battle near Montmedy, ending in the closing of the gates of that town. The Prussians have cut the railway between that and Sedan. The news, which comes to the Standard from...

T HE week has been a bad one for France. The Crown Prince, whose Adlatus, General von Blumenthal, is said to be only inferior as a strategist to Baron von Moltke, has been...

also by English correspondents, that General von Falkenstein with 50,000 men has been ordered to the front ; that the reserve battalions of the regiments crushed at Worth,...

of its actual losses, though it has given lists of officers killed ; but the Berlin correspondents estimate them at about 50,000 men for the battles alone, that is, not counting...

been remarkable. The spirit of the Imperialists is evidently giving way, and three successive motions have been carried having for their object to add members of the Chamber to...

retreat from Chalons is, we believe, erroneous. After a careful collation of the official telegrams, the statements of the Minister of War about good news in his possession, the...

their own numbers. The German papers affirm with one voice that when the King entered France there were 250,000 troops with the Red Prince, 250,000 with the Crown Prince, and...

both French and German Generals is a sign of the times. The Daily News in particular had a complete account of the battle of Rezonville, a column long, telegraphed from the...

in voting any necessary decrees. It has called out all old soldiers, married or unmarried, is willing apparently to force all Gerdes Mobiles into the Army, and its Military...

the Bel- gian neutrality,—the bears and wolves of the German and French forests having been so much scared by the late heavy discharges of artillery, that they have crossed the...

upon the progress of the campaign, and publish only the infor- mation communicated by the Ministry. It is supposed, but not known, that this order will only last for a few days....

very diffi- cult to explain, though it is rather difficult to explain why they regard the publication of the telegrams announcing Prussian vic- tories and French defeats as an...

among her civilians. There is not a man, either in Chamber or Senate, to whom men look up. Count Darn perhaps stands highest in character, but he has given no proof of ability...

Assembly, no doubt with the intention of embroiling England with the Prussian Government, that English manufacturers had undertaken to deliver 40,000 rifles to them for their...

side to negotiate. The official tone in Paris is that no overtures will be listened to, while the official tone in Berlin is that Germany must obtain territorial guarantees for...

borough hospital at Bootle, a suburb of Liverpool, has expressed his opinion that it is far from unlikely that the provision for the relief of the diseases of the poor...

"Civil Marriage in Ireland" would have been true a month since, but is not true now. A Bill to remedy the very evils complained of and others was introduced into the Commons a...

Germans have violated Belgian neutrality. They assert that German soldiers have fired on Belgian guards, that wounded' Germans have been carried through Belgian territory, and...

the latest accounts, the Germans have brought their guns within 1,000 yards of the fort, the "right aide of the citadel has been burnt down," and the "arsenal completely...

of the attempts of France to inveigle Austria into an alliance, in which, as the writer asserts, France had very nearly succeeded, having really committed Von Beust so far that...

the .severe moral condemnation cast upon him by that great moral " Historicus," for applying the subscriptions he had received for General " Stonewall " Jackson's statue to...

of its newspaper fibs,—a humour of which there is not a trace in the English papers. The last discovery there is of an abundant spring in Nevada of ready-made chicken broth,...

Then- -day at the great age of eighty-six. He was one of the few con- aiderable lawyers who keep their minds studiously open to the 'world of science, and is said to have...

which has only come to a conclusion this week, on the right of certain Dissenting members of the Committee formed for the revision of the English translation of the Scriptures,...

THE WAR. T HE melancholy monotony of French disaster has been unbroken through the week, though at its close there has come, as we read the situation, one faint streak of...

IN one of Count Bismarck's earliest speeches in the Prussian 1 Parliament, he gave as his reason for excluding the Jews from official life that the law of every Christian...

T HE policy of arming whole nations, whatever its merits, has, it is clear, one enormous drawback. It may, and in the end we believe will, make wars more rare, but when they...

T HERE are two questions connected with our National Defences which have not yet been answered, but which seem to us of not a little importance. Is it really the fact that...

E XPATRIATION evidently suits the Irish genius. While the Irish hardly furnish a statesman in a generation to the English Parliament,—Lord O'Hagan is, we believe, almost the...

4 LL soldiers of rank, we believe, assert in principle the necessity of secrecy in war, and it is seldom wise to reject the opinion of an entire profession. As a matter of fact,...

N o remark is commoner just now in the English Press than that the French nation will probably emerge from its present sufferings with a higher and purer tone of character. And...

A HOLIDAY IN THE TIROL. ILL—To THE OETZTHAL. [To THE EDITOR OF "THE SPECTATOR:"] Berne, August 19, 1870. Sin,—You can hardly conceive the strangeness of the feeling with which...

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Lindau, Lake of Constance, August 20, 1.870. Sin, — Just opposite to this smiling Bavarian town—which has been called a German Venice—on the...

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'] SIR,—As the only authority on whom the nation at large must depend for its belief in our present readiness for war is Mr. Cardwell, the...

(TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPEOTATOR.1 SIR,—In a review, under the above title, of a collection of essays of mine (in one of which the political economy of the Spectator is...

WILLIAMS'S OWEN GLENDOVVER.* WE can hardly say that Dr. Williams in verse has appeared to us more a poet than Dr. Williams did in prose. He has never, even in a leisure moment,...

than once formed part of the title of a novel, but Mr. Harris has found a new antithesis for it, and his alliteration is tempting. A wide scope is given him by the contrast...

IT would be impossible at the present day for an English writer to engage the attention of the English public by a work on free- trade, still less by a volume of speeches on the...

THERE has been a good deal of talk of late of a system of Com- parative Mythology. Professor Max Muller has written articles 7'he Mythology of the Aryan Nations. By George W....

IN Mr. Hepworth Dixon, Russia has found another De Custine. Like that brilliant author, he gallops through the country, and then considers himself entitled to sit down and...

two volumes Mr. Edwards has recounted the complete history of the British Museum and its collections, with biographies of the chief among the collectors who gathered and the...

that the history of a college cannot be par- ticularly attractive. The two volumes before us, however, have something more than a mere special interest for those who have been...

addition to the series of valuable transla- tions already published by the Hakluyt Society, and its important bearings are set forth in an introduction that has been prepared...

can do little more than recommend it to the notice of our readers. They could not have a more appropriate volume for the drawing-room table. At the same time, it has what these...

we feel -compelled to ask, any pleasure to write, for it is certainly no pleasure to read, about the sayings and doings of such a set of people as Mr. or Mrs. Howard (we do not...

George Griffiths. (Newby.) —The task of supplying these columns at all events sharpens one critical faculty, that which discerns whether or no a book is readable,—the one,...

very hard to " revive ;" but it is tolerably easy to make lay-figures and put an ancient-looking armour and satin dresses on them, in fact, to produce something as like life as...

Author of "A Change of Luck." (Chapman and Hall.)—This novel is, we suppose, meant to be didactic, but we cannot say much for it in this character. On the whole, we gather that...