It is in the narrow and dingy passages of this lower town, that a stranger feels all the associations of the olden time around him; but on ascending by the steep and precipitous streets to the modern quarter, with its light and beautiful houses, its open squares and gardens, with their fountains and statues, and all that is French and fashionable, the charm of association is gone, and one feels something like coming suddenly into the daylight from the dim scenery of a melodrame. To the stranger in Brussels there are, therefore, two distinct sets of objects of attraction. In the new town there are the palaces of the King and the nobles, the park, the public promenades, the chambers of the Senate and the Commons, the splendid hotels of the Place Royal, and the libraries and museums that occupy the château which was once the residence of the Austrian viceroys; whilst in the old town, there are the churches of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with their superb oak carvings, stained windows and statuary, the Hôtel de Ville, the gloomy old mansions of the past race of nobles, and all the characteristic memorials of the ancient capital. The first are speedily disposed of by the tourist, as there is nothing unique in any of the lions of Brussels, its inhabitants are, in fact, anxious to have their city considered a miniature Paris, and it seems to have been laid out altogether on the model of the French capital, with its boulevards and its palace gardens, its opera, its restaurants and its “café des milles colonnes.”