THE IDEAL NEWSPAPER FOR TOURISTS.
TIFIE Swiss, who are not in the least bashful about confessing that a good harvest of English-speaking tourists is of infi- nitely more importance to their country than a good harvest of all its other crops put together, have had au idea ou which we think we could offer them a little useful advice. They have invented a sort of Swiss " Galignani" for the English-speaking (i.e., English and American) visitors in Switzerland, a daily paper published at Berne in English, during the season only, which they call the, Swiss Times, for which they charge about ficl. (not too dear, con- sidering that their constituency is both rich and limited), but which is a great deal too dull, and, in fact, is not, as far as we can see, constructed on a plan at all. Our Berne contemporary need not fear that we are going to criticize him with any inter- ested motives of our own. We will not scruple to let the public into an editorial secret, and confess that the present editor is one of many amongst a limited literary class who, if he could afford to have precisely his own way, would never see a news- paper from the moment he enters Switzerland to the moment he leaves it ; who would forget if he could that there were Lords
lying spirit, the " Geist der stets verneint." M. Faure, with his unearthly laugh, seems to embody the spell which in Hoffmann's tale of the Golden Pot comes on the student Anse]mus, making him look with dull common-place eyes on the mysteries he is admitted to partake in, killing the inspiration that has enabled him to rise to their height, and leading him into sacrilege, atoned for only by a grievous expiation. It is the best reward of composers and poets to have their works interpreted with such consummate artistic sympathy.
But for the existence of the notion that no one but a German may presume to understand German thought or poetry, it would be superfluous to say anything of the obvious fact that the out- ward manners of M. Faure's Mephistopheles, so far as the part has any local colour at all, are more French than German. This, however, does not affect the groundwork of the character. The spirit and genius of Goothe's creation are in no way local, and M. Faure has grasped them with a clearness and certainty that ensure fidelity even where there is most variation in detail from the original.
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