NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ritweather has been better. It still rains every day, but with mparative rareness and moderation, and the gloom is no longer a dull weight on the intellectual faculties. The big people, too, are cheering up. The Emperor of the French has published or caused to he published quite a stirring circular, " reassuring " France and Europe, especially France, and feels so much better after this able defence of his policy that he has at last got away to Biarritz, arid so silenced the " grave remarks " upon the state of his health which the Parisians had invented to enliven the gloom. There is evidently nothing so exhilarating to a dull world as the prospect of a vacancy rather high up in it. The Parisians have not felt more anxious about the Emperor's health than the Ber- liners have felt about Count Bismarck's, who has had " neuralgia in the left leg " to an extent which inspired the Berlin corres- pondent of the Telegraph of Thursday with a wild hope of a very great sensation indeed, and induced him to telegraph a special despatch of extreme despondency to that journal,—which was interpreted by the funereal imagination of Englishmen to mean mortification to that important limb. The mortification, however, fell elsewhere. The Count, who was in such imminent danger on Wednesday evening, took his place in the triumphal procession of the Prussian troops into Berlin on Thursday. Victor Emanuel and the Pope, who were supposed to make up the quad- rilateral of great invalids, don't seem to take much account of the unfavourable opinion entertained by the world of their health, and, on the whole, we may presume that all these great men unanimously decline to die.
