NEWS OF THE WEEK.
pA_RIS on Sunday celebrates the centenary of the Revolu- tion. President Carnot will visit the building in Versailles where the States-General met in 1789, and will deliver a speech in the Palace. There will be a grand military display, and an exhibition of fireworks from the top of the Eiffel Tower, 980 ft. in the air. The affair strikes Englishmen as a little French and theatric, but we did much the same thing in London in June, 1887, and the Americans have been doing it in New York this week, their occasion being the centenary of Washington's arrival in that city as President. The assemblage of Regulars, Veterans, and Militia on Tuesday was unprecedented, and took seven hours to march past the President, while the crowd is said—probably not by a statist—to have reached the unprecedented figure of two millions. If half that statement is true, this "cuts the record "of crowds, though nearly as many will be abroad on Sunday in Paris. There is no objection to these ceremonials that we know of, except the weariness they engender; but the scribes who prepare telegraphic bulletins about them might be a little less prolix. It was proper to report President Harrison's speech, for it might have been interesting; but everybody could imagine what Mr. Chauncey Depew, some- times a great orator, must say on such an occasion. He did say it, and it was, of course, the usual exultation over material progress. That progress is as marvellous as the growth of a Californian pine ; but the pine, being a work of God, grows silently.
