One can get a glimpse of it from the memoir of famous French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904), written at the end of 1903, recalling his first meeting with another French painter Charles Jalabert in 1840:
„At that time, Paris had nothing to do with the Paris of today: no railways, no bicycles, no cars; we were less agitated, and certain districts, among others the one we lived in and which we called the Latin Quarter, had a provincial aspect in their calm and tranquility.
Now everything is changed; we no longer walk, we run like crazy; if we are not crushed during the day, we have a good chance of being murdered at night. It is charming. We have witnessed the end of a world, we are witnessing the dawn of a new one, which lacks the picturesque and above all serenity.
The day is not far off when, through our customs, our ways of being, our love of the dollar (auri sacra fames), we will no longer be French, neither in spirit nor in heart. Horrible to think of! We will be Americans!“ (Source: Wikipedia)