ossession than this
noblest of all French cathedrals. Save for such reminder this quarter
might have remained unvisited, since even philanthropic Paris appears to
have little or no knowledge of it, and it is far beyond the distance to
which the most curious tourist is likely to penetrate.

On by the Halle aux Vins, with its stifling, fermenting, alcoholic
odors, and then by the Jardin des Plantes, and beyond, the blank walls
of many manufactories stretching along the Seine,--this for one shore.
On the other lies La Rapee, with the windows of innumerable wine shops
flaming in the sun, and further on, Bercy, the ship bank of the river,
covered with wine-casks and a throng of drays and draymen; of
_debardeurs_, whose business it is to unload wood or to break up old
boats into material for kindling; and of the host whose business is on
and about the river.

They are of the same order as the London Dock laborers, and, like the
majority of this class there and here, know every extremity of want. But
it is a pretty picture from which one turns from the right, passing up
the noisy boulevard of the Gare d'Orleans, toward the quarter of the
Gobelins. This quarter has its independent name and place like the "City
of the Sun." Like that it knows every depth of poverty, but, unlike
that, sunshine and space are quite unknown. The buildings are piled
together, great masses separated by blind alleys, some fifteen hundred
lodgings in all, and the owner of many of them is a prominent
philanthropist, whose name heads the list of directors for various
charitable institutions, but whose feet, we must believe, can hardly be
acquainted with those alleys and stairways, narrow, dark, and foul. The
unpaved ways show gaping holes in which the greasy mud lies thick or
mingles with the pools of standing water, fed from every house and
fermenting with rottenness.

The sidewalks, once asphalted, are cracked in long seams and holes,
where the same water does its work, and where hideous exhalations poison
the air. Within it is still worse; filth trickles down the walls and
mingles under foot, the corridors seeming rather sewers than passages
for human beings, while the cellars are simply reservoirs for the same
deposits. Above in the narrow rooms huddle the dwellers in those
lodgings; whole families in one room, its single window looking on a
dark court where one sees swarms of half-naked children, massed together
like so many maggots, their flabby