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peared. The new city improved rapidly under
the influence of Roman laws, arts, and adminis-
tration. During the feign of Charlemagne, who,
amidst his conquests, never lost sight of the arts
of civilization, Paris advanced in arts and letters
as well as vveflth and extent. The adventurous
and roving Normans, tempted by the wealth of
the city, and despising the feeble successors of
Charlemagne, who had abandoned the capital as
a patrimony to hereditary counts, plundered it
three times, after short intervalsxe2x80x94in 845,857, and
872. Under the third or Capetian race, it improv-
ed still more rapidly than before. It became the
fixed roval residence and seat of government;
the capital of the kingdom in fact as well as in
name. Philip Augustus added to its strength and
beauty hy many new edifices, by paving the
streets, and by surrounding the whole city with
deep fosse and thick wall defended by five hun-
dred towers. Paris at this time had sixteen gates,
and covered a surface of seven hundred and thirty-
nine square acres. Louis IX. (St. Louis) built
hospitals and schools, reformed the more barba-
rous and vexatious “ customs” (laws), regulated
the administration of justice, and created a po-
lice. Paris was taken in 1426 by the English, who
were compelled to abandon it in 1436. Francis |
I. had the glorv of introducing into Paris science,
literature and the fine arts. The Grecian orders
of architecture were now adopted for the first
time, and the interior of the new edifices adorn-
ed with sculpture and the paintings of the Italian
masters. Henry IV. erected the Pont Neuf, and
laid out several squares cr places in the old city
on the islets in the Seine, hitherto the quarter of
the court. Paris is indebted to Louis XIV. fora
great portion of its magnificence :xe2x80x94for its noble
and healthful Boulevards;xe2x80x94for the triumphal
arches (of which two are splended monuments)
by which it is entered at the gates of St. Den-
is, St. Martin, St. Antoine, and St. Bernard ;xe2x80x94
for the Place Vondome and Place des Victoi-
res ;xe2x80x94for the colonnade ofthe Louvre ; the Hospit-
al of Invalids ; the garden ofthe Tuileries, design-
ed by Lenotre, under the immediate inspection of
Colbert;xe2x80x94for the promenades and plantations of
the Champs Elysees. The Revolution came, and
with it the genius of devastation for a time. The
works of art only are a permanent loss, and for-
tnnatelv they were neither many, nor irreparable
chefs d'osuvre :xe2x80x94whilst the public health, conve-
nience. and beauty of the town, have gained in-
calculably by the removal or desecration of the
churches and convents. Spacious and convenient
markets, open and well-built streets or other edi-
fices of great public ornament and utility, now oc
cupy the sites of such religious houses as were
destroyed : and those left standing, but desecra-
ted. have been converted into prisons, penitentia-
ries. hospitals, calleges, schools or other public
establishments far the purposes of society or char-
ity. Paris is under eternal obligations to Bona-
aparte : he did more far it than even Louis XIV.
He combined, iu a greater degree, the useful with
the magnificent. Despotic as he was, he saw
that the mass of the people was now a power
which must not be darzled merely, as in the time
of Lous XIV.. but conciliated and served. His
designs are said to have been essentially his own.
It seems most probable that they could have been
conceived only by the same mind which had the
force, energy and resources to execute them. He
freed the bridges and banks of the Seine from the
embarrassment and deformity of the old houses by
which they were still cro wded; built magnificent
quays and wharves; and erected four bridges of
remarkable beauty, as monuments of art. He
not only conceived (for even the conception was
a great merit), but had nearly executed, at his fail,
the Canal de 1’Ourcq. He distributed the public
supply of water by fifteen new and abundant
fountains, of which some are beautiful specimens
of architecture. The immense architectural and
sculptural mass called “ the Fountain of the El-
phant” was left by him, and still remains unfinish-
ed. The people, not merely of Paris, but of the
whole kingdom, are indebted to him for those
spacious markets, so commodiously arranged for
the sale of every kind of produce ; for public
stores, especially the wine stores, which surprise
by their vastness, the happy ingenuity of their
distribution, and their architectural grandeur. He
erected, near the barriers, five abattoirs or slaugh
ter-houses ; and thus relieved the town from the
inconvenient and dangerous presence of herds of
cattle, the revolting spectacle of blood, and the
noxious miasmata of butchery and tallow-melting.
The vast granary of reserve, destined by him to
protect the people of Paris against famine and the
change ot seasons, now unfinished or abandoned,
remains a monument of the instability of all hu
man power and the uncertainity of all human
projects. He cleared the Place du Carousel, be
tween the Louvre and the Tuileries, of its ob
structions and nuisances; adorned it with a tri
umphal arch; completed the Louvre; filled its
gallery with sculpture and paintings. The gar-
den of the Tuileries owes much of its magnifi-
cence to the noble vista which he opened hy the
rue Castiglione to the triumphal column in the
Place Vendome;xe2x80x94the opposite view of the Cham-
ber of Deputies, with its noble portico, on the left
bank of the Seine ; and the unfinished but grand
triumphal arch of Neuilly. Many of the public
buildings, canals, and other public works left un-
finished by Bonaparte, have been carried cn, and
some have been completed, since the restoration
of the house of Bourbon. A new quarter, as it &
called, was begun, in 1823, in the western sub-
urb of Paris, touching the. Champs Elysees, ex-
tending to Chaillot, and spreading above the
Chaussee d’Antin. The style of structure is
elegant, and the scale within the reach of ordi-
nary fortunes. A second quarter opens by its
main street, which is spacious and planted with
rows of trees, a communication between two
main points of the fauxbourgs Montmartre and St.
Martin. The progress of all these, however, has
been slow, and in some parts suspended; and
some generations will probably have passed away
before the “ Ville de Francois Premier” andNou-
velle Athenes,” with their brilliant associations,or
the “ Petit Londres,” with its national rivalry, are
monuments of any thing but magnificent projects,
and the want of capital or perseverance. Great
undertakings are rarely, if ever, completed by
private enterprise in Paris: they have been pro-
jected and executed only by the government. The
palace of the - Exchange, considered the noblest
edifice of the kind in Europe, was completed and
opened for the transaction of commercial business,
and for the sittings of the tribunal of commerce,
since the accession of Charles X.
It is difficult to give within short limits a
coup d’ceil of so crowded, diversified, and even dis-
orderly, a maxc2xa7s as the French capital,xe2x80x94its church-
es, palaces, public buildings, and monuments ot
art. Of its churches, the most remarkable are the |
