Paris pianos are renowned, the world over, and consequently three tenths of all the pianos made in Paris are exported to foreign countries. France, too, owing to the cheapness of labor, can make a better cheap piano than any other country. In 1852, there were ten thousand pianos made in Paris, at an average cost of one thousand francs each; and, we are informed, a very good new upright piano can now be bought in France for one hundred dollars. But in France the average wages of piano-makers are five francs per day; in London, ten shillings; in New York, four dollars and thirty-three cents. The cream of the business, in Paris, is divided among three makers,--Erard, Hertz, and Pleyel,--each of whom has a concert-hall of his own, to give _eclat_ to his establishment. We presume Messrs. Steinway added "Steinway Hall" to the attractions of New York from the example of their Paris friends, and soon the metropolis will boast a "Chickering Hall" as well. This is an exceedingly expensive form of advertisement. Steinway Hall cost two hundred thousand dollars, and has not yet paid the cost of warming, cleaning, and lighting it. This, however, is partly owing to the good-nature of the proprietors, who find it hard to exact the rent from a poor artist after a losing concert, and who have a constitutional difficulty about saying _No_, when the use of the hall is asked for a charitable object. In Germany there are no manufactories of pianos on the scale of England, France, and the United States. A business of five pianos a week excites astonishment in a German state, and it is not uncommon there for one man to construct every part of a piano,--a work of three or four months. Mr. Steinway the elder has frequently done this in his native place, and could now do it. A great number of excellent instruments are made in Germany in the slow, patient, thorough manner of the Germans; but in the fashionable houses of Berlin and Vienna no German name is so much valued as those of the celebrated makers of Paris. In the London exhibition of 1851, Russian pianos competed for the medals, some of which attracted much attention from the excellence of their construction. Messrs. Chickering assert, that the Russians were the first to employ successfully the device of "overstringing," as it is called, by which the bass strings are stretched over the others.