On the other hand, the emperor improved Paris till he made it the
most beautiful city in the world. It was his aim to open wide streets
through the old crowded quarters where revolution hid itself, hatching
plots and crimes. He provided fresh air and drainage. He turned
the Bois de Boulogne from a mere wild wood into the magnificent
pleasure-ground of a great city. He completed the Louvre, and demolished
the straggling, hideous buildings which disfigured the Carrousel in
Louis Philippe's time. The working population, which his improvements
drove out of the Faubourg Saint Antoine emigrated to high and healthy
quarters in Montmartre and Belleville, where a beautiful park was
laid out for them. No part of Paris escaped these improvements,
though it took immense sums to complete them. But while their good
results will be permanent, their immediate effect was to raise
rents and make the increased cost of living burdensome to people
of small incomes. The work brought also into Paris an enormous
population of masons, carpenters, and day-laborers,--a population
which was a good deal like the monster in the fairy tale, which
had to be fed each day with the best; for if once it became hungry
or dissatisfied, it might devour the man of science who had brought
it into being.

Still, the French are ungrateful to Napoleon III. when they forget
how much they are indebted to him for the extension of their commerce,
the growth of their railroads, the improvement of their cities, and
above all for his attention to sanitary science and to agriculture.

When he came to the throne, every traveller through France was
struck by the poor breeds of swine, sheep, and cattle; the slovenly
system of cultivation, the wide waste lands, the poor implements
for farming, and the want of drainage. In his exile the emperor
had lived much with English landowners, and he endeavored more
than anything else to improve agriculture. He spent great sums
of money himself in model farms for the purpose of showing how
things could be done. But while commercial, agricultural, and
manufacturing prosperity increased in France, so also did the cost
of living; and the cry, "Put money in thy purse!" found its echo
in the hearts of all men in all classes of society. Speculation
of every kind ran rampant, and by the year 1869 the cost of the
improvements in Paris alone became greater than France could patiently
bear.

Personally, Louis Napoleon had strong sympathy w