same company have also built, close by, the
largest hotel in Europe. The Hôtel du Louvre,
standing opposite to the north face of
these structures, in the Rue de Rivoli, covers
more than an English acre and a half of
ground. It has eight hundred rooms; and
presents as splendid a specimen of interior
decoration and furnishing as is known to
exist. Four years ago, when the Place de
Carrousel was a void, this magnificent
traveller's rest was the site of several back
streets.

It is needless to detail all that the Societe
des immeubles de Rivoli has effected; and, to
those readers not thoroughly acquainted with
Paris as it stood in eighteen hundred and
fifty-one, a description of the other improvements
would be tedious. What has already
been said will give a faint idea of the power of
capital and skill when energetically directed.
What capital, without well-directed skill, can
effect they know pretty well from experience
at home. The architectural and structural
achievements of Paris are on a much larger
scale than those of our Houses of Parliament,
for instance, yet have taken not a hundredth
—perhaps (for we do not yet see the end of
Westminster palace looming in the distance)
not a thousandth, part of the time.

We must repeat, however, that building of
the first class is naturally an easier operation
in France than in England. The
neighbourhood of Paris, the banks of the Loire,
and other large districts abound with a soft,
tractable stone of dazzling whiteness, which
cuts with little more difficulty than wood;
hardening with age and exposure. Squared
into cubes, and moved with ease, on account of
its comparatively light specific gravity, this
material enables the French mason to pile up
his walls in half the time, and with three times
the solidity, that an English bricklayer can
his; the neatness and beauty of the work
being necessarily very much greater. Even
rough walls, built with small unhewn stone,
(limousinage) are more rapidly raised than
brick walls, and are often faced and dressed
with the softer hewn stone. The new streets
abound with the richest sculptured ornament;
and this is chiefly executed after the
shell has been run up: not delayed piece-
meal in the sculptor's shed before being
set in.

But, evil was foreseen in these rapid
building performances themselves. Philosophers
of the St. Vitus's Backlane school
shrugged their shoulders, and predicted that
the concentration of a prodigious number
of workmen whose employment could last
for only a certain time, would be a huge
foundation for disturbance, when the work
was done and the workmen discharged.
But, the prophets knew nothing about the
character and circumstances of the French
mason and stone-cutter; necessarily the
largest body of operatives massed together in
the capital. They had not read about him in
an article on the French Workman, which
appeared in this miscellany,* nor M. le Play's
Account of him in his prodigious (but not
quite trustworthy), Monography of the
Workmen of Europe. This author
declares that the masons are, or have been
—for they are deteriorating, he says,—
models of prudence and sobriety. They travel
up from La Creuse or La Haute Vienne—as
the Irish haymaker visits England in summer
—during la belle saison, and return to their
homes when frost forbids work. There are
at present about a hundred and fifty thousand
stone-cutters and stone-setters in Paris, working
with unflagging zeal, to earn from two
francs and a half to five francs a-day; to live
after so much only of the communist principle
as promotes economy; and to turn their faces
finally homeward with light hearts and heavy
purses, after they have converted Paris into
a stone and sculptured paradise. The masons
never marry a Parisienne, and seldom
contract unlawful unions. They live in large
parties of twenty or thirty, called charn-
brees, in one room, for about thirty-eight
francs each a-month for board and lodging;
and soon save enough money to marry a
woman of their own country: and to buy a
house, land, and cows. They then stay at
home, and send their sons as emigrant
masons to Paris in their stead. The stone-
cutters are in two factions, or societies; one
called the Children of Solomon; the other,
the Children of Maltre Jacques. These
work together well enough, but do not live
in anything like harmony. Whether the
four hundred thousand persons now engaged
in the remaining branches of building and
decorating, will devote their attention to
barricades by-and-by, becomes very doubtful
when we know, that the ordinary absorption
of labour in all the various building
trades, including masonry, usually keeps forty
thousand operatives out of mischief in Paris
alone.

* Volume viii., page 302.

We have said and seen that the best kind
of building is rapidly accomplished in France;
and only the best kind of building is, as a
rule, tolerated. There, a house is not a lath
and plaster, or a brick- thick, shell. The self-
contained pride of being a respectable house-
keeper (that is, very often, of inhabiting an
expensive kennel "without lodgers," where
every sound in the kennels right and left is
distinctly audible) does not exist. The French,
like the Scotch, live one above another,
under the same roof, in the separate floors of
large houses; thus economising space and
money. In the principal streets, the ground
floor consists of a shop; then comes a mezzanine
floor, or entresol; then a suite of rooms,
on the same level , which includes every
convenience for a family; and so up and up, to the
highest floor. This is usually divided into two
sets of apartments, for residents of humble