de in the new line. The omnibus system
is worked to perfection only in Paris, and is there a great blessing to
people who cannot afford to drive their own carriages.

THE BOURSE--GALIGNANI'S, ETC., ETC.

The Paris Exchange is on the Rue Vivienne, and is approached from the
Tuileries from that street or _via_ the Palais National, and a
succession of the most beautiful arcade-shops in Paris or the world. If
the day be rainy, the stranger can thread his way to it under the long
arcades as dry as if in his own room at the hotel. I confess to a
fondness for wandering though such places as these arcades, where the
riches of the shops are displayed in their large windows. In America it
is not usual to fill the windows of stores full of articles with the
price of each attached, but it is always so in London and Paris. A
jewelry store will exhibit a hundred kinds of watches with their
different prices attached, and the different shops will display what
they contain in like manner. There are, too, in Paris and London places
called "Curiosity shop". The first time I ever saw one of these shops
with its green windows and name over the door, memory instantly recalled
a man never to be forgotten. Will any one who has read Charles Dickens
ever forget his "Curiosity Shop," the old grandfather and little Nell?
When I entered the shop--the windows filled with old swords, pistols,
and stilettos--it seemed to me that I must meet the old gray-haired man,
or gentle Nell, or the ugly Quilp and Dick Swiveller. But they were not
there.

[Illustration: Palais de la Bourse]

But I have been stopping in a curiosity shop when I should be on my way
to the Bourse. The Paris Bourse, or Exchange, is perhaps the finest
building of its kind on the continent. Its magnificence is very properly
of the most solid and substantial kind. For should not the exchange for
the greatest merchants of Paris be built in a stable rather than in a
slight and beautiful manner? The form of the structure is that of a
parallelogram, and it is two hundred and twelve by one hundred and
twenty-six feet. It is surrounded by sixty-six Corinthian columns, which
support an entablature and a worked attic. It is approached by a flight
of steps which extend across the whole western front. Over the western
entrance is the following inscription--BOURSE ET TRIBUNAL DE COMMERCE.
The roof is made of copper and iron. The hall in the center of the
building where the merchants mee