At present the invention is in the hands of Mr. Rand, the portrait painter, a countryman of ours, who is one of the most ingenious mechanicians in the world. He has improved the tones of the reeds till they rival, in softness and fullness, those of the strings, and, in fact, can hardly be distinguished from them, so that the sounds of the two instruments run into one another without any apparent difference. Mr. Rand has contrived three or four different machines for making the reeds with dispatch and precision; and if the difficulty of keeping the strings, which are undergoing a constant relaxation, in perfect unison with the reeds can be overcome, I see nothing to prevent the most complete and brilliant success. Letter XXVII. Changes in Paris. Paris, _August_ 9, 1845. My last letter was dated at London, in my passage across England. I have been nearly a fortnight in Paris. In ten years I find a considerable change in the external aspect of this great capital. The streets are cleaner, in many of them sidewalks have been made, not always the widest to be sure, but smoothly floored with the asphaltum of Seyssel, which answers the purpose admirably; the gutters have been removed from the middle of the street to the edge of the curbstone, and lately the curbstone has been made to project over them, so that the foot-passengers may escape the bespattering from carriage-wheels which he would otherwise be sure to get in a rainy day, and there are many such days in this climate—it has rained every day but one since I entered France. New passages have been cut from street to street, old streets have been made wider, new streets have been made, with broad sidewalks, and stately rows of houses hewn from the easily wrought cream-colored stone of the quarries of the Seine. The sidewalks of the Boulevards, and all the public squares, wherever carriages do not pass, have been covered with this smooth asphaltic pavement, and in the Boulevards have been erected some magnificent buildings, with richly carved pilasters and other ornaments in relief, and statues in niches, and balconies supported by stone brackets wrought into bunches of foliage. New columns and statues have been set up, and new fountains pour out their waters. Among these is the fountain of Molière, in the Rue Richelieu, where the effigy of the comic author, chiseled from black marble, with flowing periwig and broad-skirted coat, presides over a group of naked allegorical figures in white marble, at whose feet the water is gushing out.