Great part of this town consists of houses--summer-houses, dolls-houses,--of one story, with one door, one window, and one chimney; with room in each, for exactly one more than one inmate. An extra apartment is sometimes contrived, by means of a bower, which serves instead of a garden--there is none--though a great deal of gardening is done in the Halle, in tubs, flower-pots, and mignonette-boxes, wherein luxuriant specimens of the culture are observable; myrtles, oleanders, lilacs, orange-trees, bay-trees, and pomegranates, all a-growing and a-blowing. Favoured mansions possess a garden--sometimes as much as three or four mètres square--bedecked with roses, dwarf and standard, lilies of the valley, violets double and single, irises displaying some of the colours of the rainbow, hollyhocks, gilliflowers, blue-bells, and oyster-shells all in a row. There is an abundant supply of excellent water; of course to serve no other purpose whatever than the refreshment of the aforesaid favourites of Flora, though people say more wine is drunk in Paris than ever comes or came into it. The Halle-aux-Vins houses, which put you in mind of Gulliver’s box in Brobdingnag, are raised from the ground on separate blocks of stone, to keep them dry, which suggests the further idea of the possibility of their being flown away with by an eagle or roc, if they had only a convenient ring in the roof. Of course, the houselings,--detached and separate; no quarrelling with next-door neighbours, nor listening to secrets through thin partition walls,--are ranged in streets, the perusal of whose simple names is sufficient to create a vinous thirst. What do you say to walking out of Rue de Bordeaux into Rue de Champagne, thence traversing Rue de Bourgogne, to reach Rue de la Côte-d’Or, and Rue de Languedoc, before arriving at Rue de Touraine! The Barmecide’s guest would have been in ecstacies, in defiance of the koran, at such a feast. Moreover, to make things still more pleasant, every one of the euphonious alleys and streets is planted with trees of different ornamental species,--the lime, the horse-chesnut, and other arboreal luxuries. It is a pity that the climate does not permit the growth of cork-trees, bearing crops of ready-cut corks, including bungs, long clarets, and champagne-stoppers. The happy mortal to whom each little lodge belongs, is indicated by a legible inscription giving not only the number of his isolated square counting-house, according to its place in the alley which it lines, whether in single or in double row, but also bearing the town-address of its tenant, and specifying the special liquors in which he deals; thus:--“21, Mossenet, Senior, & Cie.; Quai d’Anjou, 25. Fine wines of the Côte-d’Or cellar, Rue de Champagne, 17.” Similar biographical sketches are given of other lords of other summer-houses which wink at you with their Venetian blinds behind their fences of trelliswork covered with creeping plants.