ld their tongues, or their voices are lost in the chorus of blatant
nonsense, which is dinned into the public ears. _Mutatis mutandis_ the
newspapers, with some few exceptions, are much what they were when they
worshipped Caesar, chronicled the doings of the _demi-monde_, clamoured
for the Rhine, and invented Imperial victories. Their ignorance
respecting everything beyond the frontiers of France is such, that a
charity-schoolboy in England or Germany would be deservedly whipped for
it. _La Liberte_ has, I am told, the largest circulation at present.
Every day since the commencement of the siege I have invested two sous
in this journal, and I may say, without exaggeration, that never
once--except one evening when it was burnt on the boulevard for
inadvertently telling the truth--have I been able to discover in its
columns one single line of common sense. Its facts are sensational--its
articles gross appeals to popular folly, popular ignorance, and popular
vanity. Every petty skirmish of the National Guard has been magnified
into a stupendous victory; every battalion which visited a tomb, crowned
a statue, or signed some manifesto pre-eminent in its absurdity, has
been lauded in language which would have been exaggerated if applied to
the veterans of the first Napoleon. The editor is, I believe, the author
of the "pact with death," which has been so deservedly ridiculed in the
German newspapers. The orators of the clubs have not been wiser than the
journalists. At the Ultra gatherings, a man who says that he is a
republican is regarded as the possessor of every virtue. The remedy for
all the ills of France has been held to be, to copy exactly what was
done during the First Revolution. "Citizens, we must have a _Commune_,
and then we shall drive the Prussians out of France," was always
received with a round of sympathetic applause, although I have never yet
found two persons to agree in their explanation of what is meant by the
word "_Commune_." At the Moderate clubs, the speeches generally
consisted of ignorant abuse of Germany, attempts to disprove
well-established facts, and extravagant self-laudation. I have attended
many clubs--Ultra and Moderate--and I never heard a speaker at one of
them who would have been tolerated for five minutes by an ordinary
English political meeting.

The best minister whom the Parisians have, is M. Dorian. He is a
manufacturer, and as hard-headed and practical as a Scotsman. Thanks to
his