The number of the institutions of benevolence is enormous. The largest of the numerous hospices or almshouses is La Salpet•iere, probably the largest asylum in the world, extending over 78 acres of land, and appropriated solely to old women, 1800 of its 4,500 inmates being insane patients; Bi•Otre, with nearly 3,600 beds, receives only men. The hospice des Enfans Trouves, or foundling hospital, provides for the infants brought to it till they reach the age of maturity, and only demands payment in the event of a child being reclaimed. The Creches, or public nurseries, first established in is44, of which there are now 18, receive the infants of poor women for the day at the cost of 20 centimes. Besides institutions for the blind, deaf and dumb, convalescents. sick children, etc., Paris has 17 general /Rid succial hospitals. Of these the oldest and most noted arc the hotel Dieu, receiving annually 13,000 patients; La Charite; and La Pitie The chief institutions connected with the university of France, and with education generally, are still situated in the Quartie• Latin. The Sorbonne (q. v.), a large building erected by cardinal Richelieu for the faculties of the old university of Paris, contains lecture balls and class-rooms, and an extensive library open to the public. There degrees tire granted by the university of France in the faculties of science, letters, and theology. and gratuitous public lectures arc delivered, which are attended by a large number of students. Near the Sorbonne is the college de France, where gratuitous public lectures arc also delivered by eminent scholars and men of letters. The Ecole Polytedinique, the school of medicine and the school of law, the observatory, and the Jardin des planters, with its great museum of natural history, lecture-rooms, and botanical and zoological gardens, are situated in the same quarter of Paris. The principal of the public libraries nre those of the rue Richelieu. now called the bibliotheque nntionale, which contains more than 1.300 000 volumes, 150,000 manuscripts, 5,000 portfolios of engravings, and a great collection of coins and medals (see LIBRARIES), which originated in a 'small collec tion of books placed by Louis XI. in the Louvre. No city on this side of the Alps is richer than Paris in fine-art collections, and among these the museums at the Louvre stand pre-eminent. The !Anis des Beaux-arts is used as an exhibition of art, manufae. tures, and architectural models. The hotel .Climy, connected under-ground with the palais des Thermes, in addition to its tieing in itself a most interesting- monument of medirevnl art, contains curious relics of the arts and usages of the French people, from the earliest ages of their history n y to the renaissance period. The mint deserves iota-c for the perfection of its machinery. The Gobelins. or tapestry manufactory, may he included under the fine arts, as the productions of its looms are all manual, and demand great artistic skill. The conservatoire des arts et Metiers, in the Rue St. Martin, contains a great collection of models of machinery, and class-rooms for the instruction of work men in all departments of applied science. The palace of industry, built in 1854 for the universal exhibition, now forms a permanent exhibition. The spacious building in which the exhibition of 1878 took place was named palace of the•Trocadero.
Among the parish churches of Paris (upwards of 60 in number); the grandest and most interesting, in an historic point of view, is the cathedral of Notre Dame, which sitinds On a site successively occupied by a Pagan temple and a Christian basilica of the time of the Merovingian kings. The present building was constructed between the 12th and 15th centuries; and in its present state of restored magnificence it may rank as one of the noblest specimens of Gothic architecture. St. Germain-des-Pres, which is probably the
most ancient church in Paris, was completed in 1163; St. Etienne du flout and St. Ger main l'Auxerrois, both alien:lit, are interesting—the former for its picturesque and quaint decorations, and for containing tile tomb of St. Genevieve, the patron saint. of Paris; and the latter for its rich ,decorations and the frescoed portal, restored at the wish of Margaret of Valois. The Sainte Chapelle, built by St. Louis in 1245-48, for the recep tion of the various relics which he had brought from the Holy Land, is one of the most remarkable buildings in Paris, profusely decorated in all parts with brilliantly colored materials. Its present beauty is entirely due to the restorations completed by the late emperor at a cost of £50,000. It was threatened by the conunune, but saved. Among modern churches. re the Madeleine, built in imitation of a Greek temple, and gorgeous with gildings, frescos, carvings, marbles, and statues; and the Pantheon, which was begun as a church, but converted by the constituent assembly of republican France into a temple didicated to the great men of the nation—it was restored to the church by hie late emFer, and rededicated to St. Genevieve; Notre Dame de Lorette, erected in 1823, a fiagraLt specimen of the meretricious taste of the day; and St. Vincent de Paul, com pleted in 1814, somewhat less gaudy and more imposing in style, etc. Among the few Protestant churches, l'Oratoire is the largest and the best known.
Paris abounds in theaters and *Les of amusement suited to the tastes and means of every class. The leading houses, as the opera, thOtre Francais—chiefly devoted toClassi cal French drama—Odeon, theatre. Italien, etc., receive a subvention from government, and all are under strict police supervision. The new opera-house, completed in 1875, is a wonderfully magnificent building, costing, exclusive of the site, £1,120,000. Cheap concerts, equestrian performances, and public halls, held in the open air in summer, sup ply a constant round of gayety to the burgher and working classes at a moderate cost, and form a characteristic feature of Paris life; while, iu addition to the noble gardens of the various imperial palaces, the most densely crowded parts of the city have public gardens. shaded by trees, and adorned with fountains and statues, which afford the means of health and recreation to the poor. Beyond the fortifications at the w. of Paris is the Bois de Boulogne, converted by the late emperor front a wood covered with stunted trees into one of the most beautiful gardens in Europe. That part of it which skirted the fortifications was cut up and destroyed during the siege, but since then it has been replanted. and is now as attractive to visitors asqt has ever been.
Paris has three large and twelve lesser cemeteries, of which the principal one is la-Chaise, extending over 200 acres, and filled in every part with monuments erected to the memory of the countless number of celebrated persons who have been buried hem. The morgue is a building in which the bodies of unknown persons who have met with a violent death are placed, and which, if not claimed within three days, are buried at the public expense. The southern parts of the city are built 'over beds of limestone, rich in fossils, which have been so extensively quarried as to have become a mere net-wors: of vast caverns, which in some cases scarcely afford sufficient support to the houses above. These quarries were first converted in 1784 into catacombs, in which are deposited the bones of the dead, collected from the ancient cemeteries of Paris.