Paris is at present in a state of upheaval, owing to the development of the und railway system. Scores of important thoroughfares are obstructed by barriers and heaps of earth. The re-Fuge in front of the Opera has become a cart of building-yard, and the navvy reigns supreme in this ultra-Parisian spot. The hoardings will shortly' be extended so as to take in the greater part of the Place do TOpéra. The inconvenience and obstruction to traffic will be very great, but there is no help for it. Three lines are to cross one another under the Place de TOpéra, all at different levels. As the lowest of the three stations will be 63 feot below the street level, and as there is a sheet. of water in the strata at a depth of 35 feet, it will be necessary to use compressed air caissons, just as in laying the foundations of a bridge over a river. The three tunnels are to pass through an immense triangular mass of masonry with a base 01 feet Jong. The boring and consolidation of the three superposed tunnels will be a somewhat complicated operation, and Parisians are anything but pleased by the information that the middle of the Place de TOpéra will be blocked for about. twelve months. The Metro, as the underground electric railway is familiarly called, has proved a great success, and there is so general a demand for that: the authorities feel justified in gi up the finest site in the city for a y urrisz the wrath of all zood boule-In addition to the original line, which crosses the city from the Bois de Boulogne to Vinceanc=, a second line, ako running est. and west but curving to the north, counceting the Bois do Boulogne with Bagnolet. (nearly ax far east as Pere Lachaise) and taking in the northern boulevards, is now in full working order. In five or six years, Paris will have rem of underground communication.
Thi Grand Oid Man of France, doyen of the French Academy, who has just entered upon his ninety seventh year and is hale and hearty, isa striking example of the regular Every ten in the morning conding the staircase of an old hou the Rue St. Mare (he was bom in this building, owns it, and hopes to die in it)
ound floor, where there is a fene= ing academy. Here he has a _fifteon minutes' bout with the proprietor, while another habitue of the room holds the fotch and sives the word at, the end of the allotted but for which th erable academician would certain tinne hi its on the longer than won i ho does not feel disposed to leave his flat or is absent from Paris, M Legouvé does his fencing in his own room, nothing bue netiial illness being allowed to. interfere with this daily duty. Billiards is another form. of exercise to which he is partial, and he isa great walker. His daughter, a lively young widow of sixty-eight, has been brought up in the same school and often ant uses herself in. summer by ming across the Seine opposite father's country house at Seine-Port. Legouvé has never worn spectacles and has no infirmity except slight deafness.
is slight, thin, stiort, and wiry, and weighs barely sixty pounds. He' is so youthful that he can still re-read the Tiree Musketeers" with the utmost en: joyment and learn forty verses by, heart i He always shaves himself, fork, and. sleeps He attributes his Jong life and ration chiefly to. the but declares that anyone She aspires. to continuous good health must keep the body in a state of elasticity by whatever forms of exercise are best suited. to his individual temperament. Ho is also a great. believer in occupation iephe Almighty" be says "inflicted exis tence on man and gare him work as a compensation."
A Waning Star.
In the interval before the production a French version of the "Sorrows of Werther," Mme. Sarah Bernhardt has been appearing in some of her old parte, among them Marguerite Gautier, in "La Dame aux Camélias." Curiosity. prompted me to pay a visit to the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, but the outcome was a di appointment. Age has begun to tell mistakeable on the creat artist. Like certain pictures, she should now be looked at only from a distance. To view hor pitiless opera-glass is to desty of complicity in the illusion which counts for so much in the enjoyment of the theatre. No paint of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.