The colonnade, with a chocolate-brown back wall,
affords shelter and relief for bronze and marble statuary. At each end
of this facade is a tall flagstaff striped like a barber's pole, and
so familiar to all who have visited the Austrian stations, at Trieste,
for example. From it flies the flag of horizontal stripes of red,
white and green, with the shield of many quarterings and two angelic
supporters.

Russia has a log-and-frame house of somewhat more than average
picturesque character. The projecting centres and wing-towers, the
outside staircase, and roofs conical, flat, pyramidal, bulbous and
Oriental, give it a miscellaneous toyshop appearance, characteristic
perhaps of the mosaic character of the nation. Barge-boards and
brackets of various cheap patterns are plentifully strewed over the
building.

Passing from the Russian to the Swiss building suggests inevitably
Mr. Mantalini's description of his former _cheres amies_: "The two
countesses had no outline at all, and the dowager's was a demmed
outline." A semicircular archway, over which is a high-flying arch
with a roof of six slopes surmounted by a bell-tower and pinnacle
roof; on the pillars two lions supporting a red shield with white
Greek cross in the field; two wings with flat arches containing
gorgeous stained-glass windows. But what avails description? There are
twenty-two armorial bearings on the spandrils of the arches, beating
the United States by six; but we had only room for the original
thirteen, the United States and two more. Oh that they had granted us
more space! High up aloft is the motto _Un pour tous, tons pour un_,
which was adopted by the French Commune.

Belgium is pre-eminent in the whole row, if expense determines. This
country has about three times as much space in the building as the
United States, and has worthily filled it. The Belgian facade on the
"Street of Nations" is reputed to have cost nearly as much as the
whole appropriation made by Congress for the United States exhibit. It
is of dark red brick with gray stone quoins and corners and blue and
gray marble pillars. The centre building is joined by two colonnades
to a flanking tower at one end and an ornate gable at the other. The
style is one familiar in the times when the great William of Orange
was alive, and was to some extent introduced into England soon after
another William took the place of his bigoted father-in-law. It
cannot be denied that the general effect is