IMPROVED PARIS.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 100, 28 April 1888, Page 3 (Supplement)

IMPROVED PARIS.

Tho City cf To-day and tho Capital

as B&Tjsao JKaow It.

Referring to the embellishments of moi^rn Paris, M. Theodore do Bnnvillo draws # remarkable contrast to-day between tho old and the now city. In 1830, for instance— that its to say, in Bakac'.s time—bho now spacious find splendid avenue of the Champs Elysees was called the ' Widows' Alley.' It'was a mournful and desolate place, whe.ro the wind howled through clumps of miserabletrees, and where highwaymen abounded ab iiigllfc. Near the Tuileries a lob of hovels stood, or rather tottered, in place of the modern Rue do Bivoli, with its Italian arcades and symmetrical houses, while the now smiling gardens near tho Louvre we-.re then used as burying grounds Notre Graham had nob ab that time been restored by Viollet-Leduc, and the statues of the Kings which ab present line its ai.-iles were half buried in a kind ol old marine stove in tiie Rue Copeau, which is now the Rue Lacepode. Toward the north of Paris, where there are to-day largre railway stations and lofty houses, there was nothing bub waste land, which served for gipsy encampment?, while in the centre ot the c; ■: rhe ' rookeries' were s-o many fever <I>jds ; yeb Paris was merry enough in those days, and M". de Banville, aa 13 becoming in a romantic poet, ahnosfclamenfca the improvements which, aro daily taking place in the city, and will h\ time obliterate every landmark of the city;