Prevost-Paradol, Orleanist man of letters, correspondent of the Times under
the signature of "A Parisian," and Minister of France at Washington, shot himself on Wednesday. He suffered, it is said, a good deal from the excessive heat, but the real cause of his action was mental anxiety. According to a letter addressed by him to an English friend on June 17th, he had after seventeen years of labour as a penman con- tracted a disgust for writing; he was unable to enter the Chamber, not being able to play demagogue in the towns or spend 2.2,000 on an election in the country, and he was too poor to retire from public life. Accordingly, when Napoleon seemed to be adopting Parliamentary ways, he accepted an embassy, but his friends declared him a traitor, the Orleanist chiefs looked coldly on him, he was doubtful himself whether he had complied with the French code of political honour, and when the declaration of war revealed the full truth that Napoleon was still the only man in France with an initiative, he elected to retire from this world. No Continental, however good, has ever been able to feel that suicide is a crime, or to see clearly that life is not the property of its apparent owner.
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