The Sun.
London, England, 1871-01-30 00:00:00

BEFORE THE CAPITULATION.

In a communication from Versailles, January 23rd, the
special correspondent of the Standard remarks :--It seems
impossible that Paris can bang out the white flag, and yet
it must be hung out. It seems impossible that the Impe-
rial legions of Germany should march down the Boule-
vards ; nevertheless, will they not do so, and
that shortly ? There is a deal of human
nature in men, even in Parisians ; and all
that I can forsee is, that they will conduct themselves
pretty much as other men have conducted themselves in
similar circumstances. We are looking for signs and
wonders, and we shall probably be greeted with the com-
mon-place. One thing, however is certain : Versailles will
not be the easy abode it has been any time these four
months. Its fatly-feeding people will be swamped by the
starving. And when Paris has fallen ? Yesterday was
Sunday, and I paid several visits, some of them to French
residents and refugees. I was much struck by the differ-
ence of tone prevailing among these excellent, but per-
sonally not very sorely tried, people, and that on which I
lately commented so fully when I was travelling among
the peasantry of what was once Maine and Anjou. Among
the latter the whole of the Lord's Prayer seemed
to have shrunk into one potition ; and that a new one
—" Give us peace." I met with no politicians, no

patriots, if you will. Only ruined householders, distracted
housewives, and children with the ringing laughter gone
out of them. When would the Prussians leave the land ?
That was all they wanted to know. As I write,
a visitor and another rumour. He is not
a gossip, but a man of standing and sense.
Everybody, he says, during the last half-hour, has
it that Paris has capitulated. It is not an hour and
a half since, in what a playful tongue might call the
British Embassy, I was endeavouring to urge, amid
many discordant opinions, that it might capitulate
at any moment. Do I therefore believe this con-
firmatory report floating in the air ? It is likely
enough to be true ; that in all I can say. I suspect
it will be true before these lines reach you.
Trochu, it is added, has handed over the reins and de-
scended from the box. Not above a fortnight ago he said
that he would never surrender. Governors do not surren-
der; they resign. Desperate resolutions are rarely with-
out loopholes of retreat. This is Troche's. I hear '
no firing this afternoon ; but St. Denis and its

defences have been. right hotly shelled these last two days.
Their reply was feeble. Yesterday they were almost
mute. Poor France ! Germany holds out its hand for big
concessions, and she has no set-off to its exactions. Good
terms, handsome terms, might once have been got ; but
that diseased body politic, of which M. Gambetta has
been the soul, has gone on making pacts with Death, and
here the tyrant is to claim his bargain. Men's lips turn
white, even the lips of adversaries, when they say that
Paris is about to invert the brandished blade and pass
under the Caudillo Forks. So much patience, so much
courage, so much waiting, so many dead and dying, so
much hunger and weeping, so much widowhood and
orphanage—and yet not saved !

The correspondent of the Cologne Gazette says that both
National Guards and Mobiles fought with great bravery
in the late sortie.

The Drapeau, the new Imperialist organ at Brussels,
states that Jules Favre will go to London to offer to the
Duc d'Aumale the Presidency of tho Republic, in await-
ing the throne of France.

Victor Hugo,who has much influence with the populace,
was consulted by an officer belonging to the Belleville
battalion respecting the emeute of Sunday, and advised
that the people should not march against the Hotel de
Ville, but against the Prussians.
The fortress of Bitsch has been watched for three
months by a Bavarian corps, but there has been an under-
standing on both sides that no useless loss of life should
be incurred, the natural position of the place being so
strong that it can hardly be taken except by famine.
On the night of the 20th the truce was broken by a sortie
of the garrison, supported by a warm artillery fire. It
was, however, repulsed by the Bavarians.

The Rev. Robert Payne Smith, D.D., Canon of
Christ Church and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford,
is the new Dean of Canterbury.

A committee has been appointed to get up a great
demonstration of unemployed working men at the opening
of Parliament, so that there may be no mistake as to
their real wants.

SMALLPDX IN THE LONDON. HOSPITALS.-Si Ilce
our last notice smallpox has broken out in another hos-
pital—the Middlesex. The patient, a female, was ad-
mitted for anaemia, and some days after her admission was
taken ill, and soon presented the characteristic eruption of
the disease. On her way to the hospital she travelled in
an omnibus, in which was a person having an eruption on
the face resembling smallpox. Six days after her
admission the symptoms began, and on the ninth day
the eruption made its appearance. She was sent to
Hampstead, and the patients in the hospital were vacci-
nated. This fact is worthy of the attention of omnibus
travellers—the more so that an eminent physician,
availing himself of that mode of travelling, encountered
exactly a similar case the other day. In this last instance,
hOwever, the diagnosis was made before the person entered
the omnibus, and admission was refused. At Charing-cross
Hospital, although the disease has not broken out in the
wards, in face of the difficulties which would attend isola-
tion, owing to the construction of the building, the
managing body have resolved to stop all visitors except to
patients dangerously ill, and then only after being ex-
amined by the resident medical officer. It was also re-
solved to exclude all out-patients suffering from the
disease, as a single case admitted into a crowded room of
sickly people is calculated to spread the disease far and
wide.—Medical Times and Gazette.

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