The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-18 00:00:00

VICTORIA'S VISIT TO PARIS.

(Front the Times of this day.)
Various and checkered beyond the ordinary lot
of those spots of earth which man has chosen for
his habitation have been the destinies of Paris. The
mud village of Julian the Apostate was not more
different from the pompous capital of Louis XVI.,
nor that capital from the beautiful city that now
spreads itself over the valley of the Seine, than are
the circumstances of this day from any which have
preceded them during the long annals of French
and English history. English Kingshave, ere now,
swept along the street of Paris, but they came to
claim a kingdom which they could not hold, or in
triumph for victories to be speedily and bloodily
avenged. It is a curious fact, that never since
France was consolidated into one nation—and be-
fore that time Paris had no right to the title of the
capital of France—has an English monarch entered
her gates in peace. Henry V. went there, indeed,
to celebrate his short-lived triumph, and Henry
VI. to assume a crown, which soon glided from
his nerveless grasp. Charles 11. was there as an
exile and a fugitive, and James 11. concluded his
dishonoured life under the shelter of the power of
the Grand Monarch. Now at last, in the fullness
of time, we witness a spectacle which our rugged
forefathers probably never desired, and which we,
however anxious, could never have hoped to see—
the interchange of offices of the most cordial friend-
ship, marking not only the sincerity of individual
regard, but the union of two great nations, never
hitherto wont to interchange other courtesies than
those which diversified the brief intervals of a
conflict extending, with little intermission, over a
period of eight hundred years. Ten years ago in-
deed Queen Victoria met at the Chateau d'Eu the
then Sovereign of France, but the happy omens of
that day were clouded shortly after by events which,
though they did not shake the amity of the two
nations, introduced a coldness between the two
Royal families never wholly removed during the
remaining days of the dynasty of Orleans. It is
with no such misgivings that Queen Victoria goes to
return the visit so Royally paid her a few mouths
ago by the present Emperor of France. The ener-
getic support which France has so nobly and unflinch-
ingly lent us in so many common dangers, the vigour
and good faith with which she has performed all,
and more than all, which could be expected of her
by the most exacting ally ; the noble and mag-
nanimous policy which her Emperor has pursued
in the face of all Europe, and in marked contradis-
tinction to all its other Imperial rulers, forbid us
for a moment to entertain the idea that the time
will ever come when so much common glory, so
much mutual esteem, will be forgotten, and the
days of old jealousies and animosities return upon
us.

It were curious to speculate with what feelings
and with what emotion the illustrious lady who
will this day enter Paris will view that beautiful
capital of which she must have heard and thought
so much, but which alone, amid the brilliant circle
in which she moves, she has by her exalted rank
been prevented from visiting. The enormous
facilities for travelling now possessed by all ranks
have introduced a singular anomaly into the posi-
tion of crowned heads. We do not speak of the
petty Princes of Germany, who seem to be for ever
on the wing from the Court of one patron to that
of another, but of Sovereigns like the Queen of
England, whose movements are great historic
events, not to be lightly undertaken, nor accom-
plished without the utmost care and forethought.
Such personages are singularly placed. Living in
the utmost splendour and surrounded by the most
dazzling magnificence, they are yet debarred from
I those spectacles of beauty and grandeur which
• foreign lands afford, and which are open to so many
thousands of their subjects. The taste is formed
and its gratification withheld, and it is therefore
probable that no one ever entered Paris with a
mind more trained to admire its innumerable beau-
ties and attractions, and to appreciate the spectacle
so long withheld of au elegance and splendour for
which the world knows no parallel, than the Queen
of England. The time chosen for the visit is as
auspicious as all the accompanying circumstances.
The weather is splendid, and the period of the
year promises to us as long a continuance of bright
suns and blue skies as consists with the variable
temperament of a northern climate. Both countries
are cheered by the prospect of an abundant har-
vest, and the gratifying consciousness that their
material prosperity is so firmly based that war it-
self with all its miseries has been unable to shake
it ; above all, just at this auspicious moment the
thick and threatening clouds which have hung so
darkly over the commencement of the campaign
have rolled away, and success, so long waited for
and so coy in her approach, has come at last in full
radiance. From the Baltic and the Black Sea ar-
rive almost simultaneously tidings of two great
victories, and what was perhaps, under the cir-
cumstances, most to be desired, France has the
honour of a share in both, while England can only
claim part in one. On the island fortresses of
Sweaborg the English and French navies have de-
molished with incredible ease, and without loss,
the arsenals and storehouses in which Russia had
treasured up those vials of wrath which she was
one day to empty on the heads of her Scandina-
vian neighbours, and on the banks of the Tcher-
naya French and Sardinian valour has driven back
the fierce attack of Liprandi with little loss, and
yet with terrible slaughter.
It is in the moment of triumph, in the first
blush of victory, when it is beginning to reward
on a scale more commensurate with the merits of
the allies so much devotion and so many sacrifices,
that Queen Victoria enters Paris a memorable
personage, with whom the French nation may as-
sociate success and glory, and the idea of a peace
which such successes must, one would fondly hope,
restore to us. In this symbolical union of the two
peoples, this interchange of acts of courtesy and
friendship between the two greatest Sovereigns of
the world, we see the germ of a state of things
which we cannot contemplate without a feeling of
thankfulness that we live in these latter times, ao,d,
not in those which have gone before us. It is
_st.,"
that between England and America the corohraeunr
ost
of interests and the mutual interchange of t
ossible :
amicable relations have rendered arisings
are assisted
the same state of feeling is rapidly
England and France. Their enterpriswee
are endea-
by our capital, and ours by the.irasci inbetween
they are
.samtiiornable method
and wonderful power of ors I
vouring to learn from them theirn
improvements as
t" alof the
nation. genius
content to derive fromte byutshesupra
may have been tested by
learn from each other
without • h er
withoWe a
u t
prejudice, r ehappy
withoutPP envy, and with only
so much rivalry :as seems to be inseparable from
mutual esteem.
We do not doubt for a moment that her
• Majesty will receive to-day at the hands of
met
as cordial and
the people of Paris a salutation
as gracious as that whichEmevperreyss-
where accompanied the Emperor andof France in their recent visit to
London
terror and dismay are shaking
tersburg--;-while the Russianfleet/. u While
tll
rembling
its granite bulwarks at the
under the blow that it has
ous allies—and the garrison
approach of the victori-
jo.ufsSterbeacsetiovpeodl, isE reeling
d
► and France can find time to keep high holyday,
not at the bidding of a, despotic tyrant, who forces