The stockbrokers of Paris have broken out into idolatry. The
financial decree of the 12th of November has had for one of its results to abolish the admission fee to the Bourse. Their gratitude is boundless, and they wish for a statue of their god. " Allow us," - they say, " to raise a monument of our gratitude, by placing the statue of your Majesty in the Palace of the Bourse. The warrior will have his triumphal column on our public thoroughfares. The statue of the Prince Pacificator in the Palace of the Bourse will protect those immense negotiations which fertilize the labours of nations, and proclaim the wisdom of sovereigns." The tenderness and " nice feeling" of this address touched the heart of Majesty, but the tutelary statue was not ac- corded ; the Prince Pacificator no doubt *fearing that his place in the Temple of Fame might be endangered by so conspicuous a situation above the shrine of Mammon. A portrait was vouchsafed instead, which gives the Em- peror the position rather of a patron saint of the Stock Exchange than of a guardian deity. It is to hang in the Bourse committee-room, where political speculators, as they pass it by, will no doubt often waft it—with better reason —the same cajolery and menaces which ignorant Roman Ca- tholics lavish on their Madonna.
