In Brussels one has enough of human surroundings. There is no lack of companionship in her gardens, her galleries, her streets and her parks. She is not a solitude, as are some of the dead cities of Italy and Germany or some of the minor provincial towns in Belgium and France. The influence of her three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants is very comfortably apparent. But where Paris pours forth her tens of thousands, Brussels sends out some hundreds. Hence there is always room and to spare. And she is well-to-do in the world, is this pretty capital of Belgium. She is growing and thriving, and wears every mark of an active and contented prosperity. New and handsome streets meet the view on every side. Foremost among these is the elegant Avenue Louise, named after the late queen of the Belgians, which leads out to the spacious and lovely Bois de la Cambre, a second Bois de Boulogne, omitting the traces of the siege. The Avenue Louise reminds me very much of South Broad street in Philadelphia. It forms an almost unbroken row of elegant private residences, extending for full two miles to the very gate of the Bois. The centre of the roadway is macadamized and bordered with rows of trees, thus forming a charming road to the Bois for the private carriages of the Belgian aristocracy. The royal family of Belgium appear but little in public. A series of family misfortunes, combined with the ill-health of the king, has induced them to live in comparative retirement. Of the children of the late king Leopold, but three survive, the present king, the Count de Flandres and the luckless empress Charlotte. The last, still sunk in a state of hopeless insanity, inhabits the Chateau de Tervueren. The king, with his wife and family, passes most of his time at the Chateau de Laeken. He is a great sufferer from a disease which has attacked one of his legs. The queen, an Austrian archduchess, was formerly one of the most beautiful princesses of Europe, but she has never regained either her health or her spirits since the death of her only son some years ago, and looks faded and careworn. On the king's death the crown will pass to his only brother, the Count de Flandres. This gentleman, whose wife, a beautiful and spirited lady, is a princess of the house of Hohenzollern, is as deaf as a post. He inhabits a very handsome palace in the heart of Brussels, and his own sleeping apartments are on the ground floor. One summer night the sentinel in charge was amazed to see a crowd gathered in front of the windows of the count's room, and evidently highly amused. On approaching it was discovered that the attendants had failed to close the outside shutters, and had drawn the lace curtains merely. The room was brilliantly lighted, and of course every part of it was distinctly visible from without. And there, Dans le simple appareil D'une beaute qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,