the sum-total of plunder has been since the first
fortnight, or whether the fountains are still as useless as spiked
cannon or tongueless bells, we have yet to learn.

Now comes a contrast. The countrymen of Sir Richard claim that in London
from time immemorial not a single cup was ever stolen from the public
fountains. So tempting a theme for generalization could not be resisted
by the Paris newspaper philosophers, who have deduced from this theft of
the cups a broad distinction between the British loafer and the French
loafer, declaring that the former "respects any collective property
which he partly shares," while the latter does not even draw this
distinction, but grabs whatever he can lay his hands on. "The luck of
the Wallace fountains," cries one moralizer, "shows how hard it is to
reform the Paris _gamin_ so long as the law contents itself with its
present measures. If the state does not speedily educate children found
straying in the street, it is all up with the present generation."
Thereupon follows a disquisition on the part which Paris children played
in the Commune. "Now, the child," adds our newspaper Wordsworth, "is the
man viewed through the big end of the opera-glass;" and he points his
moral, therefore, with the need of compulsory education. "One of the
first duties incumbent on the Chamber at the next session will be the
solution of this question. Let it take as a perpetual goad the fate of
the Wallace goblets. You begin by stealing a cup of tin--you end by
firing the Tuileries or plundering the Hotel Thiers." There is a droll
mingling of Isaac Watts and Victor Hugo in this _denoument_, and despite
its practical good sense one is amused at the evolution of a grave
discourse from so trivial a text as the Wallace drinking-cups.

* * * * *

To people of a statistical rather than a sentimental turn, the
mathematics of marriage in different countries may prove an attractive
theme of meditation. It is found that young men from fifteen to twenty
years of age marry young women averaging two or three years older than
themselves, but if they delay marriage until they are twenty to
twenty-five years old, their spouses average a year younger than
themselves; and thenceforward this difference steadily increases, till
in extreme old age on the bridegroom's part it is apt to be enormous.
The inclination of octogenarians to wed misses in their teens is an
every-day occurrence, but