The details which reach us of the extraordinary contest which has just taken place at Paris are equally horrible and curious. Hitherto we have been struck by the absence of that ferocity which distinguished the first Revolution, and the little taste there seemed for shedding blood; but the ferocity of the people broke out upon this occasion in the most terrible examples. There was a savage rancour about this exceeding the usual virulence of civil contests; the people not only murdered, but tortured, their prisoners. Since the victory the prisoners have been executed by hundreds, and with hardly any form of trial; indeed, no trial was possible or necessary, they were rebels taken _en flagrant dÈlit_, at once rebels and prisoners of war. One man, when he was going to be shot, said he did not care, for he had had his revenge already, and he pulled out of his pocket twenty tongues that had been cut out. All agree that the organisation, the military skill displayed, and the vast resources the insurgents possessed in the material of war, were as extraordinary as unaccountable. The preparations must have been long before made, for the houses of their principal fortifications were perforated for the purpose of communication and escape, the staircase removed, and there were telegraphic signals arranged by lights on the tops of the buildings. There certainly was a commander-in-chief who presided over the whole, but nobody knows who he was; and the Government have never yet been able to ascertain who the leaders were. Although distress and famine were the prime causes of this great struggle, it is remarkable that there was no plundering or robbery; on the contrary, they were strictly forbidden and apparently never attempted. It is the only example, so far as I know, that history records of a pitched battle in the streets of a great capital between the regular army and the armed civil power on one side, and the populace of the town militarily armed and organised also on the other, nobody knowing how the latter were organised or by whom directed. Colonel Towneley, who came from Paris last night, told me that it is believed that the old Municipal Guard, who were disbanded by the Provisional Government after the Revolution, had a great deal to do with it, but that the skill with which the positions had been chosen or fortified was perfect. Prodigies of valour seem to have been performed on both sides, and the incidents were to the last degree romantic. An Archbishop appearing as a minister of peace in the midst of the fray, and mounting the barricades to exhort the living and to bless the dying amidst the din and fury of the contest, and then perishing a martyr to his attempt to stop the effusion of blood; women mixing in the contest, carrying ammunition and supplies, daring everything, their opponents shrinking from hunting these Amazons, and at last being obliged to fire upon them in self-defence; the strange