The last thirty—­even twenty—­years have seen many changes.  During that period the sluggish little River Senne, which once meandered through the city, and upon whose banks stood many fine and picturesque old houses and buildings of past ages, has been arched over, and the fine Boulevard of the same name, and those of Hainaut and Anspach, have been built above its imprisoned waters.  The higher portions of the city are undeniably healthy, and the climate of Brussels is less subject to extreme changes than that of Paris.  It is not unbearably cold in winter, and tho hot in summer, is not so, we think, airless as either Paris or London, a fact accounted for by reason of its many open spaces, its height above sea-level, and comparative nearness to the North Sea.

Of its fine buildings, none excels the Hotel de Ville, which is certainly one of the most interesting and beautiful buildings of its kind in Belgium.  It is well placed on one of the finest medieval squares in Europe, and is surrounded by quaint and historic houses.  On this Grande Place many tragedies have from time to time been enacted, and some of the most ferocious acts of the inhuman Alva performed.  In the spring of the terrible year, 1568, no less than twenty-five Flemish nobles were executed here, and in the June of the same year the patriots Lamoral, Count Egmont, Philip de Montmorency, and Count Hoorn were put to death.  This atrocious deed is commemorated by a fountain with statues of the heroes, placed in front of the Maison du Roi, from a window of which the Duke of Alva watched his orders carried out.

This most beautiful Hotel de Ville, with its late Gothic facade approaching the Renaissance period, nearly 200 feet in length, was commenced, according to a well-known authority, either in 1401 or 1402, the eastern wing, or left-hand portion as one faces it across the Place, having been the first part to be commenced, the western half of the facade not having been begun until 1444.  The later additions formed the quadrangle.

The Cathedral at Brussels is dedicated jointly to Ste. Gudule and St. Michael.  The former is one of the luckiest saints in that respect, as probably but for this dedication, she would have remained among the many rather obscure saints of the early periods of Christianity.

It is to this church that most visitors to Brussels first wend their way after visiting the Grande Place and its delightful Flower Market, which is gay with blossoms on most days of the week all the year round.  The natural situation of the church is a fine one, which was made the most of by its architects and builders of long ago.  Standing, as it does, on the side of a hill reached from the Grande Place by the fine Rue de la Montagne and short, steep Rue Ste. Gudule, it overlooks the city with its two fine twin western towers dominating the neighboring streets.  These towers have appeared to us when viewed up the Rue Ste. Gudule and other streets leading up from the lower town to the church, generally to be veiled by a mystic gray or ambient haze, and to gain much in impressiveness and grandeur from the coup d’oeil one obtains of them framed, as it were, in the end of the rising street.