CHAPTER VII.
Paris.
I. The Islands.
There is but one Paris in the world,—and that is Paris! It would be difficult in any other part of the world to find such a crowd of public monuments and magnificent public buildings and fine specimens of architecture. It would be difficult to match her splendid Boulevards with spacious footpaths and fine rows of trees, and brilliantly lighted cafés on either side, thronged with people until midnight! The Bois de Boulogne is a perfect forest turned into a Park! The limpid Seine with her numerous bridges is a perfect picture, seen from any eminence. And as the visitor standing on such eminence surveys the whole town of Paris under his feet—surveys on the south of the Seine the double tower of Notre Dame, the domes of the Pantheon and the Sorbonne, the gilded spire of La Chapelle, and the gilded dome of the Hotel des Invalides—as he runs his eye towards the west over the Arc de Triomphe and the twelve beautiful avenues stretching in different directions from the Arc,—as he admires the Champs Elysé, the Place de la Concorde, the gardens of the Tuileries, and the magnificent palace of Louvre, all in one line along the north bank of the Seine,—and as he sees a forest of beautiful houses and fine streets stretching far away from
