The story of the massacre of Tientsin, on the 21st
June last, is told privately in a private letter dated Cheefoo, June 30th, published in Thursday's Standard, but the signature of which is not given. The horrors narrated are frightful, and remembering how frequently stories of similar horrors in the Mutiny melted away on close investigation,—though but too many were true,—we may hope that the writer, who does not seem to have been in Tientsin at the time, has heard somewhat exaggerated accounts. Yet making all allowances for this, there was evidently horror enough. The first attack was on the French Consul, who was murdered, the Chinese man- darins refusing aid. Then the Consulate was broken open, and two Catholic priests murdered, as well as M. and Madame Thomassin, an attachd to the Legation at Pekin and his bride. Then came the worst part. The mob, acting with regular Chinese soldiers, it is said, whom their officers did not attempt to restrain, attacked the hospital of the French Sisters of Charity, stripped them, exposed them to the mob, plucked out their eyes, mutilated them in other ways, and divided portions of their flesh among the infuriated people, and then set fire to the hospital, in which 100 orphan children, who were the objects of the sisters' care, were burnt to death. The British in Tientsin do not seem to have been attacked, —why, we do not know, probably because the British do not make so many converts as the French sisters of charity. The British Consul had demanded protection for the foreigners in Tientsin from the mob whose violence was known to be rising, four days before, and had been refused by Chung How, the Mandarin who seems to be responsible for this massacre, and whose execu- tion ought to be demanded. Were France not otherwise engaged, a French expedition to China of no trivial importance would be a certainty. There is a terrible rumour that another massacre has since occurred at Pekin, in which there have been British victims, but we trust this may be false.
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