they belong have been exempted from taxes for thirty years. From these
ramify numerous passages and other arcades, connecting different parts of
the city.

A "Passage" (pron. pä-sahj) is a street covered with a glass roof,
elegantly paved, animals and vehicles excluded or shut off, and lined by
the first-class shops in the city. The most remarkable are the Passages
des Panoramas, Jouffroy, Verdean, Vivienne, Colbert, Choiseul, Delorine du
Saumon, &c. The first of these are the most brilliant and are perhaps not
excelled or even equaled by any other in the world, with the solitary
exception of Passage des Victor Emanuel of Milan, in Italy. Some of these
passages are called



Galleries.


The Galerie d'Orleans in Palais Royal, is a good example. This lofty hall,
forty feet wide and 300 feet long, extending between a double range of
shops, connects the arcades extending around the other three sides of the
inner court of that palace, (now turned into shops, bazaars, etc.)

Many of the grand boulevards and rues of Paris have been built since 1848,
and the work of widening and improving old streets and building new ones
is still going on with constantly increasing vigor.

There are now in progress of construction, broad boulevards, which can
only be constructed at the sacrifice of many acres of some of the finest
buildings in Paris; but only beauty and grandeur are regarded anything in