The student revels of the _quartier_ have become more sedate, if not more fastidious, and there is no such Mardi Gras and Mi-Carême festivities as used to hold forth on the boulevards in the forties. And on the Buttes Chaumont and Montmartre are found batteries of questionable amusements,--especially got up for the delectation of _les Anglais_, provincials, and soldiers off duty,--in place of the _cabarets_, which, if of doubtful morality, were at least a certain social factor. New bridges span the Seine, and new thoroughfares, from humble alleys to lordly and magnificent boulevards, have clarified many a slum, and brightened and sweetened the atmosphere; so there is some considerable gain there. The Parisian cabby is, as he always was, a devil-may-care sort of a fellow, who would as soon run you down with his sorry old outfit as not; but perhaps even his characteristics will change sooner or later, now that the automobile is upon us in all its proclaimed perfection. The "New Opera," that sumptuous structure which bears the inscription "Académie Nationale de Musique," begun by Garnier in 1861, and completed a dozen years later, is, in its commanding situation and splendid appointments, the peer of any other in the world. In spite of this, its fame will hardly rival that of the Comédie Française, or even the Opéra Comique of former days, and the names of latter-day stars will have difficulty in competing with those of Rachel, Talma, and their fellow actors on the stage of other days. Whom, if you please, have we to-day whose name and fame is as wide as those just mentioned? None, save Madame Bernhardt, who suggests to the well-informed person--who is a very considerable body--the preëminent influences which formerly emanated from Paris in the fifties. But this of itself is a subject too vast for inclusion here, and it were better passed by. So, too, with the Parisian artists who made the art of the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Decamps, Delacroix, Corot, and Vernet are names with which to conjure up reminiscences as great as those of Rubens, Titian, and Van Dyke. This may be disputed, but, if one were given the same familiarity therewith, it is possible that one's contrary opinion would be greatly modified. To-day, in addition to the glorious art collection of former times, there are the splendid, though ever shifting, collections of the Musée du Luxembourg, the mural paintings of the Hôtel de Ville, which are a gallery in themselves, and the two spring Salon exhibitions, to say nothing of the newly attempted Salon d'Automne. Curiously enough, some of us find great pleasure in the contemplation of the decorations in the interiors of the great _gares_ of the Lyons or the Orleans railways. Certainly these last examples of applied art are of a lavishness--and even excellence--which a former generation would not have thought of.