A French officer of high rank who had served before Sebastopol and possessed opportunities of studying the organization and soldierly attributes of the British army, communicated his opinions of the service to a brother officer at Paris. Publicity was given to his views in a free translation by a retired British officer in the ‘Daily News.’ That concerning the engineers and sappers appeared in its columns—strangely enough—on the very day the inspection just noticed was made, and forms an apposite counterpart to the handsome acknowledgment of Major-General Jones. “I will begin,” says the writer, “with the English engineers, a corps which, from what I have seen of its working, can never have been excelled and seldom equalled in any army in the world. The education of the officers, the training and intelligence of the men, the activity of the whole corps, and the manner in which they carry on their works, are fully equal to the same qualifications in our own regiments of engineers. Of the courage of these troops I need not speak—they are like the rest of the English, brave almost to a fault. If ever there was a corps of which a nation should be proud it is that of the English engineers, or sappers and miners as the men are called, whilst the regiment itself and the officers are called the royal engineers.” On the 31st at night the sappers on the right were thus dispersed. Eight in No. 15 battery; six in the 21-gun battery taking down one of the naval magazines injured by a shell bursting on it; and four in the new right boyau. After the working party had left the trenches, the sappers, sent in advance to the right rifle pit, restored before day-break, the parapet which had been thrown down by the fire of the enemy, and also effected indispensable repairs in the communication leading to the field-gun emplacement. Between the 24th and 31st only one casualty had occurred—private George Clubb wounded in the right hand by a round shot when repairing an embrasure. June, the ninth month of the siege, had arrived, but the end of the struggle was still distant. Many a hard day’s work and many a furious fight was in store for the antagonists. Difficult and harassing as was the enterprise and frightful the carnage that month after month had occurred, there was no ground for the confederates to be dismayed, no reason for lessening that ardour, which, if steadily persevered in, was sure to win the game.