Before I left Antwerp I visited the flower market. It is held under the trees in the Public Square, and the plants were chiefly of what we should know as of the bedding class. The Lobelia and Heliotrope seemed of a darker blue than ours; the flowers of the Roses larger, and dwarf Dahlias and Asters more floriferous. I made a running visit to Ostend, Ghent and Brussels. The king of the Belgians has his beautiful grounds here. He is passionately fond of gardening, and will no doubt regret that he was absent when an American sovereign, such as your correspondent, called on him. It takes twelve hours from Antwerp, but most of this time seems taken up in changing cars. Car fare is cheaper for the person, but they get even with the American rate if the poor fellow has any baggage.

Well, Paris and its fashions! Every body asks about them. It is the ladies themselves, not their dresses. A coffee sack on a French lady would look as well as a dress by Worth on the lady of any other country. The substantial character of the buildings impresses one in Paris. They look as if built to defy time and stand forever, and statuary, real representatives of famous people, meet the gaze everywhere. The streets come together into three, four or five points so often, that one can easily get lost, and are so cleanly kept that crossing stones are never thought of. Flower stores are in every block, but there is a strange sameness in the pot plants, Euonymus, Pandanus, Fuchsias, Ficus elastica, Asters or Marguerites as they call them, Geraniums, Gloxinias, Heliotropes, Roses and Mignonettes comprise the bulk of what one finds in any one of them. The old summer Rose, Madame Plantier, is the most popular of any, although there are large numbers of Etoile de Lyon, Mermets and Neils. Cut flowers of Gladiolus and Mignonette are everywhere in abundance.

The Grand Opera House, and the Avenue de l'Opera opening out from it, strike one with wonder; but almost every store thinks it essential to have the windows and doorways embellished by pot plants, which add immeasurably to the charming scene. The military and professionals of various classes, with their uniforms and robes of office, worn in the streets, also add much to the supposed gaiety of a Paris scene. As I went through the opera avenue a regiment of cadets, boys of not over 14, with fife and drum, made things lively Fruit and vegetable stores abound. Fruits are handled more carefully than with us, and the "bloom" on the plums and grapes is carefully preserved; and the vegetables, carrots, radishes, scorzonera, artichokes and cauliflowers, they keep so fresh and plump as if but a minute before brought from the garden. On the foliaceous vegetables it is hard to note a wilted leaf. After a great deal of crossing in and out of famous streets amidst cooling fountains, and the shade of umbrageous sycamores, I found myself in the garden of the Tuilleries. Oranges of over a hundred years old in tubs, line the promenades. There are probably 1000 of them. The stems are about 18 inches in circumference, and the trees are shaved into exact globes about 4 or 5 feet thick.

Immortelle flowers are much used, and freely, to wreath the statuary on festival days. The flower beds are so thickly planted that it is a wonder how so many kinds can be made to grow thickly and harmoniously together. In the lake are two black swans, of which I have often read but never saw before. Part of the garden is set apart for nurses and children, where they gambol and play to their hearts' content, and crowds of children flock round and enjoy the Punch and Judy shows. Gentlemen sit in other parts and read their papers, while near by under the shade of the sycamores, ladies join in exploring the interior of lunch baskets. The Chamber of Deputies, hospitals and asylums here, grand, not only in their majestic architecture, but also in their wonderfully long French names, all cluster hereabouts, with the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in which lie the remains of Saint Denis, whom every good Parisian glories in as his patron Saint. Passing by the Obelisk covered with inscriptions in ancient Egyptian, which I had not time to stop and read, I made for the pretty garden spots in the Elysian Fields, or, if we must be French when in France, let us say Champs Elysees. An avenue a mile or so long, crowded with carriages, if crowd is a fair name for the jam of carriages, and with wide strips of park gardening on each side.

The Parisian, however, never loses sight in his gardening of plenty of play ground, and it is surely here. All sorts of characters perambulate these public garden tracts; one of the most curious was an old man with a sort of bag of iced drinks over his shoulder, and a faucet under his arm from which he would fill your cups as you pass along. Parties play cards on tables so long as there is no appearance of gambling going on; and there is the conjurer with his tricks to amuse the young ones. Beds of low shubbery, such as Rhododendrons and Spireaes, with flowers everywhere intermixed are everywhere in this public pleasure garden and play ground, and though millions on millions must crowd here continually, are rarely injured. The floral mixtures seem very strange and novel. Here is a clump of our American Kalmia latifolia with scarlet Geraniums mixed through them. Deodar Cedars and Ageratums, Fuchsia fulgens under dwarf Weeping Willows, Arabia Sieboldii with Clarkia pulchella, and so on.

Then again special features would be had by using all Japan Maples, Euonymuses, or Retinos-poras, and contrast the whole with Begonias and such flowering things among them. Curious effects by mixing were had with our mammoth Sequoia, Oleanders, Magnolia grandiflora, mixed up with Marguerites and such like. Gypsophyllum is largely used for edging, as also is the lovely sun-worshipping flower, Gazania splendens. But they cannot begin to come up to the well-kept lawns of the United States - though I be burned as a heretic I will say it - nor will they ever till they knock their old scythes into ploughshares, and send to Philadelphia for a cargo of lawn mowers. And yet they are ahead of us in some things. You won't catch them sprinkling streets by a clumsy, ugly, filthy concern called a water cart, but a neatly dressed man has a system of light riveted hose on a pair of wheels which he leads around and sprinkles at a tithe of the cost for watering that your old lumbering horse water barrel does. From the top of the grand triumphal arch - or, if we must, Arc de Triomphe, you may see all Paris; but to a lover of neatness and order few things will be more pleasurable than the clean asphalt walks everywhere around. Twelve of these beautiful avenues centre here.

You rush for an omnibus to get to your railroad station, but the law allows only twenty-four in and twenty-four out, and you must await your turn till an empty seat comes along. It is a happy thought for the fellow inside that you have plenty of room without another to crowd on you; but for the poor wretch on the street who knows he has but five minutes to make his train and may be fifteen before that empty seat comes along, the idea has more of the thorns of the rose than of its beauty and fragrance.

You may comfort yourself, however, if so disposed, while waiting, by investing forty American cents in a bottle of good wine. At length we get the omnibus, and as we ride back the way we came, still wonder at the clean streets, the simple method of sprinkling, the iron gratings around the sidewalk trees, and the beauty everywhere, till reaching the Place de la Madeleine and seeing the whole square one large flower market, we leave the omnibus to enjoy the pots, and sights of buyers and sellers around them. It is enough to make one look as if asked to swallow the Washington Monument! I never saw such a quantity of pot flowers together before. Palms of numerous species, with the dwarf and curious trees and shrubs, such as Eucalyptus and Myrtles, Yuccas and Amaryllis, no end of Roses, with of course huge lots of our old friends, Madame Plantier, Begonias, Pomegranites, Oleanders, Coxcombs, Lilies of many kinds, Friesia, Veronicas from New Zealand, Cannas, and a Dwarf White Dahlia, which in a six-inch pot will have half a dozen flowers and the whole plant not much higher than the pot itself.

Then there were Perennial Phloxes, Arundo Donax, Hydrangeas, Coleus, Ericas from the Cape of Good Hope, Gardenias, Aucubas, Campanulas tortured and twisted around stakes to all sorts of fantastic forms; these will give some sort of an idea of the kind of things that go to make up the grand flower market in Madeline Square; or, if we must we must, Place de la Madeleine. The cut flowers, of course, furnish an ample contribution to this beautiful scene. Huge bunches of Roses, fresh as if covered with morning dew, of La France, Paul Neron, Eugene Appert, can be had for a song, or a few sous, which is much the same thing; and, after having feasted the mind to its heart's content, we can go into a restaurant along "La Place" and get a feast for the bodily man that would be good enough for Napoleon were he here and living yet, for about 5 francs. Having seen how the people get their flowers, I will try next and see how the wealthier grow specimen plants. Paris, August 10th, '