built; re-built with a degree of solidity | City Improvements Committee with any not easily conceivable in this our city of conscience or any observation, can not bricks and stucco; and in a style of splen- walk through Paris without feeling ashamdor which would have startled the late ed and humiliated. Mr. John Martin, notably the most extreme idealist of gorgeous architecture ever known. Indeed, since the tradition of Cadmus and the magical realities of the gold districts, we know of no instance of rapid building to equal the recent transformations in Paris. In the three years during which this short work has been mainly in action, there have been swept away a great many narrow, crooked streets, which reeked with open streams of fœtid refuse; which were without side-pavements-footpassengers, horses, vehicles and filth, all mixing there in continual confusion; which were seldom lighted by the sun by day, in consequence of the height and close proximity of the opposite houses, and which were but dimly lighted by night with miserable lamps slung across the road; which were densely thronged from the cellars to the roofs by a variety of inmates, whose salient characteristic was wicked squalor; into which prudent people never ventured after sunset, and where imprudent people were frequently robbed and sometimes qualified by the coup de clef, or some other sudden passport, for the Morgue; nests, in short, of disquiet, disease, and iniquity. Not only have entire neighborhoods such as these been swept away wholesale, but every part of the city has been more or less improved in detail. Streets of moderate width have had their narrow entrances enlarged; sharp turns have been squared, and corner houses made to form double instead of single_angles—so that these widened cross-roads are never crowded, and seldom obstructed; projecting houses have been forced back into line with the rest; convenient thoroughfares have been opened through blind blocks of buildings which separated one quarter from another. Yet, utility was not the sole motive power which has executed these improvements. The love of ornament and a passion for display, always attributed to the French, have been brilliantly and beautifully exhibited; especially in the Rue de Rivoli and Boulevard de Sebastopol. But above these common sense (the most uncommon sense known) proclaims itself from every improved street and altered house. An English architect, or a member of the "But, sir, we live in a free country-in a country where private property is respected and private right a palladium. France, sir, is a despotic country. There your house is not your castle: you can have it pulled down about your ears at a moment's notice merely to promote public convenience. Our government can not, with one stroke of a pen or after a onesided discussion with civic authorities, depopulate a neighborhood to have it built up again. We must wait until capital has accumulated from the proper sources; until leases have fallen in, and groundlandlords fallen out; until paving-boards have been conciliated, and commissioners of sewers are agreed; until acts of parliaments are, at an incredible cost and waste, fought through both houses, surveyors consulted, fees guaranteed to high-minded architects, building contracts-wickedly paraphrased by the vulgar as "jobs”—. solemnly sealed and legalized. Sir, the boasted Parisian improvements have been made, I will venture to say, at the single will of the emperor, and against the several wills of thousands of ousted tenants and ruined landlords; for despotism can do in ten minutes, what sober, constitutional legality is obliged to be busy ten years about." So says the honorable deputy for the ward of St. Vitus's Backlane: but that eminent and respected public nuisance is in error. He will perhaps be surprised to hear, that not a jot of private right was invaded; that every stone in Paris which formerly stood on the area of improvement was paid full value for, before a slate was removed or a pickaxe lifted; that every owner and occupier was fairly compensated not only for loss and removal of property, but for damage done to his business-compensated, too, not with the off-hand tyranny of "take that or none;" but, in case of dispute, by juries selected from his own class. If the wor thy St. Vitus's deputy could divest himself of his London Corporation prejudices, and could inquire into the subject, he would perceive that nearly every expedient, every administrative arrangement, every mode of negotiation and adjustment between the authorities of the city of Paris and the imperial government, is applicable to the speedy improvement of a fund, applicable to the work, already his own or any other pent-up, ill-planned, existed in its coffers amounting to about ill-governed city in these liberally-gov- sixty millions of francs. The credit of a erned dominions. The nucleus of the Paris improvements is the Hôtel de Ville. Around it, the first great shattering and shocking of vile streets took place; and in it are performed the administrative and financial operations by which the wholesale changes are set in motion. The chief municipal authorities do all their work in this gorgeous Guildhall, partly of their own free inspirations and will, and partly under the direction of government. There, the plans for changing some of the worst parts of the capital into palatial habitations, are devised, deliberated on, and adopted; thence come out the loans for carrying on the work, which capitalists eagerly "take up;" and there the work is paid for when it is finished. As, however, it is thought possible that a body of gentlemen of equal status to the aldermen and common-councilmen of London, are not solely sufficient for deciding upon works of such magnitude, their proceedings have to be ratified by the conseil des bâtiments civils, an imperial committee, composed of five of the most eminent French architects and eight non-professional colleagues, whose business it is to report upon all plans respecting public structures. The sanction and cooperation of the Minister of Finance is also necessary to the monetary operations; because, as the construction of several public offices and other public works is included, a certain quota of expense is paid out of the imperial treasury. It must not be supposed that these and other excellent regulations were framed to direct this single outburst of architectural renovation; they are the law of the land, made and provided for all such cases, by the astonishingly far-seeing and comprehensive Code de Napoléon-a code which Britain, though she did rise out of the azure main to the singing of Guardian Angels, has some cause to envy. It was originally intended that the vast alterations to be made in the map of Paris, should occupy fifteen years; but the present emperor had his reasons for ordering that they should be finished in five years; so that a considerable amount of capital had to be raised in a very short time. Fortunately the task was not difficult; for, as municipal tom-foolery and gluttony are not the business of the Hôtel de Ville, corporation so flushed with ready money is in itself a bank; and, when more money was wanted, an additional sum of fifty millions of francs was eagerly lent by capitalists. No sooner are proposals for a loan announced, than the scrip rises to a high premium, and the competition for it is so strong, that ten millions more francs have been raised, by lottery, upon the excess in premiums alone. Five millions of pounds sterling have therefore been raised since the year eighteen hundred and fifty-two, for buying up property to improve Paris, besides vast sums realized by old building materials and fittings. Two years more of well-spent and costly activity have yet to elapse, before the contemplated regeneration will be complete. The doomed quarters having been marked out, notices to quit are served upon the occupiers. The bargain with each proprietor differs little, in the first instance, from that entered into between an ordinary buyer and seller. The municipality is willing to give so much; the vendor demands so much; if terms can not at once be arranged, the dispute is referred to a compensation jury, composed of members of the council-general of the department of the Seine. Upon the whole, our inquiries led to the belief that the sums awarded are fair. Some cases of under-payment and hardship could, of course, be adduced on the one side, as well as instances of exorbitant demand on the other. There are, indeed, whispers of tradesmen living in the line of projected improvement, making out beforehand on their books, enormous transactions which only existed in their books, to mystify the jurors into extravagant payment for loss of trade by forced removal. Even lodgers are compensated by indemnités locatives according to the value of their holdings. Where one family in London is put to the rout by the demolition of a house, from four to five families are ejected in Paris, where the inhabitants are nearly all lodgers; each house being separated into tenements, and each floor containing a complete and distinct household.* The consequence of the sud *In eighteen hundred and fifty-one, according to the Census, the average number of individuals living den sweeping away of habitations, caused shelter to become uncommonly scarce. Enormous rents were, for a time, demanded, even for the meanest garrets and the dampest cellars; and the poorer and industrious classes suffered intensely. Ejected families, in a most piteous plight, were seen in the streets, following the tumbrils or the handcarts in which their household appliances were piled, unable to find a roof to cover them. Many were obliged to remain out of doors in the midst of frost and snow, until the government caused certain waste places to be hutted, in which they gave the houseless shelter, free of charge. After a time, new houses were ready, and these inconveniences disappeared. There are, it must be remarked, some circumstances which render these sudden changes in Paris much more easy than in London. House-building must always be a more rapid operation in most parts of France than in England. Hitherto, underground works have not cost much time there; and—although the ancient fosses surrounding the garrison were converted at an early period into main sewers, and a great straight sewer, running east and west under the city, was constructed in thirteen hundred and seventy-yet few of the houses are drained into them to this day. But, by a decree of the sixth of December, eighteen hundred and fiftythree, a system of tubular drainage into them, and into a new sewer running parallel to the Seine, on the south side, was established; ten years being allowed to the proprietors of house-property to cause the necessary connection to be made. The main sewers will be eventually discharged into the Seine a few miles below Paris; but, so far above tidal influence, that the sewerage will be carried away. Not all the grand new streets and beautiful houses, nor the noble monuments and public buildings, will improve Paris so thoroughly and fundamentally as this measure. The abolition of cess-pools centuries old, with which its foundations are honey-combed, and of the pestiferous voiries of Montfaucon and Bondy into which they have for ages been emptied, will increase the hygienic condition of the city beyond all calculation. in each house in Paris was twenty-six. In eighteen hundred and seventeen the average was twenty-four inmates per house. The ground cleared, at the expense already indicated, had to be covered; and the four thousand master-builders who habitually find business in Paris-though taking upon themselves a fair share of such work as adding some half-mile to the arcaded Rue de Rivoli (already one of the grandest streets in Europe)-were not able to provide capital for realizing all the gigantic projects demonstrated in the plans laid out on paper. The universal remedy in such a case, a joint-stock company, instantly sprang into existence; and the covering of those acres of rugged waste known as the Place de Carrouselwith its noble triumphal arch and its tall, grim coffee-shop that stood for many years a solitary and shaky spectre of the past; with its second-hand book, curiosity, and stuffed-bird stalls; with its clamorous shoecleaners and politely importunate dealers in second-hand umbrellas, canes, and catalogues of the picture gallery-has been gorgeously accomplished by the Société des Immeubles de Rivoli, assisted by the funds of the Société de Crédit Mobilier. The palace of the Louvre and the palace of the Tuileries-recently not much less than a quarter of a mile apart-are now joined by galleries and arcades of great architectural beauty, set with gateways and pavilions adorned with caryatides and allegorical groups of the most elaborate design and execution. The new edifices thus enclosing the Place de Carrousel, comprise two inner squares, immense barracks, public offices, an extensive ridingschool, stables, and great additions to the Tuileries palace itself. The same company have also built, close by, the largest hotel in Europe. The Hôtel du Louvre standing opposite to the north face of these structures, in the Rue de Rivoli, covers more than an English acre and a half of ground. It has eight hundred rooms, and presents as splendid a specimen of interior decoration and furnishing as is known to exist. Four years ago, when the Place de Carrousel was a void, this magnificent traveller's rest was the site of several back streets. It is needless to detail all that the Société des Immeubles de Rivoli has ef fected; and, to those readers not thoroughly acquainted with Paris as it stood in eighteen hundred and fifty-one, a description of the other improvements would be tedious. What has already been said will give a faint idea of the power of capi tal and skill when energetically directed. | Workmen of Europe. This author deWhat capital, without well-directed skill, clares that the masons are, or have been can effect they know pretty well from ex--for they are deteriorating, he saysperience at home. The architectural and structural achievements of Paris are on a much larger scale than those of our Houses of Parliament, for instance, yet have taken not a hundredth-perhaps (for we do not yet see the end of Westminster palace looming in the distance) not a thousandth, part of the time. We must repeat, however, that building of the first class is naturally an easier operation in France than in England. The neighborhood of Paris, the banks of the Loire, and other large districts, abound with a soft, tractable stone of dazzling whiteness, which cuts with little more difficulty than wood; hardening with age and exposure. Squared into cubes, and moved with ease, on account of its comparatively light specific gravity, this material enables the French mason to pile up his walls in half the time, and with three times the solidity, that an English bricklayer can his; the neatness and beauty of the work being necessarily very much greater. Even rough walls, built with small unhewn stone, (limousinage,) are more rapidly raised than brick walls, and are often faced and dressed with the softer hewn stone. The new streets abound with the richest sculptured ornament; and this is chiefly executed after the shell has been run up: not delayed piecemeal in the sculptor's shed before being set in. But, evil was foreseen in these rapid building performances themselves. Philosophers of the St. Vitus's Backlane school shrugged their shoulders, and predicted that the concentration of a prodigious number of workmen whose employment could last for only a certain time, would be a huge foundation for disturbance, when the work was done and the workmen discharged. But, the prophets knew nothing about the character and circumstances of the French mason and stonecutter; necessarily the largest body of operatives massed together in the capital. They had not read about him in an article on the French Workman, which appeared in this miscellany, nor M. le Play's account of him in his prodigious (but not quite trustworthy) Monography of the * Volume viii. page 302. models of prudence and sobriety. They travel up from La Creuse or La Haute Vienne-as the Irish haymaker visits England in summer-during la belle saison, and return to their homes when frost forbids work. There are at present about a hundred and fifty thousand stone-cutters and stone-setters in Paris, working with unflagging zeal, to earn from two francs and a half to five francs a-day; to live after so much only of the communist principle as promotes economy; and to turn their faces finally homeward with light hearts and heavy purses, after they have converted Paris into a stone and sculptured paradise. The masons never marry a Parisienne, and seldom contract unlawful unions. They live in large parties of twenty or thirty, called chambrées in one room, for about thirty-eight francs each a month for board and lodging; and soon save enough money to marry a woman of their own country; and to buy a house, land, and cows. They then stay at home, and send their sons as emigrant masons to Paris in their stead. The stone-cutters are in two factions, or societies; one called the Children of Solomon; the other, the Children of Maitre Jacques. These work together well enough, but do not live in any thing like harmony. Whether the four hundred thousand persons now engaged in the remaining branches of building and decorating, will devote their attention to barricades by-and-by, becomes very doubtful when we know that the ordinary absorption of labor in all the various building trades, including masonry, usually keeps forty thousand operatives out of mischief in Paris alone. We have said and seen that the best kind of building is rapidly accomplished in France; and only the best kind of building is, as a rule, tolerated. There, a house is not a lath and plaster, or a brickthick shell. The self-contained pride of being a respectable house-keeper, (that is, very often, of inhabiting an expensive kennel "without lodgers," where every sound in the kennels right and left is distinctly audible,) does not exist. The French, like the Scotch, live one above another, under the same roof, in the separate floors of large houses; thus economizing space and money. In the principal Even in the more private streets, few people occupy a whole house. There is generally a court-yard surrounded by apartments, with one common entrance. Sometimes houses are clustered together round a larger court-yard, and called a cité. In the poorer quarters, some of these cités, which have fallen in the general sweep, swarmed to a degree prejudicial to health; but their populations are now distributed. streets, the ground floor consists of a shop; | stable close by. Does Monsieur Viteplume, then comes a mezzanine floor, or entresol; chef de bureau at the office of the Minister then a suite of rooms, on the same level, of the Interior, who lives in the floor which includes every convenience for a above, or Madame Bonnebonnet, the court family; and so up and up, to the highest milliner, who lives over him, or M. Burin, floor. This is usually divided into two the engraver, who resides nearer heaven sets of apartments, for residents of humble by the altitude of one story, or Jules Cormeans. At the end of a pretty tesselated don the journeyman bootmaker, or Madepassage beside the shop, there is, at the moiselle Fleurschâteau, who each inhabit foot of the stairs, a snug little glass case the attic apartments-ever interfere with or lodge. Looking in, you will usually the rich baronet, or with one another? see a woman in a clean cap knitting a Never. When the cobbler meets the barostocking; a gilt pendule is certain to be net or the government official, or Madame ticking on the chimney-piece; and a clean or Mademoiselle, on the stairs, he claims bed ensconced in an alcove. This woman's them as neighbors only by a polite bow, husband-always dressed, in the morning, and "bon jour." in a cap and a coarse green apron-is one of the trustworthy and serviceable class of domestic hall-keepers, or porters, for which Paris is remarkable. He polishes the stairs, polishes the banisters, polishes every thing he can lay his hands upon, and has generally polished his own manners too. He is shrewd, steady, observant, and can keep his own counsel withal. Every floor pays him a small fixed monthly stipend; and he is the guardian genius of the whole house. You ask his wife on which floor your friend lives, and she, the portress on duty, takes all sorts of pains to make you understand her directions, if she sees there be any dullness in your foreign apprehension. You ascend a flight of oak stairs, (carefully, for the porter husband is polishing his way down from the top, vigorously,) by the help of a banister supported by bronzed and gilt rails. Your friend's door opened, admits you to a little hall, in which, when it is shut after you, you feel as much isolated from the world as if you were standing on the mat of the private residence of the honorable Deputy of St. Vitus's Backlane, near Camberwell Green. Little drawing-rooms, dining-room, study, nursery, bed-rooms, kitchen, (and a back-stair leading to it, for servants and tradesmen,) all furnished with an amount of sensible taste highly suggestive to all the Deputies in all Camberwell. And all-horrid idea!-over a shop. Yet your friend may be an English baronet or a foreign count, with thousands a year, and with some capital horses in a This plan of residence of course necessitates large houses. There are no Prospect Places, Adeliza Terraces, or Paradise Rows in Paris; no small, mean, slightlybuilt streets; but every house is of sufficient dimensions to admit of architectural display. Even in the humblest parts of the town the houses are lofty and substantial. When the stipulated five years shall have elapsed, and the contemplated improvements shall be completed, Paris will be a marvel of improvement. And London? London will go on talking for and against improvement, for another halfcentury or so, and will remain, as to its general ugliness, pretty much what it has been for the last ten or a dozen years. The Hôtel de Ville in Paris and the Guildhall in London are mightily expressive, in their vast differences, of the intelligence and spirit of the public bodies they represent. But then the corporation of Paris really expresses Paris itself, while the corporation of London expresses nothing but obsolete pretenses and abuses. |
