ndated
with light and air,--that was, in fact, a fine picture which spread
out, on all sides at once, before the eye; a spectacle _sui generis_, of
which those of our readers who have had the good fortune to see a
Gothic city entire, complete, homogeneous,--a few of which still remain,
Nuremberg in Bavaria and Vittoria in Spain,--can readily form an idea;
or even smaller specimens, provided that they are well preserved,--Vitre
in Brittany, Nordhausen in Prussia.

The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago--the Paris of the
fifteenth century--was already a gigantic city. We Parisians generally
make a mistake as to the ground which we think that we have gained,
since Paris has not increased much over one-third since the time of
Louis XI. It has certainly lost more in beauty than it has gained in
size.

Paris had its birth, as the reader knows, in that old island of the City
which has the form of a cradle. The strand of that island was its
first boundary wall, the Seine its first moat. Paris remained for many
centuries in its island state, with two bridges, one on the north, the
other on the south; and two bridge heads, which were at the same time
its gates and its fortresses,--the Grand-Chatelet on the right bank,
the Petit-Chatelet on the left. Then, from the date of the kings of the
first race, Paris, being too cribbed and confined in its island, and
unable to return thither, crossed the water. Then, beyond the Grand,
beyond the Petit-Chatelet, a first circle of walls and towers began to
infringe upon the country on the two sides of the Seine. Some vestiges
of this ancient enclosure still remained in the last century; to-day,
only the memory of it is left, and here and there a tradition, the
Baudets or Baudoyer gate, "Porte Bagauda".

Little by little, the tide of houses, always thrust from the heart of
the city outwards, overflows, devours, wears away, and effaces this
wall. Philip Augustus makes a new dike for it. He imprisons Paris in a
circular chain of great towers, both lofty and solid. For the period of
more than a century, the houses press upon each other, accumulate, and
raise their level in this basin, like water in a reservoir. They begin
to deepen; they pile story upon story; they mount upon each other; they
gush forth at the top, like all laterally compressed growth, and there
is a rivalry as to which shall thrust its head above its neighbors, for
the sake of getting a little air. The street glows na