The government seems to imitate all schemes, and lately there is a proposition for a universal insurance company—against fire, flood, and faminehealth, death, or accident-in fact, it is to cover every possible contingency. Some Parisian writer remarks that a government who has on its hands the profession of "engineer, miner, road maker, professor of literature and science, shoolmaster, horse-dealer, farmer, grazier, shepherd, teacher of music and singing, theatrical director, trainer of race-horses, instructer of ballet girls, etc., etc., need not be ashamed to keep an insurance office." With so many irons in the fire, no wonder money is in demand. The Bank of France is still draining England of her gold. Nothing done less than 6 per cent, and no paper over seventy-five days. The fall on railway and other shares, since last May, arising out of the bank's refusing to advance on stock, is said to be over $100,000,000! Still, the stocks are treble above their intrinsic value. The Bank of France requires, say its managers, more capital.

Note the changes in the French Bank during the last three yearsthey show some remarkable facts. At the close of 1854, the Bank of France had eighty-one millions bullion, and only seventy millions of bills under discount. At the same time in 1855, she had but forty-three millions bullion, but eighty-four millions of dollars under discount. Again, in 1856, (this last month's return.) with but forty millions bullion, she has bills netted one hundred and ten millions of dollars! These few figures tell a strange tale they need no explanation. Those who believe in better times on this side, should mark the facts given-not my opinions-to show the contrary. England buys Russia's funds, but does not invest in the French! Why?-simply because her capitalists have not recovered from the fearful confiscation of 1797. The English never forget such things. Old stagers will tell of papering their lodgings with assignats-at par in 1789, but five years after, down to twenty. Talleyrand bid off them as the leading stock jobber, followed by such speculators as Mirabeau and Danton. People now have more confidence in the government securities. In 1798 there were but 24,796 bondholders-in 1854, 785,243! The accumulations of the savings banks are converted by the depositors into rentes-3 per cent, 4, and 5. In England the entire debt is consolidated into a 3 per cent. Some of the heads of government have become millionaires by their operations on the Bourse. De Morny could not pay his debts in 1848- -now he is said to be the richest man in the Empire, and last month settled one million on his beautiful bride of eighteen summers, that he brought away with him from the court of Romanhoff. No more to-day on France.

Persia and China attract attention just now. Have you room for another page? These lands bear upon the money market. War costs millions, and they are both engaged. From Europe, let us turn to Asia-the battle-field has changed. By this time, England and Russia are approaching each other on Persian ground. Ferukh Khan, the Persian Envoy, has just arrived amid a cloud of retainers, and blaze of Oriental display. Napoleon receives him like a prince. Russia inspires the Shah, and England and Persia are at war! As in the Trojan war, there was a woman in the case-frail, fair, and forty. Diplomacy ended in fighting-so He-rat fell to revenge she-rat! Your pardon, sir!

A century since the Afghans took it from the Persians, and now the latter have only taken back their own. They tried to do it in 1815, when

Napoleon was under a cloud-and again in 1838, when an English squadron in the Persian Gulf frightened them away, just as the city was about to surrender. The fact is, Herat is the key of Afghanistan, and Affghanistan is the door of India. No wonder England loses color, for India is a jewel in her crown. She has not forgotten, however, that the honorable East India Company spent one hundred millions in that memorable frontier war, and lives innumerable. The law of nations is the will of the strongest, and if Persia is still stubborn, under Russia's councils, England must send out troops, and the demand for a few hundred transports would give a push to the freighting business, and the money market must feel the change.

And China!-music again, and plenty of it! 'Tis the old story, Alexander the Great and the Robber! When you have read Admiral Seymour's dispatches, tell me if England has not now the title of chief among all the filibusters? Canton bombarded, will ring through the States!but England has no argument this time. Before, in '41, with the Bible in one hand, and a bill of smuggled opium in the other, she made her claim. The ten colums of the Gazette may be sifted down to a few lines. The Caroline went over the falls, but Mr. Webster and the elder Baring settled the question. The Crescent City and the Black Warrior were targets for the Moro's guns, yet we had no war with Spain. Kotza was not given up, and Austria humiliated, but it did not end in war-but it is far different with the "Lorcha Arrow." When Sir John Bowring found that it was not a British vessel-did not fly the British flag-that the Colonial Register expired on the 27th September, and the Chinese boarded her to take out the pirates not till the 8th October-when the governor found no Englishman was on board, and the Viceroy's arguments unanswerable, he changed his tactics-remembered that Canton in 1849 was not opened, as agreed in 1842 and '47—and then decided to make that the issue. Open, Sessame! said Admiral Seymour. Sessame declined! Yeh said nay! And when the Governor-general shut the Canton gate, British cannon soon opened it! Odessa was spared, but Canton, no! One was strong the other weak! Another Sinopean tragedy-almost a Copenhagen!

Canton, then, opened by the Portuguese in 1517; visited by the British ships in 1634; her direct trade with England dating from 1680, which the East India Company held till the monopoly was abolished in 1834Canton, who boldly met the British in 1842, and has been so long the port of China commerce-has been bombarded! The ships in port are ships of-war-the outside barbarians are British soldiers! Trade is stopped -and China, whose imperial canals-whose mammoth highways-whose wonderful government rules four hundred millions of people-and people whose ancestors understood the use of the mariner's compass, the art of making glass, and printing on wooden blocks, and gunpowder, when our ancestors were a lot of savages-China is to be again humiliated! The prestige England lost in Europe last year, and year before, she is going to regain in Asia!

However, commerce demands it, and morality is shocked. Commerce is a great leveler, and, of late years, don't associate much with her early friend-throwing right and morals overboard, as they seem to have done. There are no two opinions about the commercial view. A new field is opening a new era is commenced. Ministers at Pekin-foreigners in the

interior-all ports open! Steamers on the China River-and then, perhaps, railways and telegraphs! Yes, perhaps! but during the period of the war, trade will be paralized. The Americans won't have the English business under the neutral flag, as before; for already American heads, mistaken for English, have been hung on the walls of Canton, and American cannon have battered down some of the forts to revenge it. So America is with England, and France will join! Verily, it looks bad for the Brother of the Sun!

Upon the whole, now is the time to make a strike-commerce demands it-morality says no! I should think that the stopping of the machinery would smash some of the engineers, for the China trade is a wide spread credit. Break the spokes in a wheel, and down comes the wagon-take the shoes off, and you lame the horse! So will this Canton affair complicate the accounts of the outside barbarians-and hence I hear how Persia and China, as they stand, will keep the money market on the qui vive.

To come back to England. Money growing tight-bank directors change the rate again-now 6 per cent, and only 60 days. Turn again, Whittington! Last year they made seven changes-from 41, June 26th, to 7 per cent November 13th. The year opened at 6--closed at 61. In money matters, as England is to the continent, and all the world, so is the Bank of England to the other banks in the kingdom. She rules the whole. Peace in the West, but war in the East-so don't look for an easy money market. The old world is going to sleep, while the new world has just woke up. With a national debt of only $30,000,000-with an income of $77,000,000, to an expenditure $73,000,000, ($13,000,000 of which can/celed the debt)-with an estimated manufacturing and agricultural capital of $2,600,000,000—with an export table of $323,000,000, against an import list of $315,000,000--worked upon a banking capital of $344,000,000 -allowed to circulate $200,000,000 in bank notes-with an overflowing treasury, and unexampled prosperity-the United States has now the rank of first among the nations. The last reports from the several secretaries, have astonished debt-burdened Europe. They don't understand how we can manage to live on $48,000,000, fast-the last five year's average-and when they see a custom's revenue of $64,000,000, they cry free trade! While Great Britain takes two-thirds of our entire exports, I observe that we take in return from her one-half of our entire imports. It seems that the $50,000,000 that America loses in trade with Spain, South America, and China, she makes up out of Great Britain. I note that from 1793 to 1856, our gold and silver coinage amounted to $549,341,514; and that the total coin in the land is now estimated at $100,000,000. India, during only the last twenty years, has coined over $300,000,000, Let the company coin the mohur again-give the Indian a pure coin-no alloy-in gold-and the drain in Europe for silver will dry.

Hoping to be in time for February, and that I have not bored you with too many figures, believe me, I am most faithfully yours,

G. F. T.

Art. IV. THE FOOD OF PARIS:*

PORK AND CHEESE.

PORK was held in great estimation by the ancients. We read in one Traite de la Police the description of splendid repasts, where hogs, entirely stuffed with ingredients, as extraordinary as delicate, figured with honor. But however refined the varied dishes prepared of this meat, the hams were preferred by many to the other parts of the animal. "The hams," said Delamare, "have nevertheless always excelled the other parts." The Romans availed themselves of them sometimes at the entry of table, to stimulate the appetite; at other times at the close of the repast, to reanimate by their sharpness the wearied stomach, and excite thirst. They valued them so highly that Cato was at trouble to instruct them how to salt and smoke, and otherwise prepare them, that they might be good and well preserved; and St. George, the champion of England, dedicated his early talents to the same useful work.

The gourmands of our time have revived in their luxurious dinners, the usage dear to the ancients, and the guests of friendly tables not unusually take, in the middle of the most sumptuous and the most plentiful feast, a slice of smoked ham, to sharpen the appetite.

Pigs are everywhere appreciated for their fruitfulness, for the facility of their bringing up, and the abundance of their flesh. Pork furnishes man with an economical food. In countries otherwise less favored, where the peasant hardly knows flesh meat, pork forms the basis of his best repasts. In remote districts of France, every family keeps a pig, which they kill about Christmas. Certain parts of the animal they eat fresh, especially in the form of sausages or black puddings, the remainder is smoked or salted for the yearly provisions; and from time to time, Sunday especially, the small proprietor, or country tradesman, throws a little piece of ham or salt pork into his soup, with cheese and vegetables.

If pork is only an accessory food, for whoever is able to change of his own accord his diet, it is nevertheless a delicacy to those who through necessity would procure, without trouble, an appetising dish, always ready. In fact, a produce which requires from the consumer neither cooking nor seasoning previously, and which he can obtain in any quantity he desires, is a precious resource in cities, where the inhabitants, pressed with labor, and often limited in their resources, are compelled to economize their purse and time. It is this which, notwithstanding the successive improvements of the general diet of the Parisians, makes pork remain an article of great consumption in the capital-besides, the Parisian pork is in general of good quality. Even the laborer, when he has breakfasted off a piece of white bread, with a slice of pork, prepares for his supper a good soup of beef and vegetables, seasoned with bacon or drippings.

The number of pork shops are not limited in Paris-the trade is free. The public authorities put no restriction on them whatever, only in a general way, to guaranty at the same time the salubrity of the dwellings, and that of the produce offered for sale. There are at this moment in

Compiled from the French of M. Husson, for HUNT's Merchants' Magazine, by JAMES MCHENRY & Co., of Liverpool.

Paris 422 pork shops, distributed throughout the twelve wards of the city as follows:

This distribution meets the wants of each quarter, and corresponds, at least in the most considerable wards, with the density of the population. It is worthy of remark, that the poorer wards are not those where they count relatively most pork shops. The tradesman, whose work obliges him to absent himself from home, eats, it is true, on the place where he is; but the laborers who are so removed are not the most numerous. And, as we have already explained, besides the working classes, pork finds many consumers. The pork shops throughout the city are not the only places for the sale of this commodity; there are in the retail markets, principally in the Marché des Prouvaires, pork stalls, 75 in number, where they sell fresh pork. Thirty of these places are occupied by the pork dealers of Paris. Country dealers hold the forty-five others, and keep up an opposition favorable to the interests of the poorer classes.

It is in the three pig markets established in Saint Germain, in Chapelle, and the Maison Blanche, where the trade buy of the raw material. (A pig market has been established since 1851 in the Batignolles-it is but a small affair.)

They sell in these markets fat pigs destined for the supply of Paris and its environs. The Parisian pork shops absorbs nearly two-thirds of the quantities brought. They sell also lean pigs, which the graziers fatten for their own consumption, or to be sold late in the market.

From 1845 to 1852, forty-two districts have sent fat pigs to the markets for the supply of Paris. The two principal districts which have sent the largest quantities, are Sarthe, and Maine et Loire; after these comes Oise, Seine et Oise, Les Deux Sèvres, the Seine Inferieure, the Indre et Loire, the Orne, the Calvades, the Loiret, the Somme, the Eure et Loire, the Eure, the Seine, Mayenne Vendeé, and la Manche.

It was the custom formerly, that the pork dealers went to the markets to buy the live cattle; but for some time back, many among them have found it easier to supply themselves, or complete their supply at the Marché des Prouvaires, through the pork dealers of Nanterre, or by the means of several butchers called gargots; these bring to the market pigs cut in two, and sell them wholesale.

Further, in the year 1849, one of the markets was opened to sell pork by auction; but the quantities sold in this way are not considerable. Since the institution of the auction, they have put up for sale each year, as under :

This is how the pork dealers of Paris procure all the meat they require, so the reader can form a tolerable idea of the nature and the importance of their trade. We shall proceed to give some details of the various uses

For three months only.