and lined with palatial edifices no whit inferior to the French. The
metamorphosis is so startling that a tourist revisiting the city after
an absence of twenty years would have difficulty in persuading himself
that he was indeed in the residence of Maria Theresa, Joseph II. and
Metternich. No American city can exhibit a like change in the same
time. Our cities, although expanding incessantly, have preserved their
original features. Even new Chicago, springing from the ashes of
the old, has not departed from the former ground-plan and style of
building. And no American city can point to a succession of buildings
like the Franz Joseph Barracks, the Cur Salon with its charming park,
the Grand Hotel and the Hotel Imperial, the Opera-house, the Votive
Church, the new Stock Exchange, and the Rudolf Barracks. When the
projected House of Deputies, the City Hall, and the University
building are completed, the Ring street will deserve to stand by the
side of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysees. The quondam suburbs
(_Vorstaedte_), eight in number, are now one with the city proper.
Encircling them is the _mur d' octroi_, or barrier where municipal
tolls are levied upon articles of food and drink. Outside of this
barrier, again, are the suburbs of the future, the _Vororte_, such
as Favoriten, Fuenfhaus, Hernals, etc. The growth of the population
is rapid and steady. In 1714 it was 130,000, in 1772 only 193,000.
A century later, in 1869, it had risen to 811,000 (including the
Vororte); at the present day it can scarcely fall short of 1,000,000.

Not in population and adornment alone has Vienna progressed. Much has
been done, or at least projected, for the comfort and health of the
residents and for the increase of trade. The entire city has been
repaved with Belgian pavement, the houses renumbered after the
Anglo-American fashion. The railroads centring in the city are
numerous, and the stations almost luxurious in their appointments. But
the two chief enterprises are the Semmering aqueduct and the Danube
Regulation. The former, begun in 1869 and completed in 1873, would do
honor to any city. It is about fifty miles in length, and has a much
greater capacity than the Croton aqueduct. The pure, cold Alpine water
brought from two celebrated springs near the Semmering Pass, flows
into the distributing reservoir on the South Hill, near the Belvedere
Palace, at an elevation of one hundred and fifty feet above the city.
The pressur