The Parisians themselves must perceive that the attempt to frighten their enemies away by drum-beating and trumpet-blowing has signally failed. Times have altered since Jericho. It is telling the Prussians nothing new to inform them that the National Guard are poor troops. For my part, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to learn some morning that the German armies round Paris had met with the fate which overwhelmed Sennacherib and his hosts. I should be delighted to be able to hope that the town will not eventually be forced to capitulate; but I cannot conceal from myself the truth that, if no succour comes from without, it must eventually fall. I blame the French journalists for perpetually drawing upon their imagination for their facts, and in their boasts of what France will do, not keeping within the bounds of probability; but I do not blame them for hoping against hope that their armies will be successful. I am ready to admit that the Parisians have shown a most stubborn tenacity, and that they have disappointed their enemies in not cutting each other's throats; but this is no reason why I should assert that they are sublime. After all, what is patriotism? The idea entertained by each nation that it is braver and better and wiser than the rest of the world. Does not every Englishman feel this to be true of his own countrymen? It is consequently not absurd that Frenchmen should think the same of themselves. The French are intensely patriotic--country with them is no abstraction. They moan over its ruin as though it were a human being, and far then be it from me to laugh at them for doing so. When, however, I find persons dressing themselves up in all the paraphernalia of war, visiting tombs and statues in order to register with due solemnity that they intend to die rather than yield, and when, after all this nonsense, these same persons decline to take their share in the common danger on the score that they have a mother, or a sister, or a wife, or a child, dependent upon them, and when month after month they drum and strut up and down the Boulevards, I consider that they are ridiculous, and I say so. When a man does a silly thing it is his own fault--not that of the person who chronicles it. Was it wise, for instance, of General Ducrot to announce a fortnight ago that he was about to lead his soldiers against the enemy, and that he himself intended either to conquer or die? Was it wise of General Trochu six weeks ago to issue a proclamation pledging himself to force the Prussians to raise the siege of Paris. The Prussians will have read these manifestoes, and they will form their own estimate respecting them. That I call them foolish does not "keep up illusions in Germany." The other day the members of an Ultra club, in the midst of a discussion respecting the existence of a divinity, determined to decide the question by a general scrimmage. I think that these patriots might have been better employed.