And it is the river that inevitably draws one; the river to which this strangely fascinating city owes no small measure of its fascination. Even when we have been up and down its broad streets, and its “Rings”; have visited the fine museums; have inspected some of the many statues--Budapest bids fair to become known as a city of beautiful sculpture--have wandered about the attractive Városliget or public park, it is as though we were insensibly drawn back to the Danube; to the lovely park-like Margaret’s Island; to the fashionable promenade along the left bank, where for a time in the afternoon it is as though everybody in the place walked up and down; to the quays to watch the ever-attractive operations of lading and unlading the barges, the arrival or departure of the up and down river steamers or the busy traffic of the bridge. Here, too, as has been suggested, are to be seen some of the finest buildings of a city remarkable for such. Notably, first of all, the beautiful Parliament House, which remains in memory as a wonderful range of spired buildings with something of the delicacy of lace-work; the substantial Renaissance Academy; and such palatial offices as the great Gresham building named after the English merchant prince. “To name them all would need” if not a thousand tongues, the small type and concision of a guide book. The handsome bridges form a notable feature of the Budapest Danube--in which respect the river here contrasts strongly with the portion of it that flows past Vienna--and the first of them to be built, the Lánczhid or suspension bridge, is worthy of note as being one of the longest of its kind in Europe, (1227 feet) and as having been constructed (1839-49) by an English engineer, William Tierney Clark. It will be recognized that this bridge was begun the very year after the terrible inundation. Its stability has been proved by its withstanding “the shocks of masses of ice, the repeated charges of an attacking army, and the tumultuous crowding of a retreating force”; it is even further said to have resisted the attempts of military engineers to destroy it by gunpowder. This, presumably, was in the War of Independence at the time when it had only just been completed at a cost of over six hundred thousand pounds. [Illustration: THE PALACE, BUDAPEST]