Show o LIFE IN PARIS I Busy Scones on the StreetsSits or the Citys flistOY3 Gilbert Hamerton says The English I Eng-lish have invented the house the French have invented the street aud it is certainly cer-tainly true writes a correspondent of the New York Graphic that nowhere in a modern city can one find a more delightful delight-ful place for a promenade than down one of these long broad avenues of Paris They are shaded by fine trees are wide enough to show great stretches of blue I sky and cloud pictures as in the country while straight down as far as the eye can see is a charming vista Novel street scenes are always on one side on the other are windows that even an old Egyptian anchorite could not hurry past if he were to return to promenade Paris The magnificent appearance of many streets is beyond question owing to the imposing buildings which while looking like modern palaces are nothing more than flats This flat system gives air and sun fn the nnnrfcmflnts but we in New York have many improvements on the French models In London all the new things look ancient and in Paris all the old things even the ladies carry their age so well that at first one thinks of them as having no connection with time or decay Many I London visitors pronounce the splendid law courts recently built a grand old edifice so weatherbeaten does it already look In Paris on the contrary churches and palaces whose every stone is a page of history seem like things of yesterday There are plenty of tourists rushing about Europe on a perpetual motion ticket who suppose that the Louvre is a spick and span new picture gallery but a connected history of this palace would read like a romance of the middle ages The story would begin with a queer corkscrew staircase and a remnant of waIl now within the building These belonged to u 1 1 me ruyai cusiic wiiuu ji miu luunu towers a keep and where now saunter dandies and fine ladies sang the medi val bullfrogs bull-frogs in a good oldfashioned moat There is no doubt that they sang because this was known to be the age of song The troubadours were all singing love under the windows slits in the castle walls and the ladies were singing more love songs inside the castles when they were not embroidering remarkable needle work for the nineteenth nine-teenth century museums It was Philip Augustus who built the first Louvre and gave old Paris a start in many ways He built also Notre Dame and under him the city was paved and took on a much more stylish aspect He may have gone so far as to stir up the street commissioners commis-sioners though these officials had been rather strict for it is recorded that at that time none but the swine of the i abbey of St Anthony and those having bells about their necks should be allowed to roam the city highways This last musical attachment was not intended simply as an ornament to the pig but asa as-a convenience to wayfarers on dark nights for the crown prince of one of the Louises in returning from a party a little lit-tle bewildered perhaps had stumbled over one of these animals and died from the injury Yes Philip Augustus who built the Louvre was a public benefactor and had he lived in our day he might have written his own memoir or been blown up with that product of civiliza tion dynamite Phillip Augustus was not only scholar ly but he was conscientious and devout He violated an oath on one occasion and atoned for it by roasting eighty Jews on a particularly hot fire Furnaces and dungeons were the contributionboxes of those oldtime enthusiasts and some of them were very liberal givers Well the Louvre as Phillip constructed it did not resemble the Louvre of today for his I building was a strong Gothic fortress It was Francis Ithat magnificent stage monarch of the cloth of goldwho remodelled the old castle into somewhat the form it now possesses He invited artists and sculptors from Italy and intro duced a quite new style of architecture of the French Renaissance Paris of the sixteenth century must have been an odd place Old records tell us that there was only about three coaches in the city one for the queen I one for Diana of Poitiers and one owned by a nobleman who was too fat to ride on horseback and so had to be carried in a coach like a woman The ladies as a rule rode on horses covered with velvet and golden trappings and silken nets woven with jewels while of course they themselves were even more gorgeously arrayed only Paris kid gloves were then a thing of the future and very few grand dames had attained to stockings Again in the days of Richelieu the Louvre flourished and the cardinal and his king had a scheme to make it the grandest of all modern buildings Had the designs been carried out the palace would have been just four times its present grand size Under Napoleon I it assumed the shape that it still retains Everybody who ever read of Paris knows something I of the Louvre but few who have not seen it have an adequate idea of its immensity and splendor It belongs to the people now and any day you see them swarm ing over itold and young rich and poor travelers from every country priests and workingmen children staring curl pu ly at the treasures and students revel ing in the riches of art and science In wandering through the beautiful galleries one thinks how in the days when kings nilfl Queens were srmnrlir rlnmioilofl lm and all the world was talking of their glory or their crimesor botha few un known painters in faraway countries were sketching in the outlines of their new pictures wondering perhaps if the work was of worth Now the royalty are dust and ashes their names unknown to half the people who frequent this their old abode but the finished pictures on the palace walls are as fresh in beauty as the day the brush was laid down and so the poor painters have been after all the real kings who reign through whole cen turies |