love music, and many are accomplished musicians.  The national theatre is well attended by the middle classes during the season, so are the cafes chantants by the lower orders; but there is no intellectual enjoyment as in Western countries, no popular lectures nor entertainments, no societies for mutual improvement for any class of the community.  If one enquires what learned societies there are, he may probably receive, as we did, a long list of them, bearing imposing names, and many said to publish ‘Transactions’ (Zeitschrift); but enquire a little further, and you will find that this society has been defunct for so many years, and that one never met—­that this ‘Zeitschrift’ was published once, but not a second time, and so on.  The Geographical Society has done some good work.  In 1875 they published a report through their secretary, M. Cantacuzeno, which contains a great deal of valuable information concerning Roumania; but unfortunately, as in the case of all Roumanian statistical records, this differs in many cases from the statements of other ‘authorities,’ and cannot be accepted as entirely trustworthy.

These remarks, however, are not applicable to the researches and publications, in transactions and reviews, by savants such as Hasdeu, Aurelian, Tocilesco, Bacologlu, Prince Jon Ghika, Cogalniceanu, and many others.  These are, however, entirely out of the reach of the multitude, who stand greatly in need of popular instruction, a fact which has been recognised by the Queen, who is not only doing all in her power to popularise information by means of simple publications, but we believe made an effort, hitherto ineffectual, to introduce a system of popular lectures.

In another respect the city is behind the age, and that is in its commercial arrangements.  Although there are large transactions in raw produce, in the manufactures of all nations, in stocks and shares, there is no public Exchange, no Stock Market, no Corn Exchange, all the business being transacted by ambulating brokers.  But if the reader knew in what condition the country was before the Crimean war, he would marvel, not at the absence of such institutions, but that there should be any need of them.  In his work on the Roumanians published in 1857, Edgar Quinet suggests as the means of their regeneration after so many years of oppression ‘a bank,’ ‘an institution of credit,’ and railways, of which there were at that time none in existence.[39] Now there are banks, credit institutions, railways between most of the important centres, and others in progress.  In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the progress which has been effected in this country in twenty-five years has in other European States necessitated one or two centuries; and this is a circumstance of which most writers on the country have lost sight in their criticisms.  For the purpose of erecting suitable buildings for trade, and for public bodies generally, a corporation has recently been started which calls itself the ’Roumanian Company for building Public Works.’  Its capital is ten millions of francs, and Prince Demetrius Ghika, President of the Senate, is the chairman, with an unexceptionable board of directors, and no doubt the next five or ten years will witness changes and improvements as rapid as those which have occurred in the immediate past.