Paris was on Wednesday en fête in honour of Victor
Hugo. His bust was placed in the Pantheon in presence of the President and of the leading men of every department of the State. The ceremonial was magnificent, and passed without a hitch, and the euloginm pronounced by M. Georges Leygues, the Minister of Education, might have been written by Victor Hugo himself it was so grandiose, not to say "high falutin'," yet so full of eloquence and charm. It is rather too much to say of Hugo, as H. Leygues said : "He is epic like Homer and tragic like Aeschylus. He has the harmony of Pinder, the freshness of Theocritus, the verve of Juvenal. He has, moreover, the chivalrous and tender imagination of those Celtic bards who gave to the world the marvellous tales which cradled his dream of glory and of love " ; but neverthe- less Hugo was one of the first of European novelists, and France justly esteems him her greatest poet of modern days. The.. Times correspondent grows quite lyrical over the whole cele- bration—the political intention of which, of course, is to glorify Republicanism as against Bonapartism—and he has justification. No people can manage a great fête like the Frew:14 for to no people so able does every form of histrionic art come so naturally. For the moment they believe all they sai,—which is the ultimate secret of great acting.
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