118 



THE BOULEVARDS. 



to a decently arranged city^ lie will be forced to admit that 

 suburbs of London, miles in extent, have received less 

 attention as to design than a cottager bestows upon his little 

 garden, or a designer of wall-paper on his rudest patterns. 

 Trom a like, or even a worse, condition our neighbours have 

 been delivered by their splendid boulevards, and in a very 

 short time. 



The word boulevard, or boulevart as it is frequently spelt, 

 signifies in its primary sense a walk made upon the walls of 

 a fortified town, of which we have so good an example in 

 the ancient city of Chester : it is said to be derived from 



Fig. 44. 



Paris seven hundred years ago. 



the Low German ^' bullewerke,'' a word of similar meaning to 

 our own bulwarks. Be this as it may, the Paris boulevards 

 proper, extending from the Madeleine to the Bastille, 

 undoubtedly occupy the site of the ancient wall built by 

 Etienne Marcel and Hugues Aubriot, to resist the incursions 

 of the English army which encamped round St. Denis. The 

 tables have long since been turned however, and instead of 

 entering Paris to plunder and slay, a huge undisciplined 

 English army is constantly passing through the gates of Paris 

 to be plundered by the shopkeepers, and take their chance 



