The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-28 00:00:00

LONDON, TIIIII?SDAY, OCT. 28, 1869.

One of the oddest phrases in the English lan-
guage is the one in wbich any one says he is agree-
ably disappointed. Yet that is the very phrase
which precisely expresses the mixed feelings with
which the Paris Correspondents of English jour-
nalism, without exception, traversed the dripping
streets, and boulevards, and open spaces of Paris
on Tuesday last, the 26th of October. They were
agreeably disappointed. They went to describe
what took place, and nothing took place. They
went to photograph the expected demonstration on
the pages of their notebooks, and there was no de.
monstration whatever to photograph. They have
only enabled us to see through their own bino-
cular vision as through a stereoscope the vacant
spaces in which there ought to have been,
according to the political. false prophets of the
hour, this long-looked-for revolutionary outbreak.
Reading their accounts, the pedestal is there, so to
speak—but, upon it, there is visible no struggling
and entangled group of the LAocooN. There is not
even seen upon the empty square of the pedestal the
brawny figure of the reposing HERCULES. It is
simply the pedestal, and nothing more than the
pedestal. "Into each life some rain must fall,"
according to LONGFELLOW. and it certainly fell on
that day into the life of Paris. And it fell not in-
opportunely. Mobs are as effectually dispersed by dis-
charges from the tubes of fire-engines as by discharges
from the more ponderous and rigid cylinders of artillery.
It was not, however, that the floodgates of heaven
were opened on Tuesday over the French Capital. It
was simply that there was a continuous drizzle like
a Scotch mist, accompanied by a raw wind of the
most dispiriting character. The raw wind and the
drizzle, however, were quite enough. According to
LEIGH HUNT'S description of a similar day in
London, it might be said quite as accurately that,
the day before yesterday, in Paris " all the pave-
ments were a dancing wash, and all the women were
distressed Venuses de Medicis." Only, that, of the
latter, there were visible out of doors very
few indeed•—the male foot-passengers even being
very sparsely distributed about the leading thorough-
fares. It was one of those miserable days in autumn
when—

" Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger lily,"

as sings the Poet Laureate : and heavily hung the
dank blossoms of the red and yellow dahlias all along
the Champs Elysees. Not a soldier was visible
anywhere in all Paris, saving only the solitary sen-
tinel carefully buttoned up in his overcoat marching
up and down in front of some public building, or
shared for an interval of shelter into the coffin-like
niche of his sentry-box. Even when the rain abated,
and ceased in the afternoon, the sun gleaming out
from among the clouds and the roads swept clear of
moisture, the people remained still in doors, and to the
last there was no demonstration whatever. In regard
to the EMPEROR'S reception, we spoke yesterday as to
his being cordially greeted immediately upon his ap-
pearance on the terrace in the gardens of the Tuileries
by a crowd of two thousand persons who were there
on the watch for him, and who welcomed him with a
burst of acclamations. Cheered very heartily on the
evening of the 25th at the Opera, he was again very
heartily cheered on the evening of the 26th, itself, in
the Theatre Francais. There is no question of it
that the whole thing was a false alarm
raised by the irreconcilebles without any
foundation. There were the leaders of a riot if they
could but have seen their way to get one up. Only
—there were no followers. There was the watch-
word, but no one would answer it. M. Bar:BE
said a few words, or read a few words, under the
column of Luxor in the Place de la Concorde, but,
with what ludicrous result by the way ? Why the
chance passengers who listened for a moment, as they
passed, to hear what the damp gentleman was saying
to all space--offered him coppers, derisively, as
though he had been (as in point of fact he was
for the time being) a street mountebank—
to his intense indignation. Seldom, indeed,
has there been witnessed such an absurdity from be-