Swinburne has written an ode to the French Republic.  This lofty rhyme is built up of strophes, anti-strophes, and an epode.  In its construction, and grandiloquence are thrown about with the careless disregard for innocent passers-by which characterizes that poet’s freedom of style.  Most probably no sane English-speaking person has read it through and preserved his sanity.  The poet’s idea in writing it was to get the French engaged in trying to understand it, and the Germans to engage in translating it, and thus stop the war by pure exhaustion of the combatants.  The idea was good, but hardly practical.

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SOCIAL SCIENCE BY TELEGRAPH.

The right of an independent Briton to beat his wife without being liable to impertinent foreign interference is well known to be one of the most precious privileges inherited from Magna Charta.  The national use of this privilege is now generally considered, by social philosophers, to be the foundation of the love of “fair play,” so universally characteristic of the English.  It is only upon this ground that we can account for the following item recently telegraphed from London as a special to the N. Y. Times.

“It is curious to see that, while the married men of the city are against interference, all military and naval men are loud in expressions of indignation because no effort is made by England to save France from ruin.”

As we see it, this is not curious at all.  To the comprehensive English mind, the war in Europe is a mere family quarrel, on a large scale.  But what is really curious the special does not tell us.  What position do the military and naval men take who happen to be married?

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A GROWL FROM A BRITON.

Mr. Punchinello:—­One of the balloon reporters from Paris says: 

“Great care is taken to save food from waste.  There is much horse-flesh eaten.”

For a Frenchman in a state of siege horse-flesh is all right—­the French eat frogs, you know, and horses have frogs in their feet.  What I like about the thing in Paris, though, is that they call it horse-flesh, and don’t try to jerk it on a fellow for beef.  Jerked beef is bad enough, but only think of jerked horse, by Jove, you know!

Now I want to say that here in New York, not being in a state of siege, we are eating a lot more horse-flesh than we know of, all the same—­but they call it beef.

Look here, now.

I take my grub, sometimes (only for the sake of seeing life, you know), at a decent sort of a place enough, to which butchers resort.  There is a man always to be seen there at grub time, a cockish-looking fellow, somewhat, with a horse-shoe pin in his scarf, and he is as thick as thieves with the butchers.  Yesterday, for the first time, I got an inkling of who and what he is.  I saw him performing an operation upon a horse, in the yard of a livery stable.  He is a VETERINARY SURGEON!  He consorts with BUTCHERS!  Put that and that together, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, and see what you can make of it.  And the duffer always eats mutton, too, or fish.  I never yet heard him call for beef.  He knows all about nag, and likes it alive, but he is not to be nagged into eating it.  Neigh! neigh!