There is a little stir in many quarters abroad, out
of which the newsmongers try to make something.
M. Guizot has been obliged to rusticate for a month, to repair his injured health. There is the ready interpretation put upon his retirement, that it is to be permanent, but with no apparent grounds. The probable explanation is, that he is suffering from a chronic affection of the liver, which needs repose for cure. Those who have never suffered from severe, bodily indisposition induced by anxious ancl_laborious work, are often not alive to the appositeness of mere simple repose as a remedy. There are con- ditions induced by much work in which a small quantity of work keeps up or renews the worst symptoms. Meanwhile, even the temporary loss of the chief man in the French Cabinet is awk- ward, just as the question of completing the armament of the fortifications round Paris comes before the Chamber of Deputies. The cannons are ready to gape wide-mouthed around the capita/, and the Parisians begin to suspect that they are in a trap : it will need all the art of Ministers to persuade the frightened herd, before the trap is finally closed, that it will not hurt them.
The Executive Government of the United States is said to be sending secret agents to Texas and Mexico to make another at- tempt at beating up opinions in favour of annexation ; and it is also reported that in Texas itself an annexation-fever is on the increase. Those reports, however, come through the doubtful channel of New Orleans papers • which do not always care to say so much what is true as what will be liked in the Southern States.
Lord Metcalfe has dismissed the Canadian Legislature, after a productive session ; which leaves the province more prosperous than it found it, with a surplus revenue for public works, and the "Ministerial crisis" virtually unsettled,—unless it prove to be settled by time and the Governor-General's patient pertinacity.
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