The Sun.
London, England, 1870-10-01 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1870.

THERE is something appalling in the contrast of
what is being done, now, at Paris and in London. As
all the world knows, the former capital has, for
several years past, been most elaborately, compre-
hensively, and minutely beautified. Under the
regime of the Second Empire it has been transformed.
Its unsightly quarters have been swept away. New
and magnificent boulevards have radiatingly opened
out their perspective like the sticks of a fan.

The Louvre has been completed. A gorgeous
Opera House, vast enough for a Pantheon or a
Walhalla, and smothered with sculpturesque adorn-

ments of the most lavish, and many of diem of the

most meretricious character has been erected. The
entire city has been so decorated, improved in a
sanitary point of view, an !, as a whole, perfected in
the symmetry of its proportions, that it has obtained

for itself the title of the Capital of Civilisation. All
this has been accomplished under the rule of the
Emperor NAPOLEON 111., as the managerial puffs say,
though here the words are applicable with literal

truth, " regardless of expense," at the beck of the
finger of that Prince of iEdiles, Baron HAUSSMANN.
Precisely when this marvellous and costly work of
transformation is completed, the whole superb

achievement is, as summarily as possible, set apart for
destruction. Strategically the barracks commanding
the new and old boulevards were planned to perfec-

tion. But then the barracks, so placed for the main-
tenance in case of emergency of the dynasty of yester-
day, are empty. The guns that could have swept those
boulevards have long since either been captured by the
Prussians, or have been dragged to the surrounding
fortifications of the metropolis in a despairing
effort to keep back the invading legions of Germany
from taking possession of the fair and ill-fated
Lutetia. HAussmANN, months ago dismissed from
power, is no one knows where at this
moment. The EMPEROR with his scabbard
empty, and his sceptre gone, is a prisoner at
Wilhelmshohe. The terrible Von BOON, the inexor-
able Von MOLTKE, the inflexible Von BISMARCK,
the resolute but chivalrous old KING, the " pins
Aneas " of this Teutonic invasion of Gaul, the
daring and dashing CROWN PRINCE, the " Fritz " of
half-a-dozen great battles from Woerth to Sedan, these
notable leaders of the vast army that has until now

literally carried everything before it, are deliberately
sitting down now before Paris,or rather all round Paris,
with a view to its capture, sword in hand, even
though it be but as a smouldering and shattered
heap of ruins. Meanwhile England, in common with
the other great neutrals, watches quietly what will
be the upshot of it all. London, at this supreme
juncture in the history of the:world, being busily
engaged in planting flower-bcds, and laying out grass-
plots, and elaborating drinking fountains, and lamp-
posts, and street statuary, along the waste lands re-

claimed from the mud and ooze of the river, side by
side with the granite esplanale of the Thames Em-

banjcment,

I.: German papers have just been discussing a

melancholy question, but one involving an Important
Lesson. Which journal published in France was it
that gave to the Grermans the earlie6t information