with copious extracts
from Puffendorf and Grotius, and cites a case in point from the siege of
Vienna in the 15th century. It will be remembered that Messenger
Johnson, at the risk of his life and at a very great expense to the
country, brought despatches to the Parisian Embassy on the second day of
the siege. I recommend Mr. Rylands, or some other M.P. of independent
character, to insist upon Parliament being informed what these important
despatches were. The revelation will be a curious one.

Yesterday afternoon I made an excursion into the Bois de Boulogne under
the convoy of a friend in power. We went out by the Porte de Neuilly.
Anything like the scene of artificial desolation and ruin outside this
gate it is impossible to imagine. The houses are blown up--in some
places the bare walls are still standing, in others even these have been
thrown down. The Bois itself, from being the most beautiful park in the
world, has become a jungle of underwood. In the roads there are large
barricades formed of the trees which used to line them, which have been
cut down. Between the ramparts and the lake the wood is swept clean
away, and the stumps of the trees have been sharpened to a point. About
8,000 soldiers are encamped in the open air on the race-course and in
the Bois. Near Suresnes there is a redoubt which throws shell and shot
into St. Cloud. We are under the impression that the firing from this
redoubt, from Valerien, Issy, and the gunboat Farcy, which took place on
Thursday morning, between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m., has destroyed the batteries
and earthworks which the Prussians were erecting on the heights of St.
Cloud and Meudon-Clamart. You, however, are better informed respecting
the damage which was done than we are. When I was in the Bois the
redoubt was not firing, and the sailors who man it were lounging about,
exactly as though they had been on board ship. Occasionally
Mont-Valerien fired a shot, but it was only a sort of visiting card to
the Prussians, for with the best glasses we could see nothing of them.
Indeed, the way they keep under cover is something wonderful. "I have
been for three weeks in a fort," said the aide-de-camp of one of the
commanders of a southern fort, "every day we have made reconnaissances,
and I have not seen one single Prussian."

From what I learn, on good authority, the political situation is this.
The Government consists mainly of Orleanists. When they assumed the
direction of public af