The Sun.
London, England, 1870-09-10 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1870.

STERNE.S familiar phrase is for once inapplicable.
They don't "manage these things better in France "
--referring here as we do—let it be understood at
once—to the course pursued by the Parisians during
these last few days at a j tncture of extreme emer-
gency. With a hostile army, flushed with victory,
an army numbering altogether between 30p,000 and
400,000 of the most formidable troops in the
world, guided by the genius of the most
consummate master of the art of war now
living ; with a host like this advancing
rapidly upon them, the people of Paris are chipping
N's and E's, and Eagles and Diadems off every
" coign of 'vantage " on which, when these same
Parisians were the ready flatterers of
they were so lavishly squandered ; they are destroy-
ing shop signs of a similar character ;
they are obliterating photographs of the EMPEROR
and the EMPRESs, and of the Child
of France ; they are smashing busts, and fracturing
sculpture, and hacking into shreds historic master-
pieces from the hands of HORACE VERNET and
WINTERHALTER. With the Prussians swiftly ap-
proaching the gates of Paris, they, the defenders of
Paris, are busying themselves with these frivolous
displays of sheer spite and of brutal Vandalism,
varied with assaults yet more brutal upon
inoffensive lookers - on, such as the one
ii Rioted upon the well-known Correspondent of the
Daily Telegraph, who has now told us all
about it. " When empires fall and Prussians
marsh on Paris," quoth he, "the fact of a newspaper
correspondent being extensively echymosed by anti-
Prussian sabots, and having his left hand half bitten
through by an enthusiastic but seemingly anthro-
pophagic patriot, is of very little importance indeed."
"But," he goes on to say, " the fact having led to
my passing the last three days mainly in the com-
panionship of sundry bottles of Goulard water and
camphorated oil, forwarded by one of the English
chemists in the Rue de la Paix for external applica-
tion, has likewise afforded me the opportunity of
watching the curious operation "---of what ? Well,
of how it has come to pass that while he himself
was endeavouring, with the aid of the aforesaid
Goulard water and camphorated oil to rub out
the " extensively echymosed " portions of his
epidermis (we thank Mr. SALA for teaching us that
phrase), the Parisians themselves have been busying
themselves all the while with—" Rubbing out the
Empire." Chisels and mallets. pocket knives and
crowbars, have been industriously called into re-
quisition, to ohip off here, there, and everywhere,
the obnoxious initials and insignia of the abolished
dynasty of the NAPOLEONS. The frivolity, the utter
childishness of all this under the actual circumstances
is indescribably pitiable. One can fancy the Ironsides
of CnomwELL—in fact one knows only too well that
they actually were—prepared at any moment of
leisure to mutilate works of art and of antiquity in the
Abbeys, and Minsters, and glorious old Cathedrals of
the United Kingdom. But, supposing for the sake
of argument, a foreign army to have landed in
those days, to have beaten the troops confronting
them, and to be thereupon in full march upon Lon-
don—only imagine the inhabitants of the capital,
finding nothing better or wiser to do than to go
about busily chipping off every C.R. they could find
limned or carved, here, there, and everywhere.
Why, the notion is simply preposterous. No, for
once we repeat, STERNE'S phrase is inapplicable.
" They don't manage these things better in France,"
or, at least, among the Parisians.