formant by no means knows that they are true. Such are the aristocracy of Fifth Avenue. I can only say that if I could make a million dollars by a lotion, I should certainly be right to live in such a house as one of those.

The suburbs of New York are, by the nature of the localities, divided from the city by water. New Jersey and Hoboken are on the other side of the Hudson, and in another State. Williamsburgh and Brooklyn are in Long Island, which is a part of the State of New York. But these places are as easily reached as Lambeth is reached from Westminster. Steam ferries ply every three or four minutes, and into these boats coaches, carts, and waggons of any size or weight are driven. In fact they make no other stoppage to the commerce than that occasioned by the payment of a few cents. Such payment no doubt is a stoppage, and therefore it is that New Jersey, Brooklyn, and Williamsburgh are, at any rate in appearance, very dull and uninviting. They are, however, very populous. Many of the quieter citizens prefer to live there; and I am told that the Brooklyn tea-parties consider themselves to be, in æsthetic feeling, very much ahead of anything of the kind in the more opulent centres of the city. In beauty of scenery Staten Island is very much the prettiest of the suburbs of New York. The view from the hill side in Staten Island down upon New York harbour is very lovely. It is the only really good view of that magnificent harbour which I have been able to find. As for appreciating such beauty when one is entering a port from sea, or leaving it for sea, I do not believe in any such power. The ship creeps up or creeps out while the mind is engaged on other matters. The passenger is uneasy either with hopes or fears; and then the grease of the engines offends one's nostrils. But it is worth the tourist's while to look down upon New York harbour from the hill side in Staten Island. When I was there, Fort Lafayette looked black in the centre of the channel, and we knew that it was crowded with the victims of secession. Fort Tompkins was being built, to guard the pass,-worthy of a name of richer sound; and Fort something else was bristling with new canon. Fort Hamilton, on Long Island, opposite, was frowning at us; and immediately around us a regiment of volunteers was receiving regimental stocks and boots from the hands of its officers. Everything was bristling with war; and one could not but think that not in this way had New York raised herself so quickly to her present greatness.

But the glory of New York is the Central Park ;-its glory

in the mind of all New Yorkers of the present day. The first question asked of you is whether you have seen the Central Park, and the second is as to what you think of it. It does not do to say simply that it is fine, grand, beautiful, and miraculous. You must swear by cock and pie that it is more fine, more grand, more beautiful, more miraculous than anything else of the kind anywhere. Here you encounter, in its most annoying form, that necessity for eulogium which presses you everywhere. For, in truth, taken as it is at present, the Central Park is not fine, nor grand, nor beautiful. As to the miracle, let that pass. It is perhaps as miraculous as some other great latter-day miracles.

But the Central Park is a very great fact, and affords a strong additional proof of the sense and energy of the people. It is very large, being over three miles long, and about three quarters of a mile in breadth. When it was found that New York was extending itself, and becoming one of the largest cities of the world, a space was selected between Fifth and Seventh Avenues, immediately outside the limits of the city as then built, but nearly in the centre of the city as it is intended to be built. The ground around it became at once of great value; and I do not doubt that the present fashion of the Fifth Avenue about Twentieth Street will in course of time move itself up to the Fifth Avenue as it looks, or will look, over the Park at Seventieth, Eightieth, and Ninetieth Streets. great waterworks of the city bring the Croton River, whence New York is supplied, by an aqueduct over the Haarlem river into an enormous reservoir just above the Park; and hence it has come to pass that there will be water not only for sanitary and useful purposes, but also for ornament. At present the Park, to English eyes, seems to be all road. The trees are not grown up, and the new embankments, and new lakes, and new ditches, and new paths give to the place anything but a picturesque appearance. The Central Park is good for what it will be, rather than for what it is. The summer heat is so very great that I doubt much whether the people of New York will ever enjoy such verdure as our parks show. But there will be a pleasant assemblage of walks and water-works, with fresh air, and fine shrubs and flowers, immediately within the reach of the citizens. All that art and energy can do will be done, and the Central Park doubtless will become one of the great glories of New York. When I was expected to declare that St. James's Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens, altogether, were nothing to it, I confess that I could only remain mute.

Those who desire to learn what are the secrets of society in New York, I would refer to the Potiphar Papers. The Potiphar Papers are perhaps not as well known in England as they deserve to be. They were published, I think, as much as seven or eight years ago; but are probably as true now as they were then. What I saw of society in New York was quiet and pleasant enough; but doubtless I did not climb into that circle in which Mrs. Potiphar held so distinguished a position. It may be true that gentlemen habitually throw fragments of their supper and remnants of their wine on to their host's carpets; but if so I did not see it.

As I progress in my work I feel that duty will call upon me to write a separate chapter on hotels in general, and I will not, therefore, here say much about those in New York. I am inclined to think that few towns in the world, if any, afford on the whole better accommodation, but there are many in which the accommodation is cheaper. Of the railways also I ought to say something. The fact respecting them which is most remarkable is that of their being continued into the centre of the town through the streets. The cars are not dragged through the city by locomotive engines, but by horses; the pace therefore is slow, but the convenience to travellers in being brought nearer to the centre of trade must be much felt. It is as though passengers from Liverpool and passengers from Bristol were carried on from Euston Square and Paddington along the New Road, Portland Place, and Regent Street to Pall Mall, or up the City Road to the Bank. As a general rule, however, the railways, railway cars, and all about them are ill-managed. They are monopolies, and the public, through the press, has no restraining power upon them as it has in England. A parcel sent by express over a distance of forty miles will not be delivered within twenty-four hours. I once made my plaint on this subject at the bar or office of an hotel, and was told that no remonstrance was of avail. "It is a monopoly," the man told me, "and if we say anything, we are told that if we do not like it we need not use it." In railway matters and postal matters time and punctuality are not valued in the States as they are with us, and the public seem to acknowledge that they must put up with defects,-that they must grin and bear them in America, as the public no doubt do in Austria where such affairs are managed by a government bureau.

In the beginning of this chapter I spoke of the population of New York, and I cannot end it without remarking that out of that population more than one-eighth is composed of Ger

mans. It is, I believe, computed that there are about 120,000 Germans in the city, and that only two other German cities in the world, Vienna and Berlin, have a larger German population than New York. The Germans are good citizens and thriving men, and are to be found prospering all over the northern and western parts of the Union. It seems that they are excellently well adapted to colonization, though they have in no instance become the dominant people in a colony, or carried with them their own language or their own laws. The French have done so in Algeria, in some of the West India islands, and quite as essentially into Lower Canada, where their language and laws still prevail. And yet it is, I think, beyond doubt that the French are not good colonists, as are the Ger

mans.

Of the ultimate destiny of New York as one of the ruling commercial cities of the world, it is, I think, impossible to doubt. Whether or no it will ever equal London in population I will not pretend to say. Even should it do so, should its numbers so increase as to enable it to say that it had done so, the question could not very well be settled. When it comes to pass that an assemblage of men in one so-called city have to be counted by millions, there arises the impossibility of defining the limits of that city, and of saying who belong to it and who do not. An arbitrary line may be drawn, but that arbitrary line, though perhaps false when drawn as including too much, soon becomes more false as including too little. Ealing, Acton, Fulham, Putney, Norwood, Sydenham, Blackheath, Woolwich, Greenwich, Stratford, Highgate, and Hampstead, are, in truth, component parts of London, and very shortly Brighton will be as much so.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

As New York is the most populous State of the Union, having the largest representation in Congress,-on which account it has been called the Empire State,-I propose to mention, as shortly as may be, the nature of its separate Constitution as a State. Of course it will be understood that the constitutions of the different States are by no means the same. They have been arranged according to the judgment of the different people concerned, and have been altered from time to time to suit such altered judgment. But as the States together form one

nation, and on such matters as foreign affairs, war, customs, and post-office regulations, are bound together as much as are the English counties, it is, of course, necessary that the constitution of each should in most matters assimilate itself to those of the others. These constitutions are very much alike. A Governor, with two houses of legislature, generally called the Senate and the House of Representatives, exists in each State. In the State of New York the lower house is called the Assembly. In most States the Governor is elected annually; but in some States for two years, as in New York. In Pennsylvania he is elected for three years. The House of Representatives or the Assembly is, I think, always elected for one session only; but as, in many of the States, the Legislature only sits once in two years, the election recurs of course at the same interval. The franchise in all the States is nearly universal, but in no State is it perfectly so. The Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and other officers are elected by vote of the people as well as the members of the Legislature. Of course it will be understood that each State makes laws for itself,-that they are in nowise dependent on the Congress assembled at Washington for their laws, unless for laws which refer to matters between the United States as a nation and other nations, or between one State and another. Each State declares with what punishment crimes shall be visited; what taxes shall be levied for the use of the State; what laws shall be passed, as to education; what shall be the State judiciary. With reference to the judiciary, however, it must be understood, that the United States as a nation have separate national law courts before which come all cases litigated between State and State, and all cases which do not belong in every respect to any one individual State. In a subsequent chapter I will endeavour to explain this more fully. In endeavouring to understand the constitution of the United States it is essentially necessary that we should remember that we have always to deal with two different political arrangements, that which refers to the nation as a whole, and that which belongs to each State as a separate governing power in itself. What is law in one State is not law in another. theless there is a very great likeness throughout these various constitutions; and any political student who shall have thoroughly mastered one, will not have much to learn in mastering the others.

Never

This State, now called New York, was first settled by the Dutch in 1614, on Manhattan Island. They established a government in 1629, under the name of the New Netherlands.

In