Phenix Gazette

Translated for the New-York Commercial Advertiser from the Gazette de France of the 15th May.

At the moment we speak, the Danube has been crossed. Thus Islamism is threatened at once in Europe and in Asia, and none can foretell the issue of the struggle—

The signal gun has been fired, and the events to follow depend on a wisdom higher than that of man. What are we doing while such great interests are at stake? We are occupied with deciding whether there are too many pupils in the secondary seminaries and by what kind of priests they are taught.—We are discussing the question whether the prelates shall be responsible in matters relating to the clergy. All the energy, all the ardour of France is directed to the details of internal police. The mind is fixedly preoccupied with questions that cannot be solved.

'The parties which divide France,' said General Lamarque to-day, 'and its uncertain policy, deprive her of the weight which she ought to have in the balance of Europe.'

And at what time have we ever had greater need of union and strength? Austria is uniting her armies, England is arming her fleets, and all the parties in Great Britain seem only occupied in healing all their wounds, and in silencing all their disputes, in order to leave the British Empire the means of maintaining its consequence, and profiting by events.

Thus, while a nation, which, to use Rousseau's expression, has been encamped in Europe for three centuries, has mounted fiercely for battle, to defend her conquests against an enemy three times more numerous—while the Russians march to that dominion promised them by the great Catharine,—while the Greek people break from their slavery by magnanimous efforts, and escape from a long subjection with the price of their blood, we waste our time in the labyrinths of chicanery, we are every morning at the pleasure of specious politicians, and submit to the yoke of journalistic clerks.