43^ LETTERS FROM PARIS 1 * 



lantry, and popularity, together with a mixture of 

 nity, impelled him to labour at its farther embellifhment. 

 Accordingly, in one year, three new flreets, two regular 

 fquares [place royale and place dauphine], a lump- 

 tuous bridge, [pont neuf,] and feveral palaces, were 

 produced. Under his luccefYor, or rather under car- 

 dinal Richlieu, the aggrandifement and embellifhment 

 of the cky was more vilible every yeaF; and now the 

 groundwork, as it were, was laid of thofe gigantic 

 works which were undertaken and finilhed by Lewis 

 the fourteenth. 



This monarch feemed to aim at rendering his capital 

 the metropolis of the world, as he did at extending 

 his kingdom into an univerfal empire. Whatever con- 

 fined its circuit was removed. The antient towers and 

 walls which Richelieu had left Handing, were pulled 

 down, and the ramparts with the ditch rotund it, were 

 levelled and filled up, and planted with trees which 

 now overfhade the modern palaces of the old boule- 

 vards. Love, vanity, and ambition, were again the 

 architects, and they difplayed themfelves during his 

 reign in their moll mining but their moll ruinous mag- 

 nificence. Lewis the fifteenth's government, was in 

 this refpecl:, if not in many others, a continuation of 

 the former; and Paris grew up to a monftrous bulk. 

 What his predecelfors had not quite completed he 

 brought to effedfc, and what he only planned was exe- 

 cuted by Lewis the fixteenth. Paris was the fcrernc-ft, 

 and only city of its kind. 



And now, my dear friend, we are come to its new 

 walls. What took up three centuries of continued 

 extenfion to efFecl:, is to be inclofed and terminated in 1 



the 



