Characteristics of Parisian Living. 515 a house of equal rent! I do not find that we could hire the apartment at much less by the quarter; perhaps by the year it might cost not more than $1500; but this would procure an independent house, with every comfort, in New York or Boston. Here you are in a hive, with real privacy, it is true, but with no great feeling of privacy, and a terrible feeling of confinement in place of it. Yet there are several families in this very modest building who keep carriages and footmen, and ride in considerable style every afternoon in the Bois de Boulogne. I doubt not their house-rent and carriage exhausts half their income, and that they live very small in all other ways. Paris is a city of show, as well as convenience and comfort. The soft stone, which cuts almost like cheese, and hardens in the air so that it stands the climate for generations, is easily wrought into the most ornate forms, and makes the architecture of the city festive and ornate beyond account. I can't say it is impressive in all its later manifestations. The new Opera-house, for instance, tries to effect by multiplicity of elegant details what can only be produced by fine lines and great features, and is, in my eye, a splendid failure. There are painful evidences of the want which exists here among the poorer classes. Nothing is more affecting than the endless number of men, women, and children who get their living as wandering musicians. Into the court of our apartments come every day a half-dozen companies of musicians; now with harp and violin; now with a hand-organ ; again, a man who sings, while his wife carries a baby-more eloquent than his really pure and touching voice; then, later, comes a woman in shabby dress and serious mien, who has only one thing to depend on-a sweet and pathetic voiceand she stands and sings, and waits for a sous or two to be thrown her from some of the apartments. And so it goes on all day. Begging is forbidden, but now and then a workman in his blouse sidles up to some stranger and hints that he has eaten nothing all day. On the whole, the people look cheerful, healthy, and busy. O A SHORT RUN INTO BELGIUM AND HOLLAND. BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 25, 1867. A JOURNEY of six hours carried us swiftly and smoothly over the rich plains of France, through an uninteresting country, to the capital of Belgium, without any other interruption than the stoppage of twenty minutes on the borders of the country, where every trunk and package was taken out of the cars, carried into the custom-house, examined curiously, and returned. The examination of the baggage was made in the presence of the owners, who were all huddled into the "Douannerie," each with keys in hand, and all ready to declare that they had nothing taxable in their various packages. On arriving at Brussels, the noise and excitement made a Babel of the station. The Continental custom of giving the traveler a paper receipt for his baggage, instead of a duplicate check, makes the whole matter of delivery doubly complicated and distracting. Then every pound of baggage is weighed, and woe to the purse of the unhappy wight who has more than his allotted fifty pounds-which is not far from the weight of a strong American trunk before any thing is put into it. A dollar or two for extra baggage is a very common charge on short routes, with our party of four. To make up for this, the transfer of luggage to and from the cars is very cheap. We find ourselves and all our luggage carried to a * This letter was accidentally omitted in its proper place after Letter VII., page 71, Vol. I. hotel for about sixty cents, in place of the two or three dollars it would cost in New York. The railroad fares are higher than with us, but the roads are smoother and the cars more comfortable, although the speed thus far is not as great as on our express trains. We find the hotels everywhere excellent, and not immoderate in their charges. Brussels, a city of about 200,000, seemed quietness itself, after Paris. It is a lovely capital-clean, prosperous, and contented. Six thousand English are said to live here, whether to enjoy the cheap markets or the nearer view of Waterloo, I will not guess. The streets are smooth, and beautifully thorough in their whole structure. Brussels is often spoken of as a miniature of Paris in its parks, cafés, and general appearance. Certainly what it has copied it has copied well. The French language is in general use, and the coins are precisely like the French. The people show their fondness for out-of-door life, and have made beautiful parks to enjoy it in. It would be difficult to find nobler trees more skillfully arranged than in the park which Maria Theresa gave the city, full of fountains, statues, and shade. Charles V. made his abdication in 1555, in the old chateau of the Dukes of Brabant, which once stood within this park; and in it occurred the chief struggle in the Revolution of 1830. The king's palace is a plain building overlooking this park, and contains nothing as interesting as its near neighbor, the ducal palace, a modern building, only finished and occupied in 1829 by William II., king of Holland, when he was Prince of Orange. Since his expulsion, in 1830, it has served as a museum of modern Belgian art, but contains nothing of special note. The Chambers of the Senate and Deputies are splendid in their recent decorations, but more interesting as the scenes where a people who love liberty and enjoy a mild rule Hotel de Ville at Brussels. 519 succeed in keeping the freedom of Belgium up, and its taxes down. There are three parties in the Chambersthe Catholic party, the Liberals, and the Moderate men. The Liberals are slightly in the ascendency, but it is said have lately lost a little ground. Belgium is manifestly as Catholic as France in its customs and tastes. In Brussels, as in Antwerp since, I observe not only a rigorous upholding of Catholic worship, but a manifest love and devotion to it in the masses of the people, which show clearly the strength of the political party which has so long and so successfully resisted any very progressive tendencies here. But, despite all, the great column erected in the Place du Congres in 1859 commemorates a constitution quite worthy of the people's pride, in which the liberty of the press, the liberty of worship, the liberty of assembling together, and the right of popular education are solemnly guarantied. The Hotel de Ville rises to magnificent proportions on the side of a public square-the "Grande Place”—which, as the scene of the beheading of the Counts Egmont and Horn by the hated Duke of Alva, has a historical interest which will endure while Schiller's and Motley's brilliant records survive. Around this square stand the halls of those proud guilds, Brewers, Archers, Mariners, and others, who embodied their rivalries and their love of display in most picturesque façades, and which Walter Scott has reproduced in Quentin Durward and other tales. The Hotel de Ville, begun in 1401 and finished about the middle of the century, is the most costly of all those monuments of municipal power and pride which adorn the cities of the Netherlands. The spire is three hundred and sixty-four feet high, full of Gothic openwork, visible from a great distance, and always attractive; the façade is decorated as far as the north-west wing with a most elaborate array of statues and a highly ornate finish of |