ecome almost extinct,
cities or counties having bought the franchises originally granted to
private companies. These petty exactions upon the freedom of travel
ought to cease everywhere.

* * * * *

It is well known that many persons who scrupulously refrain from
perusing Lord Byron's _Don Juan_, yet enjoy witnessing Mozart's opera of
_Don Giovanni_, following the libretto with assiduity, and laughing with
special heartiness at Leporello's song as it rehearses the adventures of
his master. In the same way, many who are rather shocked at _Camille_,
find no trouble in listening to _La Traviata_, and weep for the woes of
_Favorita_ when that opera thrown into the form of an English novel
excites their censure or disgust. The fact is, that the Italian
language, like the cloak of charity, covereth a multitude of sins. Never
did it cover them more strikingly than in an instance recounted by
_L'Eclipse_. The present French government, according to that paper,
lately prohibited the theatre of La Porte Saint-Martin from playing _Le
Roi s'amuse_ of Victor Hugo, a piece familiar to Frenchmen in its
reading edition for two-score years. The edict seems to have been rather
arbitrary, since, whatever its morality, at least the play could give no
political offence, there being but the remotest kind of comparison
possible between the court of Francis I. and the government of Marshal
MacMahon. But be this as it may, on the very day after its prohibition
of _Le Roi s'amuse_ the government inserted in its budget a subvention
of a hundred thousand francs for the Theatre Italien, whose favorite
performance is _Rigoletto_. Now, _Rigoletto_ is only a bad Italian
translation of _Le Roi s'amuse_; so that the droll spectacle was
offered of the government prohibiting one theatre, at a great loss, from
playing the very same piece which next day it offered another theatre
twenty thousand dollars for playing in Italian! The _Eclipse_
satirically suggests that the secret must be that "entrer par la
fenetre" becomes harmless as _entrare per la finestra_, and "donner la
main" is innocent as "_donare la mano_" and that Italian purifies
everything. If this be so, could not the Paris journalists borrow a
useful hint from the affair, and avoid suspension by the government
through the simple device of turning into Italian verses, of the
operatic sort, those passages of the editorial articles which if printed
in French would p