There is the same indefinable charm about Budapest that there is in the gypsy music. This charm is a spiritual one. The situation of the city is delightful, the streets are clean, the architecture agreeable, and all the comforts of life are at the traveller’s command. In these respects the city is not unlike many others, but in its people it is unique and always will be as long as the Magyar tongue exists, or a drop of the rich Eastern blood remains in a descendant of the race. Our experience in Vienna was but the prologue to the hospitalities at Budapest. Under the guidance of a host of friends, chief of whom was Mr. Louis Gerster, the resident Vice-consul of the United States, we saw the town in the most agreeable manner possible. Visits to the museums of art and of antiquity, with their stores of treasures; inspection of the famous wine-cellars, with the miles of wine-butts and millions of bottles; drives in the parks; an excursion up the river in a special steamer with ladies and gentlemen, when we danced the csárdás for a day and a night almost without intermission; a trip down-stream to eat the delicious sterlet, fresh from the Danube and cooked with paprika, after the fisherman’s taste--our stay was one round of jollity. But for the frequent sight of the great river with its hurrying current which urged us to depart, we might have prolonged our stay until snowfall, such were the fascinations that encompassed us. [Illustration: COUNTRY MARKET-BOAT, BUDAPEST] The water-front of Budapest, with its masses of extensive buildings and its populous quays, is the noblest spectacle of similar order in the whole course of the Danube. Within the last few years the city has made marvellous strides in the direction of enlargement and improvement. Three bridges now cross the river between Pest on the left bank and Buda on the right, the two principal sections of the town. The upper one is of iron, on huge stone buttresses, the middle one a graceful suspension-bridge, built about forty years ago, and the lower of iron, and built to carry a railway and to serve for foot-passengers as well. Large hotels have been built, a fine new park laid out, new parliament-houses on the river-front almost completed, the squares and public places adorned with fountains and statues, and entire new quarters covered with fine buildings, all within the past fifteen years. These improvements have worked the modernization of the people as well as the town, and the native costumes once so common in the streets are almost a rarity now. The sulphur springs at Buda and on Margarethen-Insel, famous since Roman times, form one of the chief attractions to visitors, and afford an uncommon luxury to the residents. The bathing establishments are of unparalleled extent and great splendor, particularly on the island, where the delights of the beautiful park enhance the popularity of the baths. Up to within a few years there was a large cheap public bath where people of both sexes and