The Sun.
London, England, 1871-02-23 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAI, FEBRUARY 23, 1871.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE

SUN OFFICE, '8 .A.ni

THE ARMISTICE.

The following telegram was received last night a
the Foreign Office from Major-General Walker :
VERSAILLES, February 22nd (2.35 p.m.)
The armistice has been prolonged until Sunday, at
midnight.

VERSAILLES, February 22.
The Armistice is further prolonged for forty-eigh
hours.

M. Thiers was received by his Majesty at the Pre.
fecture at 10 o'clock, General Chanzy being present
and drove at 1.30 to visit the Crown Prince.

Peace is considered to be concluded, though no
signed.

On Sunday next probably Paris will be entered
quietly, without any solemn or formal triumphal
ceremony.

The army will not remain long in Paris.
M. Thiers returns to Paris, as he did yesterday.
The Orsini bombs captured by the Paris police
have been sent over here.—Times 2elegratn.

COMMUNIC ,iTION WITH PARIS.

BRIISSELS, February 22,

On and after to-morrow one train will regu-
larly leave Brussels for Paris every day. A. safe-
conduct will be necessary for passengers, and only
luggage that can be carried in the hand will be
allowed.

THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR AT VIENNA
VIENNA February 22.

M. de Remusat, an Orleanist, has been appointed
French Ambassador at this Court. —Daily News
Telegrams.

NEWS FROM THE NORTH.

AMIENS, February 22 (5 p.m,

The Emperor has remitted several millions of
francs imposed upon the Department of the Somme.

The French Director of Public Works in the
Department of the Somme has received instructions
from the Provisional Government of Bordeaux to put
the public thoroughfares in order, and to repair all
bridges that have been destroyed.
Steeplechases, under the patronage of General
Bentheim and the officers of the Ist Corps, take
place at Rouen to-day.
Peace is considered certain.—Telograph Telegratia.

REFUSAL OF MM. BUFFLT AND REMUSAT
TO JOIN THE FRENCH MINISTRY.
BORDEAUX, February 22, 2.15 P.m.
The Gazette de France attacks M. Buffet for re-
fusing to accept office as Minister of Finance, and
points out that his refusal has already had an adverse
influence in lowering the tone of the Bourse.
M. Remusat, who had accepted, has since
altered his mind, and informed the Government in
a laconic letter that new arrangements will not per-
mit him to maintain his acceptance of office.
Reutes, 0.45.

BORDEAUX, Feb. 22 (3.12 p.m.)
The Patrie says that M. Buffet is influenced only
by dread of the burden of office. French finance
is in a critical and confused condition, and the
Minister of Finance will have an onerous task.—
Lombard Telegrams.

PARIS APTER, THE BOMBARD3IENT.

Writing from Paris, Febrriary 21, a correspondent of
the Telegraph observes i—" Reitirgam !" I believe that
a certain eocial Paris will arise oat Of the ashes of
Imperial Paris, by dint of the extreme self-consideration,
not to say self-conceit, of the French. That, hi mu
generation, or in that of our grandchildren, there will be
a " Piais," a true Paris, I do not believe—always
barring the very great possibility of an intense
Imperial reaction. But there will very shortly
arise a sort of absinthe-drinking, cigar-smoking,
loafing Paris, which will divide its day into break
fast, dinner, and theatre ; high play will probably
set in among the few remaining rich men at the few re-
maining clubs ; and vice, " which to be hated needs but
to be seen," will not be seen, telt will probably be in truth
worse than ever. There are Parisians so Parisian that
they would become Prussians rather than leave Paris..
They do not form a great or a clever Class ; they are not
Frenchmen or gentlemen in the extreme sense—l am not
sure they are even men, the 'savage proper being
taken as a type ; but they are eminently Pari-
sians. And here let me remark that it would
be utterly unfair to laugh at the jeunesse dor&
and the gandins of the defunct Empire. If
you could have daily studied, as I have, the unpublished
returns of the killed during the last five months—if you
had every day found your table covered with block-edged
lettres de fairepart, telling of the funerals of some acquain-
tances whom for years you have seen daily in Paris
with ten days annually at Baden—you would
know what class has suffered most for his country.
Not the army proper that was overpowered
and imprisoned. The Mobiles suffered, certainly,
but not in the same proportion. Not the
National Guard, for litany reasons though one
will be enough : they did not fight. Not the clique of
the 4th September ; excepting Sapia, shot by a Republican
of a lighter hue of Red in a street row, no known name
has been struck from the roll of the national army.
Ducrot, indeed, declared for "Death or victory ;" but
he no more got the one than the other. Not it was
once again the Grants glaces," the disreputable
idle, gamblers, race frequenters—on whom a large
section of the National Guards depended for their
very existence—who were to the front ; and once
again the " Libre d'Or" has beaten the " Paris Trades-
man's Guide." The remains of their class, however, so
soon as they cease to be prisoners of war, will leave France
many for good and all. The taste for outdoor exercise
and sport, which the Emperor and General Fleury did
so much to introduce into France, has acted, or Lather is
acting, in a way little anticipated by its introducers-
Men have come to like hunting, racing, shooting-
England is the Paradise of those sports. France
is now abominable, and Paris intolerable ; so
scores of men say to me, " Why should I stop
here—where, arrive qui pourra, there will be at least two
revolutions and a civil war before our true level is found—
when all my friends are in England, and I can hunt
at your Newmarkets, and run my horses at
your Meltons ?" I know that £40,000 sterling
a year left France for good and ever by one
of the first possible trains from Gonesse. Still, a
Paris will revive. As we went out, we met M. Roy,
whom so many of your readers have seen going
well in "the shires," where he would be now if he
was not a prisoner of war. This was another surprise.
We had killed him, buried, wept over, and decorated him,
and now we found him coming home from his club. This
is the first day since the 4th September that I have seen
any civil movement here ! so I thought that I would
take note of the first streak of the dawn of—l wish
for the sake of Paris and its now civil grocers, I could
say dissipation but at least a sort of setni-life I
which is a relief after the drums and trumpets,
the marchings and counter marchings of Cl4ment
Thomas, the speeches of Gambetta, the politics of
Jules Favre, and the " plan "of Trochu. I connot believe
war will begin again, in spite of the " not an inch" policy
which I hear Rochefort, Victor Hugo, and even Louis
Blanc have been preaching to the mob at Bordeaux ; for
France has neither soldiers, arms, nor money. And if
peace lasts it will soon produce a sort of mushroom
Paris, where the inhabitants will lead a useless life,
hating their rulers, fearing the Reds, and praying for-
tune to send them a good strong ruler, be he King or
Kaiser,

MAGNETIC MOTIVE POWER.
If we mistake not, we are in the dawn of a new and
economic motive power. We have long had an instinctive
expectation of its approach. Now, by the scientific expo-
sition of the possibility of an infinitive development of
magnetic power by an apparently inadequate initial force,
as argued by Mr. Highton, and already published, and
the apparent production of it before our senses, seemingly
verifying the argument, we are strongly induced to hail
magnetism as the coming worker for millions of men and
for purposes innumerable. Some will smile at this. It is
right they should. The idea bas been discouraged by elec-
tric writers els visionary and impracticable. They have
asserted the impossibility of any such economic use of
material for the production of magnetic power as could
ever justify the hope of its substitution for steam. They
were right as long as the battery was regarded as the
source of power instead of a mere initiative, such as results
now seem to prove it to be. Our theories of electro-motive
force may require to be re-examined, and perhaps changed.
The axiom that a given magnetic force is the exact pro-
duct of a given consumption of zinc or chemicals, must
now be challenged and put to the proof. We confront
now the proposition that, although the electro-motive
force may be in the battery, yet that the magnetic power
which follows its application is capable of indefinite en-
largement without increase of the initiative agent. We
are brought face to face also with the fact that, when
a magnet is performing its maximum work, the
battery • which started the magnetic power is
most at rest. In other words, that the mag
netic power is not proportioned to the size or con-
sumption of the elements of a battery, although depen-
dent upon it as an initial force. We do not pretend to
explain this problem, but we can tell what we have seen.
It seems to corroborate the recent position taken by Mr.
Highton, of England, and to prove that we are on the bor-
der-land of a new and wonderful series of developments of
an economic, safe, andlefficient motive power. It may prove
that our assumed data as to the power resident in our
battery materially has been underrated, and their pro-
'ductivity misunderstood. Let us now state what we have
seen, A few days ago we accompanied, on invitation,
several gentlemen to the works of Mr. H. M. Payne, of
Newark, N.Y. [The editor here gives a description of a
powerful magnetic sawmill which he saw in action.] This
rapid and effective action has been watched nice con-
secutive hours by investigating parties, without any per-
ceptible decline of power, and with a consumption of less
than half a pound of zinc—a cost of less than c. an hour.
The power developed was rated at two-horse, and can be
maintained for 24 hours without intermission at a maxi-
mum cost of ten cents. Such, at least, is the statement
made to us by Mr. Payne, and confirmed by well-known
gentlemen, who thoroughly examined it. By increase of
diameter and width, or by multiplication of wheels, and
the number of magnets, the power can be largely in-
creased, so we were assured, by the same number of cells.
This was proved by the fact that by the addition of
wire in the circuit of sufficient length to surround another
set of magnets, no diminution of power was apparent,
although the action of the battery was necessarily
less; thus another wheel of similar- power could have
been added. The four cells we saw were stated as capable
of maintaining the speed and power produced in our
presence for sixty hours without renewal, at the cost
of abeut a single stage fare on Broadway per day. In
this machine, so utterly simple as to challenge the
scrutiny of the most ordinary mind, we see the dawn
of a new power, capable of endless application at a
minimum cost, and destitute of the usual element of
danger. It occurs to us as very strange that whatts
is just being proposed as a possible status of facts
by a learned divine in England should proved the
tl
self-
same theory which an American citizen has been
fprivaare,y
and persistently developing in actual practicheevosri3creeo
tos
To what it may give rise, we have no p
tell. If the premises demanded are proved prophets
be correct,
vsee the Atlantic
its application is infinite.
crossed by huge vessels,W We
mayyei
propelled without an
t initiative.. of
ounce of coal, by a power
place beside his writing
which the captain may
desk in his cabin, which a child can apply, and the
littlest finger may stop. The begrimed furnace-man may
then come out from these lower hells, and walk the deck

.....,... __ _ __
as clean as the passenger, and the blazing fires be put out.
- -

And it may be in the mysterious workings of the Almighty,
that these electric forces, which are on every hand de-
veloping themselves as the life of the world, quickening
its pulses from pole to pole, the cause of growth, and the
cardinal element of a power the limit of which is yet
unknown, may be ordained to remove from man part of
the curse of toil, unbending the labourer's back, and
making him to stand erect as at the first:—New York
Telegraph Journal.