New Passages Have Been Cut From Street To Street, Old Streets Have Been
Made Wider, New Streets Have Been Made, With Broad Sidewalks, And Stately
Rows Of Houses Hewn From The Easily Wrought Cream-Colored Stone Of The
Quarries Of The Seine.
The sidewalks of the Boulevards, and all the
public squares, wherever carriages do not pass, have been covered with
This smooth asphaltic pavement, and in the Boulevards have been erected
some magnificent buildings, with richly carved pilasters and other
ornaments in relief, and statues in niches, and balconies supported by
stone brackets wrought into bunches of foliage. New columns and statues
have been set up, and new fountains pour out their waters. Among these is
the fountain of Moliere, in the Rue Richelieu, where the effigy of the
comic author, chiseled from black marble, with flowing periwig and
broad-skirted coat, presides over a group of naked allegorical figures in
white marble, at whose feet the water is gushing out.
In external morality also, there is some improvement; public gaming-houses
no longer exist, and there are fewer of those uncleanly nuisances which
offend against the code of what Addison calls the lesser morals. The
police have had orders to suppress them on the Boulevards and the public
squares. The Parisians are, however, the same gay people as ever, and as
easily amused as when I saw them last. They crowd in as great numbers to
the opera and the theatres; the Boulevards, though better paved, are the
same lively places; the guingettes are as thronged; the public gardens are
as full of dancers.
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