-peaked gables to the
street, they have now turned their fronts, as more polite; the roofs are
accommodated with the luxury of pipes, and the midnight sound of "_Gare
l'eau!_" which used to make the late-returning passenger start with all
agility from beneath the opened window to avoid the odoriferous shower,
is now but seldom heard. A Liliputian footway, some two feet wide, is
laid down in flags at either side; the oscillating lamp, that used to
hang on a rotten cord thrown across the roadway from house to house, and
made darkness visible, has given place to the genius of gas--_enfin, la
Revolution a passe par la_; and the Rue de St Denis is now a ghost only
of what it was. Still it retains sufficient peculiarities of dimensions
and outline to show that it is a child of the middle ages; and, like so
many other children of the same kind, it contributes to make its mother
Paris, as compared with the modern-built capitals of Europe, a town of
former days. Long may it retain these oddities of appearance--long may
it remain narrow, dark, and dirty; we rejoice that such streets still
exist--they do one's eye good, if not one's nose. There is more of
colour, of light and shade, of picturesque, fantastic outline, in a
hundred yards of the Rue St Denis, than in all the line from Piccadilly
to Whitechapel; a painter can pick up more food for his easel in this
queer, old street--an antiquarian can find there more tales and crusts
for his noddle, than in all Regent Street and Portland Place. We love a
ramshackle place like this; it does one good to get out of the
associations of the present century, and to retrograde a bit; it is
pleasant to see how people used to pig together in ancient days, without
any of the mathematical formalities of the present day; it keeps one's
eye in tone to look back at works of the middle ages; and we may learn
the more justly to criticize what we see arising about us, by refreshing
our recollections of the mouldering past. Paris is a glorious place for
things of this kind. Thank the stars, it never got burned out of its old
clothes, as London did. Newfangled streets and quarters of every age
have been added to it, but there still remains a mediaeval nucleus--there
is still an "old Paris"--a gloomy, filthy, old town, irregular and
inconvenient as any town ever was yet; and a walk of twenty minutes will
take you from the elegant uniformity of the Rue de Rivoli into the
original chaos of buildings--into t