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From Bentley's Miscellany.

IMPERIAL

WHEN future historians sit down calmly to discuss the merits and demerits of the Second Empire, it is quite certain that they must be unanimous in their praise of the improvements to which Napoleon III. has subjected the capital of his empire. It was the boast of Augustus that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble. The flatterers of our George the Fourth said the same thing about the conversion of Swallow street into the Quadrant; but all such improvements pale into insignificance when compared with the alterations which the Emperor has produced in Paris. Not alone that Paris has been adorned with magnificent buildings, but the streets have undergone a thorough renovation, and it is possible now to walk in comfort through the penetralia of the Cité. To the Emperor the great credit is due that he has not sought merely to aggrandize his reign by the erection of stately buildings, which will form an epoch in French history, but at the same time he has ever kept in view the wants and wishes of the inhabitants.

On first acquaintance with Lutetia Parisiorum dates from the revolution of July, and on our last visit it seemed to us as if the city we remembered had disappeared from the face of the earth to make room for some gorgeous creation of John Martin. In those days Paris was essentially black, crooked, and uncomfortable, and the painters of the Romantic school had opportunities in abundance to represent mediæval Paris. At that time the city possessed its hills and its valleys; the bridges were admirable counterparts of the Montagnes Russes; and on the slightest suspicion of frost, the horses found it impossible to ascend the acclivities of the Pont Neuf and the Pont de la Tournelle, while the Boulevards and quays were in a deplorable condition, fully justifying the remark that Paris was the inferno of horses. A smart shower rendered Paris inaccessible for the pedestrian; waterpipes had not then been invented, and the rain poured down from the roofs through

PARIS.

the gaping mouths of the stone spouts, and gave the passer-by a shower-bath. In a few minutes the gutters were converted into rivulets, for the present system of sewerage was a thing unknown; streets became lakes, and the tradesmen hurriedly closed their shops to keep the water out. When the rain had ceased, the doors were again opened, and the apprentices began removing the water by means of large sponges. The wayfarers emerged from the gateways in which they had taken shelter, and crept cautiously along the slippery trottoir. Then came some clever speculator to earn a few sous by laying a plank across the road, on which only a tight-rope dancer could keep his balance-but we seem to be only repeating in halting prose what Boileau wrote in mellifluous verse about the discomforts of Paris, and yet we are describing matters from nature. It is not our fault_if Paris in 1834 too often resembled the Paris of 1693.

These things struck us at once while pursuing our researches in new Paristhe absence of the gutter running through the center of the causeway, the disappearance of the trottoirs, and the abolition of reverbères, of revolutionary notoriety. In the time we first saw Paris, the pavingstones formed a hollow along the center of the street, which, though not an actual gutter, retained the moisture even through the summer, for the sun found it impossible to force its way between the bulging houses and lick up the water. Even the broader and more convenient streets in the middle of the city were always either wet or covered with a black layer of mud, less offensive when it rained than when the sun had imparted to it a degree of consistency. However active you might be, you could not for any length of time continue your peregrinations through the streets of Paris; for while you were soon fatigued by incessantly slipping off the greasy trottoirs, the stench emanating from the filth which was being continually stirred up by passing carriages made one

sick at the stomach. In winter, again, | seventeenth century there were in Paris the pedestrian ran considerable danger of twelve publicly privileged robbers' dens, being injured by the carriages, for, owing known by the name of "Cours de Mirato the greasiness and high pitch of the cles," of which Victor Hugo gives us such streets, the wheels persisted in making an admirable description. Unfortunately, eccentric revolutions, which inevitably our prosaic age can not tolerate the robrought them on to the trottoir. mance of robber-life, and the Courts of Miracles have been put down by the strong arm of the law. Still, so long as Paris exists, with its startling contrast between unbounded riches and the extremest poverty, it must be a prey to the dangerous classes that war against society. So late as 1836, these rogues regarded the night as their exclusive property. With the twilight the veriest scum of Paris congregated on the Place de la Concorde. No honest man ventured among them, except under the most pressing necessity, and he might esteem himself fortunate if he escaped with only the loss of his watch and purse. After dusk no one ventured to walk along the Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire, or the Boulevard of the Bastille. París ended with the extreme verge of the Marais. On the other side was the town wall, with a prospect across the Rue Basse of wood-yards, fields, and nursery-gardens. Further along the Boulevards you came to the remains of Beaumarchais's splendid house and gardens, a half-finished basin in which stood the column of July, and a plaster model of an elephant, designed for a fountain, but never completed, and which eventually became a colony of rats. Round about these a spacious open quadrangle indicated the spot where the Bastille had formerly stood. Not a trace was to be seen of the once terrible building; the moat, a pestiferous swamp, with a green covering of festering weeds and some blocks of stone which peered out from the dank vegetation, were the only visible proofs of the existence of the Bastille. The long walk along the Boulevards ended as it began— in desolation and uncompleted monuments. At one end the elephant fountain, at the other the Madeleine church; on all sides there was something to complete or remove. The Seine had to be freed from the old houses which obstructed passage; the quays must be leveled to form a long, straight route from the Pont d'Jéna to the Pont d'Austerlitz, from the granaries to the garrison bakery; the river must be hemmed in between lofty insurmountable walls, the public buildings restored from the unclean and tottering

It must be borne in mind that we are not writing of barbarous times, but of a recently passed lustre, of a blessed time of peace, of elegant manners and civilization: but the pedestrian was not taken into account. The small space left him by the vehicles he could only attain in the sweat of his brow. Now, broad footpaths are his property, which no coupé or cabriolet dare invade. He can now walk firmly with clean boots, even if it have been raining furiously for hours. So soon as the storm ceases, the population of idlers and flâneurs reäppear and lounge along the asphalt pavement; while, though their noses may be unpleasantly affected by the gutters running along the pavement, at any rate their stomachs are no longer upset. But the greatest change has taken place in the night of Paris. Formerly, it is true, the streets were not quite unilluminated, but the reverbères could hardly be regarded as lighting, although they produced a remarkable change, and lengthened the daily traffic of the city by six hours. In the reign of Louis XIV. commercial Paris closed its doors at nine in summer and five in winter; but the introduction of the reverbères effected an alteration, more especially as, with the revolution, they were lighted every evening. Under the monarchy, the lighting of Paris being farmed out, the good citizens had often to wade home through a sea of mud in the dark, or hire a boy at the corner of the street to light them to their houses. Paris of to-day and Paris of yesterday are as different as light from darkness. The light destroys those places and schemes which depend on darkness for success, and shun any illumination. Light kills like the Delian Apollo destroyed with his golden arrows the dragon Python, the father of the Gorgon and the Hydra. When Boileau writes that the most dangerous and desolate forest was a secure place as compared with Paris, it was no witty exaggeration. In any rich city, where the night is longer than the day, there is an endless succession of crimes, and murderers and robbers find certain shelter. Even at the close of the

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condition in which they vegetated; the | of Louis XIII., who had the Marais laid wretched shops and stalls removed from the immediate vicinity of the palace. But there was much more to be done besides all this the Louvre to be restored, Paris rebuilt in accordance with a regular plan, the old Cité reformated, as Medea renovated Eson; gardens must be laid out, trees planted, lungs for the city arranged, the miracles of art and science introduced to every-day notice; and hundreds of other equally important matters. Well, reader, every thing that seemed impossible has been proved not merely possible, but carried into effect-and that, too, with a rapidity that you can hardly believe it all has happened within your lifetime. New Paris in so far differs from old Rome, that it has been built in a day.

During the last half-century the population of Paris has more than doubled, and the measure of its prosperity increased proportionately with even greater rapidity. It was necessary that new houses should be built and suitable sites selected. The north-west side was preferred; and hence Paris has not grown equally in every direction. As in other great cities, the population of Paris has collected in districts, so that similar trades are assembled in the same part. Thus, the great manufactories may be found in the Faubourg St. Antoine; the smaller factories, such as the bronze foundries and smithies in the Marais; the dealers in imported articles are found in the district between the Hôtel de Ville and the Canal St. Martin; in the vicinity of the Rue Hauteville, the commission and export agents have collected; further on, near the Place des Victoires, we find the dépôts of woolen goods; while across the water, in the Quartier Latin, the tan-pits and dyers' establishments occupy the banks of the Bièvre; and the printers, bookbinders, etc., are congregated around the schools and university. Hence it is seen that each part of the city possesses its elements of prosperity; but they are too unequally divided, and too much isolated. The great object, then, is to approximate them, and the greatest want hitherto felt in Paris has been of broad bridges and chaussées, which would accelerate the communication between the various suburbs. The towns of Flanders were at least three centuries in advance of the capital of France in this respect. The first trace of design in Paris will be found in the reign

out after a regular plan, with a large place after the pattern of the Netherlands. The Place Vendôme and the Invalides, the chief monuments of the lengthy reign of Louis XIV., are sufficient to show what that monarch might have made of Paris, had he not devoted his attention almost exclusively to Versailles. From that time Paris was left to its fate, and although a few streets were opened, and the most crying defects repaired, still the center of Paris has always proved the stumblingblock which prevented any material improvement. This was the narrowest, darkest, and dirtiest part of the town, a chaotic mass of filthy houses, and narrow, winding streets, into which the sun never penetrated in this confined sphere lived some fifty thousand people, and the number was indefinitely increased during business hours. As was natural, this was always the unhealthiest part of Paris; the tables of mortality show that while the average deaths in the more open parts of Paris were one in fifty, in the center one in thirty died. Here, too, epidemic discases raged most severely. In 1832 and 1848, the cholera was fearful in the center of the city, and in the confined region round the Hôtel de Ville the mortality was five times as great as in the open, healthy neighborhood of the Chaussée d'Antin. Every thing tended to prove that, if broad streets were made through the center of the Cité, this quarter would not only become more convenient and ornamental, but at the same time the inhabitants would be healthier and have increased facilities of trade communication with the faubourgs. In this sense the present government has perfectly comprehended its mission, and immortalizes itself by commencing its improvements in that portion of the Cité where the want was most pressingly felt.

It would be unjust to assert that since the First Empire no French government has made attempts to remodel or improve Paris. During the Restoration but little was done, and private buildings as much surpassed the public edifices as the reverse had been the case under Napoleon I., but the dynasty of July did much to improve the city. The formation of the Rue Rambuteau, running parallel with the river, and forming a better communication between the Place Royale and the Halles, was the greatest and most useful of the undertak

ings made by that government. The partial removal of the buildings round the Hôtel de Ville, the formation of the Rue Lobau, Rue du Pont Louis-Philippe, and of another street running from the rear of the Hôtel de Ville to the gate of the church of St. Gervais, also in some measure ventilated the center of the city. Still, the Citizen King, in this as in too many other matters, allowed himself to be directed by accidental circumstances rather than a given plan. A wise and powerful ruler, faithful in peaceful times to the principles of the founder of his dynasty, was destined to reconstruct Paris. Napoleon III. was the restorer of public peace and security in France, and with these trade and commerce emerged from their torpor. So soon as the community felt itself saved from the horrors of internecine war, the confidence it displayed in the new system was extraordinary. The numerous joint-stock enterprises, the enormous state loans, suddenly produced an incredible mass of easily convertible capital, and the spirit of speculation became so powerful among the Parisians that even the war could not damp it. Entire quarters disappeared and rose again by magic; and it would be incredible, if it could not be proved by documents, that during five years of the present régime four times as much was effected for the improvement of Paris than during the thirty-one years of the Restoration and the July dynasty. The sums expended in the improvements of Paris from 1816 to 1830 amounted to 10,250,000fr., and from 1831 to 1847 to to 24,500,000 fr. ; while between 1851 and 1855 the enormous sum of 157,651,000 fr. was expended for the same purpose. Even more admirable than this is the design accompanying these magnificent works, for every day the spirit becomes more visible which has actuated Napoleon III. in all his undertakings. Ile has proved to his people not only that he ever studies their welfare, but that he possesses the head with which to find the means.

Paris is not a commercial and manufacturing city, which, like London, can be independent. The enormous population it contains lives almost entirely on the luxury and expenditure of rich Frenchmen and foreigners, who spend their revenues there, and consequently furnish employment for all hands. The rich foreigners, however, were driven from France by the Revolution, the rich people of France

were afraid of attracting attention by any profuse outlay, and consequently the trade of Paris, being entirely dependent on them, was utterly stagnant. Every government, then, whatever name or form it might have, if it desired stability, was forced to find employment for the poorer classes, and set money in circulation; not merely because the workman must eat, but because an idle man is a dangerous man in any state, above all, in one that is insecure. After the coup d' état Louis Napoleon, consequently, sought to consolidate his power and make a pow erful impression on public opinion, and he chose the improvements of Paris as the best and most effectual means. According to an old French proverb, "all goes well when le bâtiment goes on ;" and by this is understood a quantity of special trades, which furnish employment for at least 50,000 workmen, or about one fourth of the industrial population of Paris. In consequence of this new impetus the amount of money employed in private building soon grew from twenty-eight to two hundred and fifty millions, and the quantity of work for the laborers increased in an equal ratio.

If however, the primary cause of the Parisian improvements may be of a political character, there is a second cause of much more important and beneficial aspect. A portion of Paris was immoderately populous and industrial, another almost lifeless and dull. Every one thronged round the Palais Royal, the Louvre, and the Halles. This was an admirable situation for the retail trade, from its vicinity to the Boulevards. Houses were expensive here, but any one who possessed one considered his fortune as made. On the other hand, the once rich Quartier du Marais, the handsome Faubourg St. Germain, and the West-end had so sunk in public repute that they appeared like a city of the dead. The farther one went from the center the broader and longer the streets became, but trade was stagnant. The more distant Quartiers had no intercommunication, and lay round Paris like villages. In Chaillot and the Roule, behind the Chaussée d'Antin, and the Faubourgs Montmartre, Poissonnière, St. Denis, St. Martin, etc., on the right bank, as well as in the district between the Gobelins and the Invalides, resided many thousands who belonged only topographically and politically to Paris, but

seemed to have no connection with the city, which they only visited on business or on holidays, All these districts were once villages, which gradually joined themselves to the colossus, and were finally included by a common wall, during Calonne's ministry in 1784. In these villagelike districts every thing was quiet and rustic. Here you might see, within the banlieue, fields of wheat, spacious orchards, large nursery-gardens, dépôts of wood and stone, and those factories which required large space, which could be obtained here at a cheaper rate. In short, while one part of the city was overcrowded, another was almost deserted. So soon, then, as the number of houses in the populous quarter was diminished, the inhabitants were compelled to emigrate to the desolate portions of Paris. Such has been the object for which the present government of France has been striving, and it has met with perfect success.

the most respectable and cleanest in the quarter, and which ran to the Château d'Eau: gone, too, is that labyrinth of dirty and scandalous streets that formed a chain of villainy between the Louvre and the Palais Royal, in which no honest citoyenne dare appear by day or night, lest she might be subjected to insult. It is difficult now for us to comprehend how such a swarm of scoundrels could find shelter on a spot which is only just large enough for the new Louvre buildings. All this and much else existed five years ago-a miserable sight for the philanthropist; now it is almost an obliterated reminiscence, attaching itself to the archæologic memories of the Bastille and the Carillon on the Pont Neuf. The boarded stalls of the Carousel are as much a Parisian tradition as the old wooden gallery in the Palais Royal, once known as the "Camp of the Tatars."

The Parisians have certainly witnessed eternal repairs and improvements on the Louvre and the Tuileries, but they progressed so slowly that they might have gone on building forever, for before one

The new Louvre was designed as the nucleus of new Paris. The completion of this palace has so long been regarded as impracticable, as the creation of the brain, that it is difficult to believe in the realiza-part was finished, another had fallen into tion, even when it is visible to us as a gigantic fact. The Parisians had for so long a period known the court of the Louvre as a cloaca, where at night four wooden posts stretched out their arms to the passengers, diffusing a sickly light, and the Carousel-square, as a fair-ground, full of booths and stalls, that they had at last persuaded themselves that the dirty streets, gallows-like lamp-posts, and neckbreaking holes, formed an indispensable adjunct of the royal palace. And, in fact, is it not a dream? Five years have scarce elapsed, and the whole disgraceful heap of pig-sties, stalls, pot-houses, and tapis francs has disappeared. The holes are filled up, the ground leveled and covered with magnificent buildings, and, strange to say, the eye accustoms itself so entirely and rapidly to the change, that the memory can hardly summon up the old aspect of the place; we seem to forget utterly the but recent buildings that covered it. At length we vacantly look round for the Rue du Doyenné, a species of Invalid quarter; the Hôtel de Nantes, a large house standing alone in the center of the Place, where it looked like a pyramid, and served as a house of call for all the omnibuses of the city and the banlieue; the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre,

a dilapidated state. Now the Parisians see with amazement that the two palaces are connected, and the new Louvre built and decorated with magical rapidity, before they had time to form an idea of its extent, arrangement, and plan. The huge block of buildings now covering the Place de Carousel is of very recent date, the foundation-stone having been laid in July, 1852. Since that date the wing on the north side of the Tuileries, begun by Napoleon I. and extending from the Pavillon de Rohan to the Rue de Marengo, has been completed, thus forming the connection between the Louvre and the Tuileries. At the same time two other wings have been added, running parallel from the old Louvre to the Place du Carousel, and forming a large square, which has received the name of the Place Napoléon III. Round the new wings, along the Place du Carousel and the Place Napoléon III., run covered walks, with terraces, in which an army of statues of celebrated men stand in rank and file, like soldiers in the battlements of a fortress. Doubts may exist as to the aesthetic value of the new edifices, and we are not disposed to agree with the French critics when they say that it is "le plus beau monument d'architecture moderne qu'il y ait dans

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