DIARY OF A READER OF THE FRENCH PAPERS.

Jan. 26th. Prince POLIGNAC has arrived in Paris, to propose him self, it is said, for the Premiership of the French Ministry. This step, like almost every other step taken by a political character, is attributed to English intrigue. Judging from the Paris journals, it might be supposed that the, Duke of WELLINGTON was always playing at chess with Austria, and Russia, and Prussia, for knights and pawns, and that he never went to bed without dreaming of the downfal of France. Good easy man ! he little knows the dark intrigues that are spun for him in the cafos of Paris. We much doubt whether the image of La belle France, pale and wo-begone, ever draws his curtain at dead of night, or yet rides the nightmare of his Cabinet dinners, — The activity of France respecting all subjects of commercial interest would astonish an Englishman ignorant of the real state of that country." All kinds of commissions of inquiry are going on, and extend their ramifications to every trading town in the provinces. The evidence of a M. DUBRUNFAUT before the Commission d'Enquilte, respecting the manufacture of sugar from beetroot, is curious. There are in France about one hundred beetroot manufactories : this year they will produce about five millions of killogrammes (about two and a half millions of pounds) : last year only half this quantity was manufactured. It is believed that this proportion will continue in a geometrical ratio ; and in four or five years the produce will satisfy the wants of the country. The price of beet-root sugar ought, says the witness, to be about a shilling per lb. Common lump sugar at present costs 14 and 14i per lb. ; and very poor sugar it is at that price.

— Another CONTRAFATTO has appeared in the department of Vaucluse. Will the French Catholic priest ever be permitted to marry ? NAPOLEON had a ridiculous crotchet about keeping, up the Pope's dignity, otherwise all the French priests would or might have been at this moment married men. The Pope was ready to consent : " It is but an affair of discipline," said Cardinal GONSALVL

271h. The Chambers are about to open, and the members of different parties are forming themselves into clubs, for the purpose of acting together with more etket: after the manlier of our opposition. The Ministry appears to have so little of a decided character, that the papers are full of discussions as to which party in the Chambers they will join: they talk of it precisely as of a sheet of blank paper, upon which alw one who obtains possession of it may write his opinions. FREDERICK SCHLEGEL is dead. He was just commencing a new course of lectures on philosophy. To use the words of a great man of unhappy memory, ARTHUR THISTLEWOOD, we may say, he knows all about it now--KANT or CorlooncET? The rem gade Protestant as well as the renegade patriot has left his school, and is now doubtless a pupil himself where more than great talents are required to pass. Tie more celebrated SCHLEGEL still remains, but it would be hard to eay which of the pair of great brothers had the profoundest intellect, the most searching wisdom. The French boa:sellers are again loudly complaining of the injury their interests sustain by the re-impressions of French works at Brussels. The cheap editions of the Pays Bas are said to supply Germany, the Northen states, and even America. This has been attempted to be countericted by the establishment of branch houses and agencies at Bruss4s ; and the pirates have taken a curious method of driving out heir opponents: the moment that a book of interest is published at 3russels by a French agent, or that copies are sent down there to 111 agent, they are bought up by the centrefacteurs and taken to Pins, where they are sold under the very noses of the publishers at hal j price. Thus they early OT1 the war.

28th. The journals of "Paris are occupied by lhe report of the King's speecksztlhe opening of the Chambers. The passage relating to

French glory was received with a triple round of applause. "Glory of France !" says the Mvning Chronicle, speaking of this passage, " Glory of France ! Glory of a fiddlestick !" This is =courteous, but full of meaning. Nevertheless such expressions are so calculated to create bad feelieg, that they had better be avoided, though it cost us a laugh. The words in the original are—" que S. M. n'oubliera jamais que la gloire de la France est un depot sacre, et que Dionne= crun iltre le gardien est lai)Iiis belle prarogative de in conronne." " In this sentiment," says the Courrier, the most liberal of the Paris journals, " every French heart will sympathise." What will French hearts think of the Chronicle's " fiddlestick" ? The Chronicle has only within these few weeks been admitted into France. The Royal speech was delivered at half-past one o'clock on the 7th: it is commented on by the Editor of the Chronicle in his paper published on the morning of the 29th, consequently he must have received it in the night of the 28th. This t a specimen of the rapid communication existing between the two capitals. The cornier who carried the despatch consumed only sixteen hours between Paris and Calais.

— M. Pacno, the author of Travels in the Cvrenaica, reviewed

along with Captain BEECHEY'S Nvork on the North Coast of Africa ih the Edinburgh Review (No. 95), has just committed suicide. Excessive labour in preparing his work on this subject for the press is said to have been the cause.

Sonic time ago the Abbe GALLAY, in a moment of en thusiastic modesty, brae some plaster casts at Perpignan ; and since then, the Director of the Drawing Academy has thrown others into the liver, because of their indecency. Not many years ago, a Rev. Mr. Man E R LX wrote a pamphlet to slimy that. the immorality of the Cambridge students might be attributed to the exhibition of a naked Venus, by TITIAN, in the Fitzwilliam Museum.

— At the trial of some swindlers before the Court of Assizes

of the Seirte, who had worn bushy mustachios and whiskers during the commission of their crimes, the Judge, in order to identify them, summoned into court a perempier-coi/Tanefithricarttde moustaches; and desired him to fit the prisoners with suitable specimens of his art. A toilette, we will suppose, by no means agreeable to the feelings of these military dandies, who no doubt looked sheepish enough in their bristling ornaments.

29th. At the opening of the Chambers, in administering the

oath to one of the members, the President by age, M. LABBY de POMPIERES, in reciting the words, stopped once or twice, and was clearly at fault. The Right side broke out into laughter on each occasion. The President turned to them and said, " Gentlemen ! at seventy-eight. years of age, a man's memoly sometimes fails him." Silence was immediately established.

301h. A son of the Ex-King MURAT is at the American bar, and is married to a niece of Washiirton.

-The celebrated M. CHARLES DuPiN has commenced his

course of geometry applied to the arts, for the benefit of the operatives. In his first lecture he has opened it battery against the theatres of Paris, Such as we only hear from the pipit of the Methodists.

"Every evening (says be), in the theatres, where the moderateness of the price seems calculated as a trap for the lower orders, is exhibited on the stage every refinement of crime. Here may be found a periodical school of demoralization. It is in vain that the malefactor is punished at the end of the drama: the mechanical means of robbery, of fraud, of escape, of murder, are not the less taught. Plays are the technology of convicts, illustrated by examples. In following these infamous courses of instruction, they who hate labour discover the secret of procuring shameful means of subsistence without production."

He proceeds in this strange style, and ends by calling upon Government to close these academies of crime. Alas! alas! that men will not ride their own hobbies, without running a tilt against those of all other men.

31st. BAP.RAS is dead, at the age of seventy-three. It is said that be has left his memoirs hellind ban ; surety they will be fall al. 111L-rest.

Feb. 1st. A seal has been set upon the IlAmus, on the

same ground that those of CAlinAci,:izss w dl ythe Govern ment—to wit, flint the Government is In t a aeners of all men

who tilled the -first 1.1;,ces of the sit. . A excuse for an

arbitrary art! It is Fad that 13Ann...s, ;:v,..71e of the ;inlet ice, had taken care to dispose of his prine;; The French peraslierd press 1,ca,k Lei:ot, in imitation of the medical journal under this title in England. It seems to be viewed with less jealousy by the faculty than its original,