look checkered by old and new houses contrasting with each other, but the external appearance of the buildings is made to harmonize, and each street is a unit in appearance.  In the finest part of Paris there are few alleys or stables, but splendid rues and boulevards lined with magnificent buildings with elegant fronts, have taken their places.  This section is over three miles in length, nearly two in width, and presents scenes of beauty, grandeur and magnificence which are unrivaled by anything that the first other cities of the world have ever brought forth.

Its beautiful balconies, as numerous as the windows, constitute another very charming feature of Parisian scenery.  The streets are always kept clean and wet by sweepers and sprinklers, and the broad smooth pavements along the boulevards, free from dust and all manner of rubbish or obstructions, afford a suitable promenade for gayety, wealth and fashion to roam.  Here beauty’s feet may stray, arrayed in the most showy colors or the stateliest attire, without fear of encountering nasty crossings or of being splashed over and soiled by teams upon muddy streets.  Ladies attired in gaudy ball-room dresses with long trails, would scarcely present a contrast in dress with the average promenaders.  All dress equally well, on Sundays, and on week-days, so that Paris presents to the foreigner, the appearance of a city celebrating an eternal Sabbath.  Even when it rains, the pedestrian can walk for miles about the city, without being in want of an umbrella.  In that event he need only confine his course to the

Arcades and Passages.

Webster defines an arcade as “A long, arched building or gallery lined on each side with shops.”  May the reader not be misled by this definition; for the arcades of Paris do not have shops on both sides.  They are a uniform system of porticoes generally from twenty to thirty feet in width.  Those on Rue de Rivoli are about a mile in length, and the houses to which they belong have been exempted from taxes for thirty years.  From these ramify numerous passages and other arcades, connecting different parts of the city.

A “Passage” (pron. pae-sahj) is a street covered with a glass roof, elegantly paved, animals and vehicles excluded or shut off, and lined by the first-class shops in the city.  The most remarkable are the Passages des Panoramas, Jouffroy, Verdean, Vivienne, Colbert, Choiseul, Delorine du Saumon, &c.  The first of these are the most brilliant and are perhaps not excelled or even equaled by any other in the world, with the solitary exception of Passage des Victor Emanuel of Milan, in Italy.  Some of these passages are called

Galleries.

The Galerie d’Orleans in Palais Royal, is a good example.  This lofty hall, forty feet wide and 300 feet long, extending between a double range of shops, connects the arcades extending around the other three sides of the inner court of that palace, (now turned into shops, bazaars, etc.)