PAVING OF STREETS.

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was regulated by laws, the former in 139(5, and the latter in1501 formed a company and were obliged to subscribe tocertain regulations. The city increasing in size and popula-tion, the cleaning of the streets became too expensive for thepeople, so that government was obliged to take care of it;this took place in 1(509. They were cleaned in this mannertill 1748, when the last contract amounted to 206,000 livres.

The Parisians had long been in the habit of dirtying thestreets, by bringing out every kind of tilth and there deposit-ing it. The inhabitants also contributed by throwingeverything out of windows; this was strictly prohibited.They also suffered their swine to run about the streets, tillat last the young king Philip was killed by a fall in conse-quence of one of these animals running between the legs ofhis horse; hence they were prohibited. On the 3d of Octo-ber, 1131, swine were prohibited for the future having-ingress into the streets ; but this the obstreperous and proudpriests of St. Anthony opposed, because, as they alleged,it w r as contrary to the respect due to their saint to preventhis swine having the liberty of going whither they pleased.It was therefore found necessary to allow these clerical pigsthat exclusive privilege, on condition that they were tohave a bell about their necks.

That cry which was necessary for the inhabitants to pro-claim upon their throwing any thing into the streets wasGare Venn, “ Take care of the water;” this also ceased in1395. But the same privilege was longer indulged to theScotch, for as late as 1750, when people travelled Edinburgh in the night, they were compelled to take a guide with them,who cried as lie went along the streets, Maud your haunde,i.e. “ Hold your hand.”

The most rigid vigilance was essential in the police ofParis to make that people reform in their filthy practices.They had not as vet any privies in or about their houses.It is not more strange than true that an especial order ofgovernment was essential to compel those convenient officesto be established. Those who may wonder at this, will beastonished w hen they are told that the royal residence of theSpanish monarch was without them, at the time the English circumnavigators found privies erected in the Europeanmanner among the inhabitants of New Zealand, —completesavages. But it seems that neither was Madrid the onlyroyal residence without this convenience, there were noprivies in Warsaw till within these few years.

We are also given to understand that in the Parisian codeof laws, Coutume de Paris, improved and confirmed in 1513,