Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 50 THE BOULEVAKDS. LETTER III. The Boulevards—Boulevard Madelaine—Boulevard des Capacities— Boulevard Italien—Monsieur Carefne—Splendid cafes—The baths —Boulevard Montmartre—The shoe-black—The chiffonnier—The gralteur—The commissionnaire—Boulevard du Temple—Scene at the Ambigu Comique—Sir Sydney Smith—Monsieur de Paris— The Cafe Turc—The fountains—Recollections of the Bastille— The Halle aux Bles—The Bicetre—Boulevard du Mont Parnasse. Paris, July, 1835. The main street of Paris, and one of the most remarkable streets of the whole world, is the Boulevard. It runs from near the centre towards the east, and coils around the circumference of the city. Its adjacent houses are large, black and irregular in height, resembling at a distance battlements or turreted castles. Its course is zig-zag, and each section has a different name and different pursuits; so that it presents you a new face and character ; a new and picturesque scene, at every quarter of a mile. This does not please, at first sight, an eye formed upon our Quaker simplicity of Philadelphia, but it is approved by the general taste. Our Broadways and Chestnut streets and Regent streets are exhausted at a single view; the Boulevard entertains all day. Its sidewalks are delightfully wide, and overshaded with elms. Before the visits of the allies it had eight miles of trees ; a kind of ornament that is held in better esteem in European than in American cities. Our ancestors took a dislike to trees, from having so much grubbing at their original forests, and their enmity has been infused THE MADELA1NE. 51 into the blood. To cut down a tree is now a hereditary passion ; I have often spent whole days in its gratuitous indulgence. A squatter of the back woods begins by felling the trees indiscriminately; and he i... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.