The Sun.
London, England, 1871-01-03 00:00:00

NOTES FROM INDIA.

By the Brindisi route we have received the Indian mails
to date December 10. We extract the following heads of
intelligence from the Bombay Gazette :
Mr. Hume, Commissioner of Customs at Calcutta, has
been appointed to act for Mr. E. C. Bayley as Secretary
to the Government of India in the Home Department
during Mr. Bayley's short period of leave. The ap-
pointment has been unfavourably criticised in some
quarters.

There has been a report in Calcutta, apparently not
well founded, that Sir William'Muir, at present Lieute-
nant-General of the North Western Provinces, was likely
to succeed Sir William Grey as Lieutenant-Governor of
Bengal.
- The reduction of postage on letters to England rid Brin-
disi to eight annas (from ten annas eight pies), beginning
with the present mail, has given much satisfaction. There
is no reduction for papers.
It is understood that the equipment of all fortifica-
tions, inland and seaboard, in India has occupied the
attention of the home authorities, and that detailed
instructions have been sent out by the Secretary of State,
with orders to have them promptly acted upon, in view to
thorough efficiency against any possible necessity for being
called into requisition.
The Bangalore Hera'd tells us that two gentlemen
bearing her Majesty's commission behaved in a manner
the reverse of decorous at St. Andrew's Kirk, Bangalore,
on Sunday evening last. One of them has been placed
under arrest.

Colonel Layard, who went to England on special duty
with the Nawab Nazim, and has returned to India, is re•
posted to Bengal, as a superintending engineer, 2nd grade,
in the Public Works Departmeot.
The British India Steam Navigation Company is about
to commence running a regular monthly line of steamers
between Mauritius, Galle, and Bombay. Caytain Beyts
left on the lst December to take up the appointment of
agent at Mauritius.
General Tom Thumb and his wife arrived at Madras
on the 3rd December.

The Rev. R. P. Greaves, of the Church Mission Society,
has died of fever, contracted whilst pursuing his duties at
Burdwan.

Telegraphic communications are re-established between
Bordeaux and Lille.

The Russians, when their last order shall have been
completed, in April, will, says the Standard, be in posses-
sion of 420 Gatlings, whereas up to the present moment
the British Government has only ordered twelve.
A court martial is to be held at Bordeaux, uuderal
General Jaureguiberry, on the soldiers and officers who
have failed in their duty in the last campaign. This is
in order to secure in that town those fugitives who have
abandoned_their companies.
Mr. Richard Wallace, who has inherited the large for-
tune of the late Marquis of Hertford, has shewn great
lberality to the Parisians. He has just added to his former
donations the sum of two hundred thousand francs, which
he desires may be spent in procuring firing for the poor.
M. Charnal, editor of a Lyonnese paper, the Guapron,
has just been arrested at Marseilles, under the assumed
name of Robert. He has published a list of the great
fortunes of Lyons, which is found to tally exactly with a
document seized at Dijon among the papers of a Prussian
staff officer.

The Municipal Council of Toulouse has presented its
collective resignation to the Prefect of the Haute Garonne,
because the Government hai not appealed to universal
suffrage. The Prefect, while protesting against the com-
plication of the political and military situation by
electoral agitation, has agreed to transmit the resignation
to the Government.

The correspondent of the Cologne Gazette says :
" When at last the Christmas boxes arrived in France it
was decidedly melancholy, and a tear came into many a
stern warrior's eye whon he thought of home. Yet it
cannot be helped, for it is the warrior's lot. Winter has
reached its turning point, the sun will come again, and
perhaps find us still in France, for the contest must be
fought out once for all."
An amusing story is told of a Marine of the Paris army
who took a Prussian soldier prisoner. They were talking
together in a friendly way, and the Prussian asked,
"What do you eat in Paris now?" " Everything of the

best," was the reply. " Beef ?" "No ; our beef was
finished some time ago." " Mutton ?" "No : there is
none of that left." " Horseflesh ?" "No ; all our horses
are eaten up." " What do you eat, then?" "Why, we
eat our prisoners, and we find Clem excellent."
The manager of the Luxemburg railway, says that the
Grand Ducal lines have transported much more food for
the use of Germans than for the French. In fact twenty-
five times as much has been sent for the former as for the
latter. It is true that provisions were sent by Thionville
for France ; but a neutral country has the right to use its
railways for the transport of regularly authorised
merchandise, and neither the railway company nor the
Luxemburg Government could justly refuse to serve
either the one state or the other.

The Emperor's secret papers reveal the curious fact that
M. Glais-Bizoin, a member of the present French Govern-
ment, composed seven years ago a comedy entitled, "True
Courage ; or, a Triangular Duel and a Woman for Stakes."
It was to be acted at the Thdatre du Gymnase, Paris, but
the Government censor passed the following judgment on
it, which of course prevented its performance :—" These
scenes where the shameful recriminations of socialism
against law and order are displayed in all their violence
and brutality, and which recall to us the worst days of
revolutions, seem to us inadmissible."
In the address presented to M. Crdmieux on the 23rd
ult. by the Municipal Council of Bordeaux, he was urged
to make the Republic respected by enforcing the laws
against all who profit by the national disasters fo make
disturbances. Crdmieux replied in a long speech, and
agreed as to the necessity of such severity, but said that
Paris, the seat of the Government of which the Ministers
at Bordeaux were but delegates, did not understand this
other danger, and said, "Let us drive out the Prussians
first ;we will see to the rest afterwards! " There had
been so little change in the officials throughout the country
that, except in the invaded districts, there was, Crd-
mieux said, little change in the aspect of France.

The semi-official Provincial Correspondence is of opinion
that if Paris falls in a few weeks the French operations
and preparations in the west and south need give no ap-
prehension, but that if a longer interval elapse new cam-
paigns will have to be undertaken, the bare possibility of
which ought to induce as large reinforcements as possible.
These would convince the enemy of the uselessness of
further resistance, and, if necessary, would render prac-
ticable an advance southwards immediately on the sur-
render of Paris, without prejudice to the occupation of the
northern provinces. At Berlin numerous recruits are
being collected, who were enrolled early in October, and
have since been thoroughly drilled. Every regiment will
thus be strengthened by from 400 to 600 young and fresh
soldiers.

The reduction of Paris by famine, remarks a German
paper, will be no new phenomenon in history. De Thou
says of 19A, when Henry IV. lay before Paris, "the con-
sternatiox of this city had indeed become extreme. The
want of rrovisions had so weakened not only the inhabi-
tants but also the troops which had come to their help,
that they were no longer in a position to defend them.
selves. People in Paris forgot what meat was, and the
army mild only subsist on leaves or roots which they
dug up between the citones. Saucepans stood in the
public scuares and at the corners of streets, in which the
only kini of nourishment, oatmeal gruel, was prepared.
The most terrible diseases broke out. In three months
more than 12,000 persons died."

THE EX-EMPRESS.—On New Year's Day the
Duc de Persigny, the Marquis de Lavalette and his son,
Baron termite David, M. Itouher, M. Bouville, and fifty
or sixty of the principal French families now residing in
this cotntry were received by her Majesty the Empress
of the French at Chislehurst,
•
GEAm A N OPINION OF THE FRENCH.-1)l'. Rus-
sell writes from headquarters at Versailles : —lt -affords
occupation and amusement to the Staff to read the letters
in the captured balloons. The study has had a curious
result. In former letters I remarked on the extraordi-
nary ignorance which prevailed in and among Germans of
French literature. It is not, of course, anything profound
as the Bceotian darkness of the Gallic mind concerning
Germans and Germany, but still remarkable on the part
of such a well-instructed people. When we were before
Phalsbourg I found no one had ever heard of Erckmann-
Chatrain's novels. The study of sacks full of letters
which has been forced on the Staff has very much altered
their ?iews of the character of their enemies. They are
astonithed to find that there are French husbands
who love their own wives and French wives who
are devoted to their own husbands. They are as-
tonisted to discover evidences of noble qualities of
heart and head on the part of a people whom they have
despised as frivolous, false, and evil, and to meet with an
intensity of domestic affection and family love—a depth
of filial and paternal love which Germans highly appre-
ciate. They are struck, too, by the heroic spirit—a far
' higher feeling than the display of desperate and
reckless obstinacy—which animates them in resisting an
enemy who appears to be irresistible. The result is, I
may safely say, that the German officers of whom I speak
have a greater respect than they ever had for the French
nation.