=Second Empire.=--Chief among the architectural memorials of the Second Empire (1852-70) are the completion of the =Louvre= and the =Tuileries= by Louis Visconti and Hector Lefuel; and the =Paris Opera House= by Charles Garnier. The Tuileries was destroyed by the Commune in 1871, but the two wings of the New Louvre, which occupy the western corners of the Place du Carrousel, worthily continue in a modern spirit the character of Pierre Lescot’s Renaissance façade. They represent, in fact, not Classicalism, but rather a reversion to Renaissance inspiration, as also does Garnier’s masterpiece, which is a brilliant adaptation of the Italian style to the sumptuous requirements of a modern ceremonial theatre and to the extravagant ostentation and somewhat meretricious taste of a society of _nouveaux riches_. =Paris Re-planned.=--A memorable feature of this period is the extensive replanning of Paris, projected under Baron Haussmann. It involved the widening of streets, creation of new boulevards, and general improvements of sanitation, as well as increased magnificence--a scheme of such magnitude that it has been but recently completed. Meanwhile, this gradual development of an organised plan, regulated in its progress so as to reconcile the rights of private ownership with the interests of the community, has been an object lesson in the proper course of city reconstruction. UNITED STATES CLASSICAL REVIVAL The United States of America having won their independence as a nation, there was an immediate need for Government buildings. That they should be designed in the classical style naturally followed from the intimate relations which had grown up between the New Republic and France. When Washington had been selected as the seat of the National Government, it was a Frenchman, Major Pierre Charles l’Enfant, who laid out the city on a plan so convenient and ornamental, that it is strange no other city of America, with a similar chance of starting forth from the beginning, has emulated it. Instead, the general practice both with new cities and the extension of older ones, has been to adopt the gridiron plan of a repetition of parallel streets, cut at right angles by another repetition of parallels; a deadly monotonous system and far from convenient. For it makes no adequate provision for the gravitation of government, finance, and so forth to certain centres, which in consequence become inconveniently congested. =Plan of Washington.=--The Washington plan, on the contrary, is logically designed about two foci: the Legislative centre, the =Capitol=, and the Executive centre, the Mansion of the President, =The White House=.