THE FROST AND THE FIRES.
WHENEVER a great fire happens at the time of a great frost, people exclaim—"Alt! there is never a frost without a fire!" — as if fires never happened in the Dog-days. We dare say the dealers in those curiosities of experience "remarkable coinci- dences" could fit every frost that has been chronicled with a fire— graduated to the proportionate scale of intensity, no doubt. One would think that old Winter kindled the Palace of the Czar to melt the icicles on his beard ; or that Jack Frost required the aid of Swing to help him to a thaw. The present Frost is a good spe- cimen of his race, certainly : he looks rigidly severe at us with his glassy eyes; his grasp pinches us to numbness; and his frore breath chills our very vitals : lie holds his countenance as im- moveable, too, as if he intended to take up his winter-quarters here,—notwithstanding Mr. MURPHY, who as well as M. ARAGO predicted his coming, promises us (in the Weather Almanac-ft) that his visit will end with this week, and his gelid fetters dissolve in rain. But we do not consider this member of the family of Frosts of such importance as to require three grand Fires, one in each of three European capitals, besides a number of lesser ones, kindled as if to light his pipe withal, to celebrate his advent; especially if he is to remain no longer, and perform no greater wonders than "stopping the supplies" of water in our houses, and blocking up the canals: he ought at least to cover in the Thames with ice, and then John Bull, besides making him wel- come to the old Royal Exchange, will roast a bullock for him.
The French, who epigrammatize on every incident, have seized urott the circumstance of these burnings of public buildings in three capital cities, to point a moral.
" The Quotidienne remarks, that in three European capitals that building was balm which was the type of each—the Palace of the despot at St. Peters- burg, that of commerce and capital in London, and in Paris the comCdie or theatre. And any other building in the French capital might have burned as well, adds the Carlist paper ; for what building is there here which is other than a conu'ulie ?"
The National makes a similar observation : happy journalist that made it first! In this country we leave these sentimen- talisms to the penny-a-liners—geniuses in their way, and of a must laudable industry, but never to be compared with the Pari- sian artists in paragraphs.
Some wag burnt the Mosque of Santa Sophia at Constantinople, to carry out the parallel : and we were expecting to hear, through
the channel of Mr. ALEXANDER'S electrical telegraph, which spans our globe in three minutes, that the American House of Assembly, the Temple of Juggernaut, the Great Pyre- mid, and St. Peter's at Rome, had followed in due course. But the Fire King may not have gone his rounds yet. By the by, we think this flaming minister of justice was not very happy in his selection—regarding it in an ethical point of view —or he would have prekrred the Palais Royal in Paris, and swallowed up San Carlos as a hint to the Neapolitans.
To descend to minutiae, we may remark that the Whigs seem in favour with this fiery monitor,—for Sir EDWARD SUGDEM among the Tories, and Mr. WARD among the Radicals, have had domiciliary visitations; which omens we trust will be duly re- garded by their respective parties. Then there has been a gra- nary burnt ; which may be taken as a hint to Ministers to repeal the Corn-laws.
Apropos of omens. Mr. WARD seems to be particularly pointed at : in assisting to put out the fire in his house, he again put out the shoulder that was before dislocated in his loyal eagerness to rush into the presence of the Queen. May not this be meant as a warning to him not to put his shoulder to the wheel of the Movement ?
In a political point of view, it would seem either that Fire were impatient of being considered a mere Destructive, or that Frost, desirous of showing that he is not such an Obstructive as he is taken for, has employed the opposite element to produce a jusle- milieu effect. We commend this idea to the attention of our Pari sian brethren, who read the interpretation of fires with the saga. city of soothsayers; while we, dull matter-of-fact folks, penetrate no deeper into their hidden causes than to discern overheated flues and great want of water.
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