Many of the grand boulevards and rues of Paris have been built since 1848, and the work of widening and improving old streets and building new ones is still going on with constantly increasing vigor.
There are now in progress of construction, broad boulevards, which can only be constructed at the sacrifice of many acres of some of the finest buildings in Paris; but only beauty and grandeur are regarded anything in this noble city, expenses being but little estimated. Notwithstanding the lavish expenditure of money upon this class of improvements, Paris is, of all cities, perhaps the most prosperous on the globe.
Of the wide-spread destruction of public buildings, occasioned by the late war and the stormy days of the Commune, there are but few marks remaining. The Palace of the Tuileries, Hotel de Ville, and a few other buildings, lie still in ruins; but the thirty or more churches which were either greatly damaged or quite demolished, and numerous other public edifices that have been destroyed, have already been restored--some of them with increased magnificence. Besides this, the French have almost finished paying their immense war-debt, while America, whose war ended seven years before theirs, is obliged to sail into the centennial year, still heavily freighted with the obnoxious burden.
Did heaven ever smile upon a more blessed city than Paris? To give the reader an idea of how buildings are torn down to make room for the purpose of extending fine streets, let us refer to the statistics concerning Rue de Rivoli. This street cost $30,000,000. It is two miles in length, and its establishment caused the demolition of upwards of one thousand houses! Thirty millions of dollars, enough to pay for a tract of land that is twenty miles long and eleven miles wide, bought at the rate of $200 per acre; and all this expended on the improvement of two miles of road!
In the Old World, a strip of three to five or six story houses, several hundred feet wide and a quarter of a mile to upwards of a mile in length, is torn down with as much complacent indifference concerning the destruction, as men manifest in mowing so much grass!
As among the most fashionable places in Paris, may be mentioned, Boulevard des Italiens, Palais Royal, Champs Elysees, Jardin des Tuileries and other pleasure gardens and public squares. Boulevard des Italiens, in fair weather, is densely crowded with ladies and gentlemen seated on chairs hired for two to three sous (cents) each. The city clears over $7,000 a year from this source of revenue. But several hundred steps toward the west of this street stand the Academic de Musique (the most splendid opera-house in the world) and the Grand Hotel--two of the most brilliant edifices in the city.
Palais Royal,
as it now stands, was completed in 1786. This building, like most of the palaces in Europe, is built around a quadrangle, and its plan may be compared to a pupil's slate used for ciphering. The frame corresponds to the form or ground-plan of the buildings, and the slate, to the court or yard which they inclose. This inner court or garden, 700 feet long and 300 feet wide, containing nearly five acres of land, is planted with lime (linden?) trees from end to end, and two flower gardens. In the middle is a fine jet d'eau (a fountain). "The garden was thus arranged in 1799; it contains bronze copies of Diane a la Biche of the Louvre, and the Apollo Belvedere; two modern statues in white marble, one of a young man about to bathe, by d'Espercieux; the other of a boy struggling with a goat, by Lemoine; Ulysses on the sea-shore, by Bra; and Eurydice stung by the snake, by Nanteuil, a fine copy in bronze, but more fitted for a gallery than the place it now occupies. Near this statue is a solar cannon, which is fired by the sun when it reaches the meridian, and regulates the clocks of Palais Royal."
From the privilege of supplying refreshments and from the hiring of chairs, the Government derives an annual rent of $7,000.
The shops under the arcades are chiefly devoted to articles of luxury, and are among the most elegant in Paris. Many restaurants are on the first floor; here, were formerly the gambling-houses which rendered this place so notorious. The best time for visiting Palais Royal is in the evening, when the garden and arcades are brilliantly illuminated and full of people. The shops of the watch-makers and the diamond windows are then particularly brilliant. In the most magnificent windows the articles have no price marks; but in the best windows in which the articles have price marks, I saw lockets priced $200; rings for $900; ear-rings for $1,000 a pair; a pair of diamond studs for $2,800; crosses for $320; and a necklace worth $3,000.