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Two illustrations of nineteenth-century precocity, rather superior to the generality of anecdotes regarding the wisdom of the rising generation, we find in recent French papers.  One of them is originated by the Moulin-a-Parole.  Madame de B. was visiting, with her baby, her friend Madame X. After chattering three-quarters of an hour, without giving anybody else a chance to put in a word, Madame X. pauses, when Baby immediately takes up the burden of conversation.  Madame X., getting tired at last, says, “Why do you talk so much, mignonne?  It isn’t nice for a little girl like you to do so.”  “Oh,” replies Baby very graciously, “it is only so that mamma may rest!” A little lad furnishes the other instance of the premature sagacity of modern childhood.  A famous merchant has four children, three daughters and a boy named Arthur.  Two of the former die successively of consumption, and at the funeral of the second a friend of the family comes to offer his compliments of condolence, and, patting little Arthur’s head, tells the poor lad the house must seem lonely to him now.  “Yes,” briskly replies Arthur, whom his father has brought up to accurate ideas, “here we children are reduced fifty per cent.”  Worthy to take charge of these children would have been the prudent bonne of whom Charivari speaks.  The morning after engaging herself to Madame R. she hastened to that lady with her finger wrapped in a handkerchief, and in an agitated voice asked if the converts were real silver.  “Why so, Nannette?” “Because, I just pricked my finger with a fork, and I know that if it is plated copper I ought to take the precaution of having the place bled.”  “Don’t be alarmed,” replies the lady, smiling despite herself at the young girl’s innocence, “my plate is all solid.”  “Ah,” says the bonne with a sigh of relief, “I am so glad!” The day after, the simple young lady disappeared with all the silver.  It is not every bonne that would take such precautions.

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Paris has always been famous among modern cities for its genius and industry in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the audacious invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old ones—­either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of preparing it.  It was a curious incident in the late history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard necessity—­that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity.  But the zest resulting from the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days appears to have been so great that we now hear of an enterprise worthy to have a Brillat-Savarin to celebrate it—­namely, the formation of a society under the presidency of the naturalist Lespars, designed to bring into vogue as eatable a great class of living creatures whose