otest
against the bombardment. They say that while Paris is deserted by the
Great European Powers, it is a source of pleasure to think that the
Principality of Monaco and the Republics of San Marino and Honduras
still stand by her. They suggest that M. Jules Favre should go to
Andorre to endeavour to induce that republic also to reason with the
Prussians upon the bombardment. I am told that the "proud young porter,"
who now the sheep is dead, represents alone the Majesty of England at
the British Embassy is indignant at not having been invited to add his
signature to the protest. He considers--and justly I think--that he is a
far more important personage than the Plenipotentiary of his Highness of
Monaco; a despot who exercises sway over about 20 acres of orange trees,
60 houses, and two roulette tables. The diplomatists are not, however,
alone in their protest. Everybody has protested, and is still
protesting. If it is a necessity of war to throw shells into a densely
populated town like this; it is--to say the least--a barbarous
necessity; but it seems to me that it is but waste of time and paper to
register protests against it; and if it be thought desirable to do so,
it would be far more reasonable to protest against human beings--women
and children--being exposed to its effects, than to indite plaintive
elegies about the possibility of the Venus de Milo being damaged, or the
orchids in the hot-houses being killed. I know that, for my part, I
would rather that every statue and every plant in the world were smashed
to atoms by shells, than that I were. This, in an aesthetical point of
view, is selfish; but it is none the less true. _Chacun pour soi._ The
Pantheon was struck yesterday. What desecration! everyone cries; and I
am very sorry for the Pantheon, but very glad that it was the Pantheon,
and not me. The world at large very likely would lose more by the
destruction of the Pantheon than of any particular individual; but each
particular individual prefers his own humble self to all the edifices
that architects have raised on the face of the globe.

I have been endeavouring to discover, whether in the councils of our
rulers, the question as to what is to be done in the possible
contingency of a capitulation becoming necessary, has been raised. As
far as I can hear, the contingency is not yet officially recognised as
within the realms of possibility, and it has never been alluded to.
General Trochu has officially a