitude, if the dignity of an office should be measured by the services which it is called upon to render, the prefect of police is the first magistrate of the capital. Paris, deprived of the advantages procured her by the administration of the prefect of the Seine, might languish in a painful abasement, would cease to be at the head of the | In 1790, the constituent assembly were discivilized world, still Paris would survive its departed splendor; but Paris, a prey to all the evils that are warded off by an indefat igable and vigilant police, would speedily perish in the convulsions of anarchy.

for the first time, the administration of Paris obeyed a simple and vigorous direction. In 1789, dispersed between the lieutenant of police, the provost of merchants, the sheriffs, the committee of buildings, (chambre des batimens,) the bureau of finance, and even the parliament, it lacked system and unity; confusion reigned in its bosom ; an obscure distribution of ill-defined powers and duties engendered incessant collisions.

arming the government of its authority; at Paris, as at all points of the kingdom, were constituted multiplied and deliberative bodies, able in counsel, but unfit for action. The 10th August, preluding the sanguinary This the Emperor had comprehended, and usurpation by the Commune of Paris, his policy, always sensible like his genius, founded but a political dictatorship. The labored unremittingly to elevate the magis- Directory communicated to the power eletrature of the prefect of police. He main- vated upon the ruins of the Commune the tained with him a direct and daily inter- debility and incoherence which menaced course, intent upon extending his powers, itself, and must have promptly led to its upon giving him an exalted place in public fall. The Consulate alone, or rather the opinion; in all the conflicts of jurisdictions genius in whom it was personified, perhe used to accord him his support. The ceived the exceptional situation of a city restoration, in a similar spirit, conferred for where the destinies of the state were incesa while on the prefect of police the title of santly at stake, placed it under the authominister of state. The government of July rity of two magistrates, appointed by the has perhaps not sufficiently appreciated the central power itself, invested one with the considerations of general interest, which administration, properly termed, the other demand at least between the two prefects with the police; but, yielding to jealousies a strict equality. Since the electoral la which the circumstances explain, as much has so impoliticly excluded them from the as his political distrust, he had left to the Chamber of Deputies, in opening to them wishes of the citizens but an unfaithful and access to the other Chamber, the elevation factitious expression, in a municipal council of the prefect of the Seine alone to the packed, appointed like the prefects and despeerage, has placed his colleague, to the titute of any real authority. The Restorapublic eye, in a sort of a relative inferior- tion, whose partizans do not proclaim the ity. Yet this dignity might, without suff- maxims of liberty but at the periods when ering, be attached to functions the remem | they have not to apply them, left undisbrance of which does not disfigure the most turbed this organization. The government illustrious lives, and which the actual pres- of July, more sincere in its liberalism, has ident and speaker of the Chamber of peers referred the composition of the municipal have successively occupied. We should council to election, augmented the number not suppose that one of the first posts in the of the members, and assigned seats to the State could belong to men who would not be two prefects; it is under the eyes of this worthy of sitting beside those honorable effective and faithful representation of the predecessors. The present is a guarantee people that they discharge their respective for the future, and it is well that the per- functions. The prefect of police, without spective of this attribution, if not necessary, losing any of his official attributions, in at least habitual, circumscribes the selec- contact with an elective power, finds himtions of the government within the circle self elevated in public opinion by the comof personages whom their characters, their munity of responsibility which unites them

Political Division.

together, for if sometimes the elective coun- The police, divided into Political and of cils restrain and fetter the functionaries security or Civil. whom they control, they aggrandize and sustain them more frequently by their adhesion; this popular sanction is particularly necessary to a magistrate of police-it repays him in popularity more than it derogates from his power.

The internal labor is distributed according to the several attributions of the prefect. His private cabinet alone entertain political questions. There, in secret, under A law, this long time promised, is about to the guarantee of a reciprocal confidence, put an end at once to the respective rights pass in succession affairs the most delicate, of the municipal council of Paris, and of those which regard the security of the state, the two prefects, and to the distribution of the manœuvres of factions, secret societies powers between the latter; it will, if we and their conventicles-perilous concerns, are not mistaken, maintain much more than which involve the responsibility of the it will reform. The municipal council ex- | chief, and of which he must reserve to him ercises at present, by law, an authority con- self the direct and exclusive appreciation. fined within just bounds, and which needs Two divisions, sufficiently defined by their only to be clearly defined. As to the duties designations-the division of security, and of the two prefects, the repartition of their the division of administration-share bepowers excites no objections, except upon tween them the matters not-political; the some points not very essential, and a suita- secretary-general directs the affairs proper ble solution of the difficulty will easily result from the discussion of the Chambers.

It has seemed to us that it would be of some interest to analyse the organization of the Prefecture of Police, its means of action, its several attributions. This description may subserve the law which is in course of preparation; it will, perhaps, gratify the curiosity of such as desire to understand the political and administrative institutions under which they live; it may furnish a term of comparison and a subject of meditation to the foreign statesman; it will in fine enlighten public opinion, by dissipating unjust prejudices.

I.

The Analysis.

The duty of the prefect of police is more to superintend than to act, to prescribe than to execute, and, while his agents within the city are numerous and busy, it is without particularly, and in the active service, that his power is manifested.

to the administration considered in itselfthe personal, the material, and a certain number of objects not classed in these divisions. The bureaux of the prefecture of police do not differ from those of the ministers or of the grand administrations, except that they require from the agents (employees) who compose them a special promptitude of examination, decision and despatch.

The organization of the exterior service is strong and powerful. Every body knows that Paris is divided into 12 arrondissements and 48 quartiers. In each arrondissement (ward) a brigade of inspectors and city constables, under the direction of a peace officer; in each quartier (section) resides a commissary of police, aided by one or two secretaries, sedentary fellow-laborers, and by at least one inspector of police and a bell ringer, (porte sonnette,) who are exterior and executive agents.

The commissaries of police are independ ent of the peace officers and their superiors in the order of the hierarchy. They are The bureaux concert the measures to be appointed by an ordinance of the King, retaken, give the impulsion, collect and cer- lieve at once the prefect of police who tify the results; they prepare, deliberate, holds them under his authority and the organize, they are the thought and under-attorney-general of whom the law has constanding of the system. The active officers stituted them auxiliaries. They keep their watch, execute, hinder, prevent, repress. In immediate connection with the citizens they are stationed at all points, by day and night-they are the eyes, the arms of the administration. But in the multitude of the duties imposed upon them, the part of passive and silent instruments would not be sufficient, and their obedience stands always in need of being enlightened by reflection and guided by discernment.

bureau (office) always open in each quartier, and there perform a ministry of reconcilia tionand order exceedingly useful and highly appreciated by the Parisians who find in them arbitrators and peacemakers. They are at the disposition of citizens who claim assistance in any public or private trouble, receive and examine individuals under arrest supervise the execution of the ordinances of police-all which concerns health and