NEWS OF THE WEEK.
EUROPE has been greatly surprised this week, and also relieved. The Ambassadors, though besieged in Pekin, are all alive with the exception of the German, who was murdered under the eyes of his secretary; Herr Cordes, by an Imperial officer. The attack on the Legations, though continuous, was always slack, the Empress-Regent wishing to preserve the Ministers as hostages. The defence was most ably and gallantly managed, and on July 16th, when some sixty of the defenders had fallen, an armistice was proclaimed. These facts rest on the authority of letters from Sir Claude Macdonald, whose despatch is curiously hurried and brief, from the German and Belgian Legations, from the Japanese • Secretary of Legation, and from Dr. Morrison, the able Times correspondent, whose. obituary has appeared in that paper. • All the published messages, even Dr. Morrison's, leave on us an impression of having been edited, or written under some promise of secrecy as to certain facts ; but besieged persons rarely transmit the connected narrative for which outsiders long. There is no evidence whatever that attack may not be re- newed, or that the besieged trust any promises made them, and no explanation of the long failure to send messages through.-- The general feeling in the Embassies was • that they could hold out till August 1st, but that they must be relieved from outside. Their danger, however, was failure of ammunition, which, if the armistice lasted, may have been postponed.
