during the period that it remains open. One hundred thousand go out to
the races on ordinary days, and twice that number attend the Grand Prix.
Hence comes a famine of conveyances and of seats, and a plethora of
companions that are far from being uniformly agreeable.

In Brussels one has enough of human surroundings. There is no lack of
companionship in her gardens, her galleries, her streets and her parks.
She is not a solitude, as are some of the dead cities of Italy and
Germany or some of the minor provincial towns in Belgium and France. The
influence of her three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants is very
comfortably apparent. But where Paris pours forth her tens of thousands,
Brussels sends out some hundreds. Hence there is always room and to
spare. And she is well-to-do in the world, is this pretty capital of
Belgium. She is growing and thriving, and wears every mark of an active
and contented prosperity. New and handsome streets meet the view on
every side. Foremost among these is the elegant Avenue Louise, named
after the late queen of the Belgians, which leads out to the spacious
and lovely Bois de la Cambre, a second Bois de Boulogne, omitting the
traces of the siege. The Avenue Louise reminds me very much of South
Broad street in Philadelphia. It forms an almost unbroken row of elegant
private residences, extending for full two miles to the very gate of the
Bois. The centre of the roadway is macadamized and bordered with rows of
trees, thus forming a charming road to the Bois for the private
carriages of the Belgian aristocracy.

The royal family of Belgium appear but little in public. A series of
family misfortunes, combined with the ill-health of the king, has
induced them to live in comparative retirement. Of the children of the
late king Leopold, but three survive, the present king, the Count de
Flandres and the luckless empress Charlotte. The last, still sunk in a
state of hopeless insanity, inhabits the Chateau de Tervueren. The king,
with his wife and family, passes most of his time at the Chateau de
Laeken. He is a great sufferer from a disease which has attacked one of
his legs. The queen, an Austrian archduchess, was formerly one of the
most beautiful princesses of Europe, but she has never regained either
her health or her spirits since the death of her only son some years
ago, and looks faded and careworn. On the king's death the crown will
pass to his only brother, the Count de Flandres. Th