The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-12-02

A MODERN ATHENS.
Paris-the Most Delightful City of the
World.

World.
With its great boulevards, its urban
parks, squares and gardens, its avenues
lined with stupendous architecture, its
vast hotels and gorgeous cafes, its trees
and flowers and great promenades, its
shops and its restaurants, Paris, the
Paris of Baron Haussmann, has become
the headquarters of the luxury of
Europe and Of the whole civilized world.
For luxury invites luxury, and if Paris
had remained the picturesque, miser-
able and prodigious city which Victor
Hugo has described in his novel, Notre
Dame de Paris-the city whose narrow
streets and mysterious gables were inn
pressed with the tragedies and strug-
giles of ten centuries of history and with
the souvenirs of twenty revolutious-it
would never have attracted those count
less visitors from the old world and the
new, who are, as a rule, neither poets,
nor thinkers, nor artists, but who, new
ertheless, contribute to the wealth and
splendor which make Paris what it is,
the modern Athens, or the modern
ByZantium.
More completely than any other city,
Paris realizes the conception of the
Athenian republic, full of light and
joyous hum, sung by the poets, sculp-
tured by the statuaries, idealized by the
painters, employing for the happiness
of its children all the resources of the
sciences and the arts, offering to all
feet alike its staircases of white marble.
and presenting against the background
of q tranquil blue sky the pediuients of
its palaces and its temples The illu-
sion is ali the more complete because
Paris seems at first sight to be wholly
given up 20 pleasure. The number of
people of leisure in Paris is so great
that unless we made very thorough
and minute examinat ton of the facts, we
might be tempted to imagine that the
emancipation of humanity had reached
its apogee, that the proletarian had
been forever freed, and the iron arms
OF interchangeable machinery substituted
in place of the feeble arms of man.
Therefore, in the sunny spring days, we
see the citizens OF this modern Athens
exclusively employed in watching the
bursting Of the buds in the tree-Iined
avenues of the city, admiring the groups
of statuary that adorn the public gar
dens, or examining curiously the grace
ful movements Of rare exotic birds and
beasts that are kept for their diversion
in the menageries of the re-
public We see citizens, accom-
panied b. their wives and children.
strolling through the galleries of the
Louvre. where the masterpieces of art
of all ages and OF al countries have
been collected together for their edia-
cation. Those who are of j devout
turn OF mind find the temples open. and
through the fumes Of incense they see
the walls decorated with sUmptuous
paintings On the Seine, swift steam
gondolas shoot through the arches OF
the bridges. carrying calm citizens 70
and FRO In the garden OF the Tuileries
the mountains dance IN the sunlight
and their basins are not covered with
bits OF floating oTanEe-peel, nor are
they surrounded by dirty and exDeetor-
at.ng bovS In the Champs E.ysses the
black branches are tipped win 1eTaer
green buds, which gives 10 the masses
of The trees. when seea from distance,
me delicate poyvlerr appearance 81
pastel Spring has come. Paris has
awakened - . neW life The city :
fu.l OF sunshine and flowers. and the
air IS re6olent wiTh the perfumes &
nature and Of art, OF violets arG q
0poponax Theodore Child, II HarperS
Magazine