No city in the world, says Charles Eliot Norton, appeals more strongly to the poetic imagination than Venice. Rising in the dawn of modern Europe, she linked the tradition of the old civilization to the fresh conditions of the new. The destiny that ruled her beginnings seemed, as she grew, to have had no element of chance, but to have been determined by foresight and wise counsel. Her statesmen were the ablest, her merchants the most adventurous and most successful, her seamen the boldest, her craftsmen the most skillful, of their time. The affection in which she was held by her people had the depth and intensity of a passion.[3] As it was with Venice, so in a scarcely less degree it fared with Florence and Siena, and other independent cities of Italy, which vied with one another not only in power, but much more in beauty and in the love borne them by their citizens. And to-day their charm makes them the resort of people of taste and refinement, long after their power has waned and only their beauty remains. [Illustration: 1780.] [Illustration: 1830.] [Illustration: 1880. XV. TRANSFORMATION OF THE BANKS OF THE SEINE IN PARIS. Chronological views of the Petit Pont and Petit Chatelet, showing the evolution of the boulevards.] City planning, in the sense of regarding the city as an organic whole and of developing its various units with reference to their relations one to another, had its origin in Paris during the Bourbon period. Among great cities, Paris has reached the highest stage of development; and the method of this attainment affords lessons for all other cities. Paris owes its origin and its growth to the convenience of its location in view of increasing commercial conditions. Its beginnings go back to the century before the Christian era, when it was but a straggling village called Lutetia, occupying one of the islands in the Seine. On the vast level plain adjoining the town, houses could be erected indefinitely, while the numerous watercourses extending into the surrounding regions gave easy access to the trader. Fertile lands furnished an abundance of provisions; and brick-clay, lime, and sand, with timber from the neighboring forests, provided materials for building. The surroundings of Paris, so rich in all the requisites for the creation of a great city, are similar to those of London and Berlin and Chicago; and in each instance there is the same breadth in the landscape.