THE GIANT CITY

This enlargement of the narrow Lutetia, whose smallness and serenity Julian the Apostate preferred to the vast bustle of the Italic cities, how far will he soon go? M. Maurice Talmeyr asks himself, with melancholy uneasiness, in the Revue des Deux Mondes. Each time that Paris has enlarged its enclosure, each time also noise, fashion and splendor have withdrawn, like a flood, from the quarters which their flux had first filled.

Contrary to these historical precedents, "the Greater Paris" should no longer see, in the future, the fashionable region move to its home, which would remain, never to move again, where we see it today. In the center of the prodigious capital would be forever fixed opulent Paris, the limits of which would only be further pushed back and would themselves extend in proportion to the enormous extension of the city. Then, all around, the ever-widening circles of the different neighborhoods would widen, distributed according to class and wealth, opulence, mediocrity or poverty of conditions, but always airy and healthy, served and by public transport. the most multiplied and the fastest, and to the extremities of the department, and separated from each other by the immense belt of open air, parks, gardens, vast fields for games and athletics, substituted for the old strategic area. But will everything be accomplished according to these magnificent, and perhaps very proud, plans?

Mr. Maurice Talmeyr is right to show some skepticism; the laws of history participate in the rigor of physical laws; and cities, moreover, show coquetry in transforming themselves to rejuvenate, because they are women...