THE CHARM OF PARIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12602, 17 June 1904, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE CHARM OF PARIS.

Is no city can you see so many interesting things at once as in Paris. This, indeed, is her special charm in contrast with London totality of life in all her streets. It arises from the radical fact that.Paris lives perpendicularly, London lives horizontally.

I am saying nothing for the moment about differences in the history, temperament, and genius* of the two populations, though even these may depend more than, we think on the construction of a great city. The outward life of London and the outward life of Paris are essentially and enchantipgly different, and a very large part of the "difference may be traced to, or at least studied in, this simple fact that Paris lives perpendicularly while London lives horizontally. Paris has always ljyed within fortifications ; these fortiScatipns have been moved outward from time to time, but they have always exerted on the city that inward pressure which iorces houses upwards in the given area. Therefore the normal motion of the population in its everyday life is downstairs and'upstairs. Parisians come downstairs to find in their own street their fresh air, their provisions, their opportunities for gossip, amusement, and excitements. This means that in every street you see the father? the mother, the child, the tradesman, and the soldier. It is the survival of the thronged end picturesque life of the middle ages under modern conditions.

THE EVENNESS OF i'ARTS. Paris is more evenly interesting than London. The Seine does not divide what is florious from what is inglorious as docs the hames. When yon cross -*■ nx * do tot exchange thrifty sublimity for abounding: commonplace. The Hotel des Invalids, filled with Napoleon's memory ; the Institut, home -the 40 Immortals; the great Palace of the Luxembourg, meeting place of the Senate; the Pantheon, church and mausoleum by turns and magnificent as both } the Odepn Theatre, second only in rank to the Comedie Francaise; the Universite clustering ill- j numerable around the ancient Sorbonne; the { Hotel deCluny, that treasure-house, of Roman and mediseval Paris ; and such" noble churches a* St. Sulpice, St. Etienne du Mont, and St. Severin, and last, not least, the Chamber of Deputies--rail are on the south of Paris. :.'■„.:■.;'.: *• ■■ v * : '- "■'■ Again, separation between the commercial and pleasure-loving towns is 1 slight. The Bourse, representing our " Stock Exehangg,' has for its near neighbours the Palais Royal and the Opera. C'omique, arid its financiers can stroll but upon the great boulevards. ' Nor is this equality of interest difficult tQ ' understand when you remember that old Paris was a trinity. In the river itself rose the Cite, the hqme of Church. $*& State, scarce finding room for her palaces and churches. Close to her side, oil the south bank, the TJnjvei-site spread her buildings, while on the rigjit bank the V ffle hummed with trade, and was adorned with greai; municipal institutions like the Hotel Dieu. -'"■" Victor Hugo lias yery happily compared the three cities "to a little old woman between two handsome, strapping daughters.

, ; A WOBD TO THE TOURIST. Here let me lament the fact that so many English" visitors to Paris take no trouble, to understand her physiognomy. They imagine when they walk from, the Madeleine along that splendid series of boulevards, the Capusihes, the Iteliens, the Montmartre, the Poissonpiere, and so on to the Bastille, that, they are in the heart of Paris. They are in the* heart of Paris, but this is no more historic Paris than Oxford-street is historic London. Late' in the 18th century blackberries could be gathered on the road to Tyburn, and an 18th-century map of Paris will show these boulevards as a long mall of trees, bordered by the walls of gardens and parks, and looking northward over open country to Montmartre. Therefore, when you -walk these boulevards you are at the most skirting the northernmost side of old Paris. When you walk or drive past the Porte St. Denis, and lopk up at that 17th-century arch of triumph, built to commemorate the German ' victories of Louis Quatorze, you must miss the historical ' significance and architectural fitness of the arch if you pass on; treating it an an incident in the boulevard. It belongs not to the boulevard, but to the ancient Rue St. Denis, and it is only by proceeding some distance up this street, the ancient pilgrim way to the" tomb of the saint, that the meaning ot the Porte St. Denis can be felt, or its architectural quality appreciated. The arch may be heavy—it has been described as hideo'ii!!—but seep in the Rue St. Denis, whose roadway passes under its gigantic arch, this monument forms a typical view of old Paris; a view which early in the last century employed the brush of Bonington. PARIS, THE BEAUTIFUL.

Thus the centuri«i have done their work of extending and/mi gUng,le jeu est fait, so to §pia|, and Paris by the necessities of her growth and by her, unswerving devotion' to one stately domestic architecture, has made the separation, of old from new peculiarly difficult to a casual eye. It is indeed her way to be new and splendid, to be always the bride of cities, espousing human destiny. And truly it is in this character that we do her homage with our visits, our money, and our admiration. Out of grey, unwieldy, distributed London we fly from a vast and romantic camp to a city exact and beautiful. So exact, so beautiful, so consistent in her vivacity, so neat in her industry, so splendid in her display that I think the ultimate way to enjoy Paris is to pass,unquestioning and unsolicitous into her life! exclaiming not Lo! here, and Lo! there, in a. fever of sightseeing, but rather baring one's breast like Daudet's ouvrier to her assaults of glistenirtg life. . The pleasanteiit hours I have ever spent in Paris have been those I have given to wandering slowly along her streets and quays, or in sitting outside her cafes, where rich and poor, priests, students, concierges, soldiers, waiters, and pedlars, have gone by in infinite circulation against a background of trees and of comely houses whose life soared far above the cafe awning. As for that new note of friendship which has been struck Iwtween the two great capitals and the nations they represent it ought to be struck again and again until it becomes an instinct. What may not be hoped for from a friendship so unhistorical yet so hopeful; a friendship all the surer because it must ever be based on profound differences of temperament dominated by a lofty commonsense and conscious mutual sympathy.—John o' London, in T.P.'s Weekly.