somewhat quaint; they smack strongly of independence and go-aheadism, and are, to my thinking, a great improvement upon our system. First and foremost, there is no "cad" on the footboard behind, to chaff and be insolent, or to haggle with about the fare, thus losing precious time. The steps into the 'bus are so large and low that you may without difficulty or danger ascend whilst the vehicle is in motion; many do so; but if you wish it to stop, you hail the driver, and your wishes are attended to. As soon as you are in, you ring a bell which hangs over a circular hole beneath the driver's seat. Upon the sound of the bell his hand appears at the aperture aforesaid; you place five cents in it, which he deposits in a tin box by his side, and then your fare is paid without a word and without a halt. Should you have no small change, and be obliged to give the man-say, a quarter of a dollar-you wait to hear the tinkle of the bell; then look up, the driver's hand is at the circular hole with your change, which you rise up and receive, still without a word and without a halt. When you wish to descend, you pull a rope which hangs from the roof of the 'bus and communicates with the driver, the vehicle stops, you get out, and as your foot leaves the lowest step the 'bus moves on. An omnibus in New York is never to be seen standing for five or ten minutes at a time, as ours do in England, obstructing the traffic and delaying the passengers; they frequently move slowly for a few yards, but I do not remember ever to have seen one standing still, except to receive "a fare." The omnibuses are also much lighter and cleaner than ours, and, in consequence of the extravagant charges of the hackneycoaches, far more respectably filled. But, after all, they are 'buses, and not Hansoms; and if your business lay off the line, you can but be deposited at the nearest point to it, and walk the rest of the way.

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Broadway is well paved, as are, for the most part, the Avenues, which answer to our Piccadilly, Oxford-street, &c., and are, in fact, the leading thoroughfares of the city. But the pavement of the cross streets is perfectly disgraceful; heaps of stones and holes of mud are their chief characteristics. They look as if they had never been repaired since first they were made: the stones have been forced out of their places, are allowed to remain en masse, and mud and grass occupy the vacant holes. The picturesque confusion of an American forest one can admire, but not that of an American street. In the forest dead and decaying trees, tossed here and there amidst rugged rocks and deep ravines, add much to the general effect, but in the streets there is on our side of the Atlantic at least-a prejudice in favour of order. We prefer that the paving-stones should be side by side instead of piled up, one on the top of the other, on the margin of the holes they originally filled. "It is the fault of the corporation," said an American gentleman, to whom I ventured to point out the above nuisance. "The corporation of New York," he continued, "are a venal and corrupt body; no respectable person will belong to them. The rates are quite sufficient to enable them to keep the streets in good order, but they prefer putting the money into their own pockets." This, thinks I, is a very good reason why the streets are in such a dilapidated state; but why keep "a venal and corrupt body of men" in office? I believe I can answer that question. The citizens of New York do not care sufficiently about the disgraceful state of their streets to induce them to take the trouble of investigating the

matter. They have not yet reached that high state of civilisation which recoils from dirt and disturbance, which classes comfort and quiet among the necessaries of life.

I thought of the corporation of London under similar circumstances, and how "Paterfamilias," "A Ratepayer," "A Householder"-et hoe genus omne-would inundate the columns of the Times with complaints and revilings were there even one lane in their locality so dilapidated and forlorn as the majority of the streets in New York.

About three miles from what we should call "the West-end" of New York is the Central Park. It is at present quite in its infancy; indeed, it is yet unfinished, there being some three hundred workmen employed upon it in laying down turf, making roads, blasting rocks, planting, mowing, &c. &c. It was, however, a sight to be seen as a specimen of an American park in posse.

Accordingly we entered a car upon the Eighth Avenue tramway, and proceeded at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour to our destination. Arriving there, we hired a carriage and drove round the park. It is, I was told, seven hundred and seventy-six acres in extent, and in many respects its natural capabilities are great. The ground is picturesquely tossed about; valleys and hills, rocks and brushwood are all to be found within its area, and though last mentioned, certainly not least in importance, several small streams, which the ingenuity of man has already converted into divers lakes of lesser and greater dimensions. The rough, rocky banks of these lakes, fringed partly with natural woods, partly with ornamental shrubs, are very pretty; there are miles of gravel walks through the park, and numerous ravines crossed by picturesque bridges. There is also a swamp which might be converted into a lake of a hundred acres in extent, fed from the Croton springs, of which I will speak presently. The great want observable in the Central Park is timber; this want nothing but time can supply. A century or two hence, when the New Zealander has satiated his appetite for antiquity by gazing upon the ruins of ancient London, he may doubtless cross the Atlantic and find both shelter and shade beneath the stately limbs of some far-spreading elm or stately oak, but at present he would have to content himself with the imperfect protection afforded by scrubby brushwood and juvenile deodaras. Within the area of the park are the large buildings formerly used as an arsenal, the Croton reservoir, and a parade-ground of some fifty acres, on which artillery, cavalry, and infantry may successfully manœuvre. A short distance from the parade-ground are the Botanical Gardens, the soil of which is said to be well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of plants and flowers.

The suburbs of New York are not beautiful; they consist of small, irregularly-built wooden "shanties," dotted about here and there upon the barren rock. These shanties are for the most part inhabited by the lowest order of Irish; they erect their cabins upon any spare bit of rock they may choose to select. Here they" squat," paying no rent, as indeed why should they? If the rock supports the cabin, it certainly supports nothing else. Here these "squatters" remain, until by the extension of the city their rock is wanted, when down come the shanties, and streets arise in their stead, the squatters merely retreating a few hundred yards to squat again. The island of Manhattan, upon which New York is

situated, is itself a rock, with here and there a few scrubby trees, here and there a patch of scanty herbage upon its surface. As the city increases, the ground is made, cultivated, and beautified; trees, shrubs, gardens arise pari passu with streets, and what erst was a howling wilderness becomes a fruitful and pleasant locality. It is a pity that the nature of the soil around New York is not more kindly; were it so, doubtless the suburbs would be the resort of the wealthy merchant and retired tradesman in place of the Irish squatter, and the suburbs would become an ornament to the city instead of an eyesore; but the cultivation of a bare rock being conducive neither to pleasure nor profit, the New Yorkers are feign to migrate to some of the adjacent islands-to Staten Island in particular, where are many beautiful villas, and where the vegetable kingdom flourishes exceedingly.

My visit to New York was too short to admit of visiting institutions, &c., and, had I done so, I could but have repeated statistical facts already sufficiently well known. In this journal I shall confine myself principally to my own experiences, interspersed with such information as I was, during my séjour on the other side of the Atlantic, able to obtain and have considered worthy of reproduction. If, therefore, you expect any enlightenment touching the institutions or political economy of the country, I fear you will be disappointed.

The streets of New York are all more or less lined with avenues of trees. The Catalpa and the Pride of India are the most common and the most beautiful. These avenues not only beautify the city, giving it a fresh and gay appearance, but by the shade which they afford they are a positive blessing to all, especially to those unfortunates who are compelled to pass a liquid existence in New York during the months of July and August. It was July when we were there, and although the weather was not considered hot for the time of year, the mercury stood at 80 deg.

in our room.

The 4th of July, 1861, was the eighty-sixth anniversary of the American independence. Query! Will the 4th of July, 1862, be the first jubilee of a divided state? The way they keep this 4th of July is by decking every window and house-top with "the star-spangled banner," by firing guns and letting off crackers from twelve o'clock on the night of the 3rd to twelve o'clock on the night of the 4th. The cracker part of the demonstration might very advantageously be dispensed with. It is carried on by boys and "loafers" (Anglicè, ragamuffins), and is a most intolerable nuisance to all the respectable portion of the inhabitants-so much so, indeed, that the universal practice is to leave New York for Long Island, Staten Island, or some other neighbouring locality during the twentyfour hours of jubilee. It is positively dangerous for ladies to walk in the streets on the 4th of July; handfuls of crackers are let off under your feet, your ears are stunned with perpetual reports, and your nose stifled with clouds of sulphur. It is certainly a most childish and offensive proceeding, neither dignified nor intellectual, but, I suppose, consistent with the character of "free and independent" America, where each individual may do as he pleases.

The Croton aqueduct, by which the city is supplied with pure water, is, says a book entitled "New York as It Is," "one of the most gigantic enterprises of the kind undertaken in any country. The distance which

the water travels through this artificial channel, exclusive of the grand reservoir, is about forty miles. The dam crosses the Croton river six miles from its mouth, and the whole distance from this dam-thirty-two miles-is one unbroken underground canal formed of stone and brick. The great receiving reservoir is on York Hill, five miles from the city hall. It can receive a depth of water to the extent of twenty feet, and is capable of containing one hundred and fifty million gallons. The cost of the Croton aqueduct and reservoir was thirteen million dollars. The Croton lake covers an area of four hundred acres, the dam which forms it is two hundred and fifty feet long, and thirty-eight feet wide at the base, allowing a discharge of sixty million gallons of water daily.

I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that, in conformity with advice received before we left England from a person well acquainted with New York, we had eschewed a hackney-coach when we landed at Jersey city, and placed ourselves and our luggage in an omnibus. "The Havannah Hotel" was painted upon its side, but the driver said he would take us to the Fifth Avenue, and as we saw no omnibus from that house we agreed to go with him. Upon our arriving at the hotel we immediately secured rooms, and went to look at them; whilst doing so, one of the porters of the hotel came to me and said that the driver of the omnibus was waiting to be paid, adding, "Shall they pay him at the office?" I assented, supposing, as a matter of course, that the clerk in the office would pay the man what was right and no more. Imagine my astonishment when I was about to pay my bill, just as we were on the point of leaving the hotel, to find seven dollars fifty cents, or thirty shillings English, charged for the omnibus that brought us from the wharf at Jersey city! In vain I remonstrated; the clerk said that the driver asked that sum and he paid it.

"Do you always pay those people what they ask? If he had asked seventy dollars should you have paid him?" I inquired. The official shrugged his shoulders but said nothing. In England no respectable hotel-keeper would allow a gentleman to be robbed in so barefaced a manner; indeed, it is a common custom in England to tell the waiter or the landlord of the hotel to pay for your cab, and you are quite safe in so doing. This piece of iniquity prevented our going back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel upon our return to New York; we took up our quarters at the Everett House instead, and upon our embarking for England we went in the hotel omnibus to the identical wharf where we had landed, paying for our trajet three dollars in place of seven dollars fifty cents. I mention this little episode for the good of future travellers.

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INDEX

TO THE FIFTY-FIRST VOLUME.