style, by a light railing covered with stout iron network, which allows it to gaze at the Vanity Fair, while it separates it from too familiar contact with the world. It is in the crowd--without being of it--a convenient, friar-like, differenceless distinction. Exclusiveness, however, of whatever kind, is more apparent than real. At the bottom of Rue Cuvier, turn to your right, and you may enter at once, unless you prefer walking along the Quai to the principal entrance, where there is a letter-box, in case you have a billet-doux to post. The principal restriction imposed upon a stranger is, that he is forbidden to smoke amongst the eaux-de-vie. Well, now that you are inside it, what do you think of it? Is the wine-market of Paris like any thing else? The name of the establishment puts the London Docks into your head; but, beyond their commercial use and distinction, there is no more analogy between the London Docks, and this little bit of fairy-land, than there was between the caverns of Ætna, where Vulcan made pokers and tongs, and the slopes of Parnassus where the Muses danced. The Halle-aux-Vins is not a building, nor a labyrinthine cellar; it is a complete town, as perfect and unique in its way as Pompeii itself. Once a week, indeed, it resembles the city of the dead; it is silent, solitary, and closed. No business is transacted there on Sundays, save only by the restless spirits which will work unseen, and which contrive to make their escape invisibly, however fast they may be imprisoned. The Halle is the very concentration and impersonation of French vinous hilarity. It would not do for port and sherry, which require a more solid and stately residence; nor is it sufficiently whimsical and mediæval to serve as a rendezvous for Rhenish, Austrian, and Hungarian volunteers in the grand army of Jean Raisin. Rudesheimer, Voeslan, Gumpoldskirchen, or Luttenberg, could not well sojourn comfortably in any place that had not a touch of a ruined castle in its architecture. But the Entrepôt, whose first stone was laid little more than forty years back, no more pretends to an elderly and dignified mien than does the Bal Mabille (by daylight) or the Château des Fleurs. It is as tasteful and as elegant as if intended to serve as a suburban luncheon-place, where you might call for any known wine in the world, to be sipped under the shade of flowering shrubs, to the accompaniment of sandwiches, sausage-rolls, and ices, handed to you by white-aproned waiters or rosy-cheeked and smart-capped damsels.