ached us through
the English papers up to the 3rd. Thus the _Liberte_, after giving
extracts from numbers of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the _Daily News_, the
_Daily Telegraph_, the _Sun_, the _Times_, and the _Standard_,
accompanies them with the following reflections:--"We feel bound to
protest in favour of the English press against the assertions of those
who would judge the opinions of a great liberal nation by the wretched
specimens which are under our eyes. Heaven be praised. The civilized
world is not so degenerate that the ignoble conduct of Prussia fails to
elicit universal reprobation." We have had two more pigeons, but
Gambetta either cannot or will not let us know anything of importance.
These two messengers confirm the news of the "victory of Orleans," and
inform us that public opinion is daily pronouncing in favour of France,
and that the condition of affairs in the provinces is most satisfactory.
Such is the universal distrust felt now for any intelligence which
emanates from an official source, that if Gambetta were to send us in an
account of a new victory to-morrow, and if all his colleagues here were
to swear to its truth, we should be in a wild state of enthusiasm for a
few hours, and then disbelieve the whole story.

Small-pox is on the increase. The deaths last week from this disease
amounted to 419; the general mortality to 1885--a number far above the
average. The medical men complain of the amount of raw spirits which is
drunk--particularly at the ramparts, and ascribe much of the ill health
to this cause.

By the bye, the question of the treason of Bazaine turns with us upon
what your correspondent at Saarbruck meant by the word "stores," which
he says were discovered in Metz. If munitions of war, we say that
Bazaine was a hero; if food, that he was a traitor.

If sieges were likely to occur frequently, the whole system of
ambulances, as against military hospitals, would have to be ventilated.
There are in Paris two hundred and forty-three ambulances, and when the
siege commenced, such was the anxiety to obtain a _blesse_, that when a
sortie took place, those who brought them in were offered bribes to take
them to some house over which the flag of Geneva waved. A man with a
broken leg or arm was worth thirty francs to his kind preservers. The
largest ambulance is the International. Its headquarters are at the
Grand Hotel. It seems to me over-manned, for the number of the healthy
who receive pay