There were in those days more than a score of passages, being for the most part a series of fine galleries, in some instances taking the form of a rotunda, glass-covered, and surrounded by shops with appartements above. The most notable were those known as the Panoramas Jouffroy, Vivienne, Colbert, de l’Opera, Delorme, du Saumon, etc.
There were more than a hundred squares, or places—most of which remain to-day. The most famous on the right bank of the Seine are de la Concorde, Vendome, du Carrousel, du Palais Royal, des Victoires, du Châtelet, de l’Hôtel de Ville, Royale, des Vosges, and de la Bastille; on the left bank, du Panthéon, de St. Sulpice, du Palais Bourbon. Most of these radiating centres of life are found in Dumas’ pages, the most frequent mention being in the D’Artagnan and Valois romances.
Among the most beautiful and the most frequented thoroughfares were—and are—the tree-bordered quais, and, of course, the boulevards.
The interior boulevards were laid out at the end of the seventeenth century on the ancient ramparts of the city, and extended from the Madeleine to La Bastille, a distance of perhaps three miles. They are mostly of a width of thirty-two metres (105 feet).
This was the boulevard of the time par excellence, and its tree-bordered allées—sidewalks and roadways—bore, throughout its comparatively short length, eleven different names, often changing meanwhile as it progressed its physiognomy as well.
On the left bank, the interior boulevard was extended from the Jardin des Plantes to the Hôtel des Invalides; while the “boulevards extérieurs” formed a second belt of tree-shaded thoroughfares of great extent.
Yet other boulevards of ranking greatness cut the rues and avenues tangently, now from one bank and then from the other; the most splendid of all being the Avenue de l’Opéra, which, however, did not come into being until well after the middle of the century. Among these are best recalled Sébastopol, St. Germain, St. Martin, Magenta, Malesherbes, and others. The Place Malesherbes, which intersects the avenue, now contains the celebrated Dumas memorial by Doré, and the neighbouring thoroughfare was the residence of Dumas from 1866 to 1870.
Yet another class of thoroughfares, while conceived previous to the chronological limits which the title puts upon this book, were the vast and splendid promenades and rendezvous, with their trees, flowers, and fountains; such as the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg, the Champs Elysées, the Esplanade des Invalides, and the Bois de Boulogne and de Vincennes.
Dibdin tells of his entrée into Paris in the early days of the nineteenth century, having journeyed by “malle-poste” from Havre, in the pages of his memorable bibliographical tour.
His observations somewhat antedate the Paris of Dumas and his fellows, but changes came but slowly, and therein may be found a wealth of archæological and topographical information concerning the French metropolis; though he does compare, detrimentally, the panorama of Paris which unrolls from the heights of Passy, to that of London from Highgate Woods.