The Boulevards,


like a dozen other of the distinguishing features of Paris, are _new
things_ to the American; and as they are quite different from anything
that I have yet seen of the kind in this country, I shall here take room
to note some of their striking characteristics. They are the grandest
streets in Paris, sustaining about the same relation to the "Rues" that
the avenues in our American cities sustain to the streets. In the French
nomenclature, the names applied the different classes of thoroughfares,
&c., run as follows: 1st., avenues; 2nd., boulevards; 3rd., rues; 4th.,
allees or ruelles, and 5th., passages (pron. pahsahjes). In America, the
corresponding terms are 1st., avenues; 2nd.,----; 3rd., streets; 4th.,
alleys, and 5th., passages. It will be observed, that we have here nothing
to correspond with the boulevard. In the classification here presented,
the term avenue is to designate thoroughfares of great width and shaded
with rows of trees on each side, as are the avenues in Washington, D.C. In
most American cities, the avenues are diagonal streets or openings
connecting distant points of the cities, but this definition loses most of
its force when applied to European cities, as they are not built square or
rectangular.

Champs Elysees intersects a fine and extensive reservation, (having many
of the characteristics of the pleasure garden), extending from the Jardin
des Tuileries (Garden of the Tuileries) to the Arc de Triomphe (the Arch
of Triumph). Its length is a mile and a quarter, and the garden or park of
which it is the grand thoroughfare, is, in one place, about a third of a