A census which has just been made of the population within the lines, makes the number, exclusive of the Line, Mobiles, and sailors, 2,000,500. No attempt has yet been made to ration the bread, but it is to be mixed with oats and rice. The mayor of this quarter says that in this arrondissement--the richest in Paris--he is certain that there is food for two months. Should very good news come from the provinces, and it appear that by holding out for two months more the necessity for a capitulation would be avoided, I think that we should hold on until the end of February, if we have to eat the soles of our boots. If bad news comes, we shall not take to this food; but we shall give in when everything except bread fails, and we shall then consider that our honour is saved if nothing else is. M. Louis Blanc to-day publishes a letter to Victor Hugo, in which he tells the Parisians that if they do capitulate they will gain nothing by it, for the Prussians will neither allow them to quit Paris, nor, if the war continues, allow food to enter it. As yet there are no signs of a real outbreak; and if a successful one does occur, it will be owing to the weakness of the Government, which has ample means to repress it. The Parisian press is always adjuring the working men not to cut either each others' or their neighbours' throats, and congratulating them on their noble conduct in not having done so. This sort of praise seems to me little better than an insult. I see no reason why the working men should be considered to be less patriotic than others. That they are not satisfied with Trochu, and that they entertain different political and social opinions to those of the bourgeoisie, is very possible. Opinions, however, are free, and they have shown as yet that they are willing to subordinate the expression of theirs to the exigencies of the national defence. I go a good deal among them, and while many of them wish for a general system of rationing, because they think that it will make the provisions last longer, they have no desire to pillage or to provoke a conflict with the Government. I regard them myself, in every quality which makes a good citizen, as infinitely superior to the journalists who lecture them, and who would do far better to shoulder a musket and to fall into the ranks, than to waste paper in reviling the Prussians and bragging of their own heroism. As soldiers, the fault of the working men is that they will not submit to discipline; but this is more the fault of the Government than of them. As citizens, no one can complain of them. To talk with one of them after reading the leading article of a newspaper is a relief. A French journalist robes himself in his toga, gets upon a pedestal, and talks unmeaning, unpractical claptrap. A French workman is, perhaps, too much inclined to regard every one except himself, and some particular idol which he has set up, as a fool; but he is by no means wanting in