FOOTNOTES:[8]Continued from page 557, vol. iii.[9]If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, we should suspect that his lordship had plagiarized from one of them the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeating it, the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose humor, at least, is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan.
[8]Continued from page 557, vol. iii.
[8]Continued from page 557, vol. iii.
[9]If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, we should suspect that his lordship had plagiarized from one of them the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeating it, the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose humor, at least, is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan.
[9]If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, we should suspect that his lordship had plagiarized from one of them the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeating it, the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose humor, at least, is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan.
Nicholas.—God fights for us visibly. You look grave, Nesselrode! is it not so? Speak, and plainly.
Nesselrode.—Sire, in my humble opinion, God never fights at all.
Nicholas.—Surely he fought for Israel, when he was invoked by prayer.
Nesselrode.—Sire, I am no theologian; and I fancy I must be a bad geographer, since I never knew of a nation which was not Israel when it had a mind to shed blood and to pray. To fight is an exertion, is violence; the Deity in His omnipotence needs none. He has devils and men always in readiness for fighting; and they are the instruments of their own punishment for their past misdeeds.
Nicholas.—The chariots of God are numbered by thousands in the volumes of the Psalmist.
Nesselrode.—No psalmist, or engineer, or commissary, or arithmetician, could enumerate the beasts that are harnessed to them, or the fiends that urge them on.
Nicholas.—Nesselrode! you grow more and more serious.
Nesselrode.—Age, sire, even without wisdom, makes men serious whether they are inclined or not. I could hardly have been so long conversant in the affairs of mankind (all which in all quarters your majesty superintends and directs) without much cause for seriousness.
Nicholas.—I feel the consciousness of Supreme Power, but I also feel the necessity of subordinate help.
Nesselrode.—Your majesty is the first monarch, since the earlier Cæsars of Imperial Rome, who could control, directly or indirectly, every country in our hemisphere, and thereby in both.
Nicholas.—There are some who do not see this.
Nesselrode.—There were some, and they indeed the most acute and politic of mankind, who could not see the power of the Macedonian king until he showed his full height upon the towers of Cheronœa. There are some at this moment in England who disregard the admonitions of the most wary and experienced general of modern times, and listen in preference to babblers holding forth on economy and peace from slippery sacks of cotton and wool.
Nicholas.—Hush! hush! these are our men; what should we do without them? A single one of them in the parliament or town-hall is worth to me a regiment of cuirassiers. These are the true bullets with conical heads which carry far and sure. Hush! hush!
Nesselrode.—They do not hear us: theydo not hear Wellington: they would not hear Nelson were he living.
Nicholas.—No other man that ever lived, having the same power in his hands, would have endured with the same equanimity as Wellington, the indignities he suffered in Portugal; superseded in the hour of victory by two generals, one upon another, like marsh frogs; people of no experience, no ability. He might have become king of Portugal by compromise, and have added Gallicia and Biscay.
Nesselrode.—The English, out of parliament, are delicate and fastidious. He would have thought it dishonorable to profit by the indignation of his army in the field, and of his countrymen at home. Certainty that Bonaparte would attempt to violate any engagement with him might never enter into the computation; for Bonaparte could less easily drive him again out of Portugal than he could drive the usurper out of Spain. We ourselves should have assisted him actively; so would the Americans; for every naval power would be prompt at diminishing the preponderance of the English. Practicability was here with Wellington; but, endowed with it a keener and a longer foresight than any of his contemporaries, he held in prospective the glory that awaited him, and felt conscious that to be the greatest man in England is somewhat more than to be the greatest in Portugal. He is universally calledtheduke; to the extinction or absorption of that dignity over all the surface of the earth: in Portugal he could only be called king of Portugal.
Nicholas.—Faith! that is little: it was not overmuch even before the last accession. I admire his judgment and moderation. The English are abstinent: they rein in their horses where the French make them fret and curvett. It displeases me to think it possible that a subject should ever become a sovran. We were angry with the Duke of Sudermania for raising a Frenchman to that dignity in Sweden, although we were willing that Gustavus, for offences and affronts to our family, should be chastized, and even expelled. Here was a bad precedent. Fortunately the boldest soldiers dismount from their chargers at some distance from the throne. What withholds them?
Nesselrode.—Spells are made of words. The wordserviceamong the military has great latent negative power. All modern nations, even the free, employ it.
Nicholas.—An excellent word indeed! It shows the superiority of modern languages over ancient; Christian ideas over pagan; living similitudes of God over bronze and marble. What an escape had England from her folly, perversity, and injustice! Her admirals had the same wrongs to avenge: her fleets would have anchored in Ferrol and Coruna; thousands of volunteers from every part of both islands would have assembled round the same standard; and both Indies would have bowed before the conqueror. Who knows but that Spain herself might have turned to the same quarter, from the idiocy of Ferdinand, the immorality of Joseph, and the perfidy of Napoleon?
Nesselrode.—England seems to invite and incite, not only her colonies, but her commanders, to insurrection. Nelson was treated even more ignominiously than Wellington. A man equal in abilities and in energy to either met with every affront from the East India Company. After two such victories in succession as the Duke himself declared before the Lords that he had never known or read of, he was removed from the command of his army, and a general by whose rashness it was decimated was raised to the peerage. If Wellington could with safety have seized the supreme power in Portugal, Napier could with greater have accomplished it in India. The distance from home was farther; the army more confident; the allies more numerous, more unanimous. One avenger oftheirwrongs would have found a million avengers ofhis. Affghanistan, Cabul, and Scinde, would have united their acclamations on the Ganges: songs of triumph, succeeded by songs of peace, would have been chanted at Delhi, and have re-echoed at Samarcand.
Nicholas.—I am desirous that Persia and India should pour their treasures into my dominions. The English are so credulous as to believe that I intend, or could accomplish, the conquest of Hindostan. I want only the commerce; and I hope to share it with the Americans; not I indeed, but my successors. The possession of California has opened the Pacific and the Indian seas to the Americans, who must, within the life-time of some now born, predominate in both. Supposing that emigrants to the amount of only a quarter of a million settle in the United States every year, within a century from the present day, their population must exceed three hundred millions. It will not extend from pole to pole, only because there will be room enough without it.
Nesselrode.—Religious wars, the most sanguinary of any, are stifled in the fields of agriculture; creeds are thrown overboard by commerce.
Nicholas.—Theological questions come at last to be decided by the broadsword; and the best artillery brings forward the best arguments. Montecuculi and Wallenstein were irrefragable doctors. Saint Peter was commanded to put up his sword; but the ear was cut off first.
Nesselrode.—The blessed saint's escape from capital punishment, after this violence, is among the greatest of miracles. Perhaps there may be a perplexity in the text. Had he committed so great a crime against a person so highly protected as one in the high-priest's household, he never would have lived long enough to be crucified at Rome, but would have carried his cross up to Calvary threedays after the offence. The laws of no country would tolerate it.
Nicholas.—How did he ever get to Rome at all? He must have been conveyed by an angel, or have slipt on a sudden into a railroad train, purposely and for the nonce provided. There is a controversy at the present hour about his delegated authority, and it appears to be next to certain that he never was in the capital of the west. It is my interest to find it decided in the negative. Successors to the emperors of the east, who sanctioned and appointed the earliest popes, as the bishops of Rome are denominated, I may again at my own good time claim the privilege and prerogative. The cardinals and their subordinates are extending their claws in all directions: we must throw these crabs upon their backs again.
Nesselrode.—Some among the Italians, and chiefly among the Romans, are venturing to express an opinion that there would be less of false religion, and more of true, if no priest of any description were left upon earth.
Nicholas.—Horrible! unless are exempted those of the venerable Greek church. All others worship graven images: we stick to pictures.
Nesselrode.—One scholar mentioned, not without an air of derision, that a picture had descended from heaven recently on the coast of Italy.
Nicholas.—Framed? varnisht? under glass? on panel? on canvas? What like?
Nesselrode.—The Virgin Mary, whatever made of.
Nicholas.—She must be ours then. She missed her road: she never would have taken her place among stocks and stones and blind worshipers. Easterly winds must have blown her toward a pestilential city, where at every street-corner is very significantly inscribed its true name at full length,Immondezzaio. But I hope I am guilty of no profaneness or infidelity when I express a doubt if every picture of the Blessed Virgin is sentient; most are; perhaps not every one. If they want her in England, as they seem to do, let them have her ... unless it is the one that rolls the eyes: in that case I must claim her: she is too precious by half for papist or tractarian. I must order immediately these matters. No reasonable doubt can be entertained that I am the visible head of Christ's church. Theologians may be consulted in regard to St. Peter, and may discover a manuscript at Novgorod, stating his martyrdom there, and proving his will and signature.
Nesselrode.—Theologians may find perhaps in theRevelationssome Beast foreshadowing your Majesty.
Nicholas.—How? sir! how?
Nesselrode.—Emperors and kings, we are taught, are designated as great beasts in the Holy Scriptures ... (Aside) ... and elsewhere.
Nicholas.—We have disposed of our brother, his Prussian Majesty, who appeared to be imprest by the apprehension that a portion of his dominions was in jeopardy.
Nesselrode.—Possibly the scales of Europe are yet to be adjusted.
Nicholas.—When the winds blow high they must waver. Against the danger of contingencies, and in readiness to place my finger on the edge of one or other, it is my intention to spend in future a good part of my time at Warsaw, that city being so nearly central in my dominions. Good Nesselrode! there should have been a poet near you to celebrate the arching of your eyebrows. They suddenly dropt down again under the horizontal line of your Emperor's. Nobody ever stared in my presence; but I really do think you were upon the verge of it when I inadvertently saiddominionsinstead ofdependencies. Well, well: dependencies are dominions; and of all dominions they require the least trouble.
Nesselrode.—Your Majesty has found no difficulty with any, excepting the Circassians.
Nicholas.—The Circassians are the Normans of Asia; equally brave, more generous, more chivalrous. I am no admirer of military trinkets; but I have been surprised at the beauty of their chain-armor, the temper of their swords, the richness of hilt, and the gracefulness of baldric.
Nesselrode.—It is a pity they are not Christians and subjects of your Majesty.
Nicholas.—If they would become my subjects, I would let them, as I have let other Mahometans, become Christians at their leisure. We must brigade them before baptism.
Nesselrode.—It is singular that this necessity never struck those religious men who are holding peace conferences in various parts of Europe.
Nicholas.—One of them, I remember, tried to persuade the people of England that if the bankers of London would negotiate no loan with me I could carry on no war.
Nesselrode.—Wonderful! how ignorant are monied men of money matters. Your Majesty was graciously pleased to listen to my advice when hostilities seemed inevitable. I was desirous of raising the largest loan possible, that none should be forthcoming to the urgency of others. At that very moment your Majesty had in your coffers more than sufficient for the additional expenditure of three campaigns. Well may your Majesty smile at this computation, and at the blindness that suggested it. For never will your Majesty send an army into any part of Europe which shall not maintain itself there by its own prowess. Your cavalry will seize all the provisions that are not stored up within the fortresses; and in every army those are to be found who for a few thousand roubles are ready to blow up their ammunition-wagons. We know by name almost every discontented man in Europe.
Nicholas.—To obtain this information, myyearly expenses do not exceed the revenues of half a dozen English bishops. Everytable-d'hôteon the continent, you tell me, has one daily guest sent by me. Ladies in the higher circles have taken my presents and compliments, part in diamonds and part in smiles. An emperor's smiles are as valuable to them as theirs are to a cornet of dragoons. Spare nothing in the boudoir and you spare much in the field.
Nesselrode.—Such appears to have been the invariable policy of the Empress Catharine, now with God.
Nicholas.—My father of glorious memory was less observant of it. He had prejudices and dislikes; he expected to find every body a gentleman, even kings and ministers. If they were so, how could he have hoped to sway them? and how to turn them from the strait road into his?
Nesselrode.—Your Majesty is far above the influence of antipathies; but I have often heard your Majesty express your hatred, and sometimes your contempt, of Bonaparte.
Nicholas.—I hated him for his insolence, and I despised him alike for his cowardice and falsehood. Shame is the surest criterion of humanity. When one is wanting, the other is. The beasts never indicate shame in a state of nature; in society some of them acquire it; Bonaparte not. He neither blushed at repudiating a modest woman, nor at supplanting her by an immodest one. Holding a pistol to the father's ear, he ordered him to dismount from his carriage; to deliver up his ring, his watch, his chain, his seal, his knee-buckle; stripping off galloon from trouser, and presently trouser too: caught, pinioned, sentenced, he fell on both knees in the mud, and implored this poor creature's intercession to save him from the hangman. He neither blushed at the robbery of a crown nor at the fabrication of twenty. He was equally ungrateful in public life and in private. He banished Barras, who promoted and protected him: he calumniated the French admiral, whose fleet for his own safety he detained on the shores of Egypt, and the English admiral who defeated him in Syria with a tenth of his force. Baffled as he often was, and at last fatally, and admirably as in many circumstances he knew how to be a general, never in any did he know how to be a gentleman. He was fond of displaying the picklock keys whereby he found entrance into our cabinets, and of twitching the ears of his accomplices.
Nesselrode.—Certainly he was less as an emperor than as a soldier.
Nicholas.—Great generals may commit grievous and disastrous mistakes, but never utterly ruinous. Charles V., Gustavus Adolphus, Peter the Great, Frederic of Prussia, Prince Eugene, Marlborough, William, Wellington, kept their winnings, and never hazarded the last crown-piece. Bonaparte, when he had swept the tables, crieddouble or quits.
Nesselrode.—The wheel of Fortune is apt to make men giddier, the higher it rises and the quicklier it turns: sometimes it drops them on a barren rock, and sometimes on a treadmill. The nephew is more prudent than the uncle.
Nicholas.—You were extremely wise, my dear Nesselrode, in suggesting our idea to the French President, and in persuading him to acknowledge in the face of the world that he had been justly imprisoned by Louis Philippe for attempting to subvert the existing powers. Frenchmen are taught by this declaration what they may expect for a similar crime against his own pretensions. We will show our impartiality by an equal countenance and favor toward all parties. In different directions all are working out the design of God, and producing unity of empire "on earth as it is in heaven." Until this consummation there can never be universal or indeed any lasting peace.
Nesselrode.—This, lying far remote, I await your Majesty's commands for what is now before us. Your Majesty was graciously pleased to express your satisfaction at the manner in which I executed them in regard to the President of the French Republic.
Nicholas.—Republic indeed! I have ordered it to be a crime in France to utter this odious name. President forsooth! we have directed him hitherto; let him now keep his way. Our object was to stifle the spirit of freedom: we tossed the handkerchief to him, and he found the chloroform. Every thing is going on in Europe exactly as I desire; we must throw nothing in the way to shake the machine off the rail. It is running at full speed where no whistle can stop it. Every prince is exasperating his subjects, and exhausting his treasury in order to keep them under due control. What nation on the continent, mine excepted, can maintain for two years longer its present war establishment? And without this engine of coercion what prince can be the master of his people? England is tranquil at home; can she continue so when a foreigner would place a tiara over her crown, telling her who shall teach and what shall be taught. Principally, that where masses are not said for departed souls, better it would be that there were no souls at all, since they certainly must be damned. The school which doubts it is denounced as godless.
Nesselrode.—England, sire, is indeed tranquil at home; but that home is a narrow one, and extends not across the Irish channel. Every colony is dissatisfied and disturbed. No faith has been kept with any of them by the secretary now in office. At the Cape of Good Hope, innumerable nations, warlike and well-armed, have risen up simultaneously against her; and, to say nothing of the massacres in Ceylon, your Majesty well knows what atrocities her Commissioner has long exercised in the Seven Isles. England lookson and applauds, taking a hearty draught of Lethe at every sound of the scourge.
Nicholas.—Nesselrode! You seem indignant. I see only the cheerful sparks of a fire at which our dinner is to be dressed; we shall soon sit down to it; Greece must not call me away until I rise from the dessert; I will then take my coffee at Constantinople. The crescent ere long will become the full harvest-moon. Our reapers have already the sickles in their hands.
Nesselrode.—England may grumble.
Nicholas.—So she will. She is as ready now to grumble as she formerly was to fight. She grumbles too early; she fights too late. Extraordinary men are the English. They raise the hustings higher than the throne; and, to make amends, being resolved to build a new palace, they push it under an old bridge. The Cardinal, in his way to the Abbey, may in part disrobe at it. Noble vestry-room! where many habiliments are changed. Capacious dovecote! where carrier-pigeons and fantails and croppers, intermingled with the more ordinary, bill and coo, ruffle and smoothen their feathers, and bend their versicolor necks to the same corn.
Standing in the City Hall, New-York, and drawing from that point a circle whose radius shall be three miles, we embrace a population of three-quarters of a million. We say this at the outset, by way of securing respect for our theme.
New-York is a mere Jonah's gourd or Jack the Giant-killer's beanstalk compared with London. London was London when St. Paul was a prisoner in Rome, ten years before the destruction of Jerusalem. Sixteen hundred years afterwards, when New-York was but just named, London lost some seventy thousand inhabitants by the plague, and more than thirteen thousand houses by the Great Fire, and hardly missed them.
Before this period, however, the little Dutch town of Niew Amsterdam, called by the aborigines Manahatta, or Manhattan, had commenced a dozing existence, under the government of Walter the Doubter and Peter the Headstrong, celebrated by that great chronicler, Diedrich Knickerbocker. Some consider this a mythic period, and class the legends of Wilhelmus Van Kieft's wisdom, and Peter Stuyvesant's valor, with the stories of Romulus and Remus, and the Horatii and Curiatii. But to cast any doubt upon a historian like Knickerbocker—the Grote of colonial history—at once minute and philosophical, just and enthusiastic—is surely unwise. His picture of the portly burghers of Niew Amsterdam, their habits and manners, pursuits, politics, and laws, is verified by the impress left on their descendants. All the foreign floods that have swept over the city have not been able to wash out the footsteps of the original settlers; and Walter the Doubter and Peter the Headstrong still figure, it is said, in the Assembly of the City Fathers, though the voluminous nether habiliments, which characterized them of old, have dwindled to the modern pantaloon.
Casting our eyes backward for a moment, let us imagine the condition of things before English innovation had interfered with the quiet current of Dutch ideas in the metropolis of the West. "The modern spectator," says our historian, "who wanders through the streets of this populous city, can scarcely form an idea of their appearance in the primitive days of the Doubter. The grass grew quietly in the highways; bleating sheep and frolicksome calves sported about that verdant ridge where now the Broadway loungers take their morning stroll. The cunning fox and ravenous wolf skulked in the woods where now are to be seen the dens of the righteous fraternity of money-brokers. The houses of the higher class were generally constructed of wood, excepting the gable end, which was of small black and yellow Dutch bricks, and always faced the street. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors, and small windows on every floor; the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front, and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce weathercock, to let the family know which way the wind blew. The front door was never opened, except on marriages, funerals, New Year's days, the festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion * * *. A passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms, and scrubbing-brushes; and the good housewives of that day were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water; insomuch, that many of them grew to have webbed fingers like a duck. In those happy days a well-regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sundown. Fashionable parties were confined to the higher class, ornoblesse; that is to say, such as kept their own cows or drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six; unless it was winter-time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. At these tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting or coquetting; no gambling of old ladies, nor chattering and romping of young ones; no self-satisfied strutting of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets," &c.
Speaking further of the ladies, Mr. Knickerbocker says: "Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quiltedcalico. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey, were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes, and all of their own manufacture. These were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read the Bible, and wore pockets, and that too of a goodly size, fashioned with patch-work of many curious devices, and ostentatiously worn on the outside. Every good housewife made the clothes of her husband and family," &c.
Such and so homely was the germ of the present goodly town that sits, like a queen, throned between two mighty streams, with a magnificent bay at her feet. Marks of her Dutch origin were numerous a few years since, and are still to be found, though sparely. Of the national customs enumerated and described by the veracious Diedrich, we find at the present day but few. The last of the gable-fronted houses, with curious steps in the brickwork on the sides of the peak, disappeared some years since. Calves never frisk in Broadway now, though they sometimes pass through it tied in carts, in defiance of humanity and decency. The year of building is no longer written in iron on the fronts of the houses, for
"Panting Time toils after us in vain,"
"Panting Time toils after us in vain,"
and chronology is out of date. Large doors have now large windows to keep them company, and weather-cocks are rendered unnecessary by the arrival of vessels from some part of the earth with every wind that blows. The front door is now opened to every body but the master of the house, who goes out of it in the morning not to see it again till evening. The practice of daily inundation is now nearly limited to the street, since Kidderminster, Brussels, and Wilton, conspire to cover every inch of floor; but the annual house-cleaning is still in full vogue, and no amount of slop, discomfort, destruction, and self-sacrifice, is considered too great in the accomplishment of this civic festival. As to rising with the dawn, the citizen of to-day considers breakfast-time daybreak; and the dinner-hour is as various as the fluctuations of business and pleasure. "Fashionable society" has, at present, no very decided limits, as few of the inhabitants keep a cow, and many of the highest pretenders tobon tondo not drive their own wagons—getting home before dark! New-York ladies make a point of getting home before light; and if they assemble at three o'clock it is for adéjeûner, or amatinée dansante. As for Mr. Knickerbocker's further characterization of the genteel manners of the olden time, it would be unhandsome in us to pursue our counter-picture; but this we will say, in mere justice, and all joking aside, that there are no gambling ladies in New-York, either young or old.
Thinking of New-York in her early life, we were about to say that from 1614 to 1674 she was a mere shuttlecock between the Dutch and English; but the recollection that neither of the contending parties ever tossed her towards the other, spoiled our figure, and we find her more like the unfortunate baby whom it took all Solomon's wisdom to save from utter destruction between rival mothers. The Dutch certainly had the prior claim; but that circumstance, though something in a case of maternity, seems far from conclusive in the matter of adoption. The little Dutch city had accumulated a thousand inhabitants, and wrenched from the home government leave to govern itself, by the aid of a schout, burgomasters, and schepens, when King Charles II., of pious memory, coolly gave a grant of the entire province to his brother James, Duke of York, who forthwith proved his right (that of the strongest), and put an English governor in place of Peter Stuyvesant, called by Knickerbocker, "a tough, valiant, sturdy, weather-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-spirited old governor," who nearly burst with rage when obliged to sign the capitulation, and who finished by dying of sheer mortification on hearing that the combined English and French fleets had beaten the Dutch under De Ruyter. Nine years after, the tables were turned, and Dutch rule once more brought in sour-krout and oly-koeks; but, in 1674, New-York became English by treaty, and so remained until November, 1783.
Since that epoch, although growth and prosperity have been the general rule, yet the island city has had her ups and downs, by means of fire, pestilence, war, embargo, mobs, &c., quite enough to stimulate the energy of her sons and ripen the wisdom of her councils. In 1825, the completion of the Erie Canal, which united the Atlantic with the great lakes, gave a prodigious impulse to trade. In 1832 came the cholera, threatening utter desolation; and in 1835 a fire, which consumed property worth twenty millions of dollars. Yet, in 1842, the Great Aqueduct was finished, at a cost of thirteen million dollars. Thus much premised, let us look at New-York of to-day.
"She has no timeTo looken backe, her eyne be fixed before."
"She has no timeTo looken backe, her eyne be fixed before."
In describing American towns, if we would make our picture a likeness, we must
"Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of the minute."
"Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of the minute."
The New-York of 1851 resembles her of fifty years ago scarcely more than the West End of London resembles Birmingham or Bristol. In 1800, one might easily believe the old story, that the streets were originally laid out by the cows, as they went out to pasture and returned at evening. Streets running in all sorts of curves crossed each other at all conceivable angles, making a maze without a plan, through which strangers needed to drop beans, like the children in the fairy-tale, to avoid being wholly lost. Fortunately, the city is not very wide, so that Broadway, which always ran lengthwisethrough the centre, has served as a tolerable clue from the beginning. Great sacrifices have been made for the sake of regularity, and there is now a tolerable degree of it, even in the old, or south part of the city, cross streets running from Broadway to either river with an approach to parallelism. In the early time, the town presented no bad resemblance in shape to the phenomenon called a "mackerel sky," Broadway representing the spine, and the streets running to either river the ribs, while northward and southward was a tapering off; on the south, where the Battery juts into the bay, and on the north, where the uppermost houses gradually narrowed till Broadway came to an end, with few buildings on either side of it. But in these later days, when Knickerbocker limits no longer confine the heterogeneous thousands that have pushed the old race from their stools, sixteen great avenues, each a hundred feet wide, run parallel with Broadway and the rivers, cut at right angles by wide streets, lined with costly dwellings, churches, schools, and other edifices. As is usual in great commercial towns, the lowest portion of the population haunt the neighborhood of the wharfs; and, in New-York, the eastern side of the city in particular attracts this class. But, perhaps, no city of the size has fewer streets of squalid poverty, although the encouragement given to immigration is such that there must necessarily be great numbers of wretched immigrants who have neither the will nor the power to live by honest industry. It is in truth for this class of persons that hospitals and penitentiaries are here built, foreigners supplying at least nine-tenths of the inmates of those institutions in New-York.
As to clean and healthy streets, the upper and newer part of the city has, of course, the advantage. It is laid out with special attention to drainage, for which the ridged shape of the ground affords great facility; the island on which New-York is built being highest in the middle, and sloping off, east and west, towards the Hudson and East Rivers.
Manhattan island is about fourteen miles long, with an average breadth of one mile and a half, the greatest width being two and a half miles. At the southerly point of the island, where the Hudson unites with the strait called the East River, lies one of the finest harbors in the world, affording anchorage for ships of the largest size, and surrounded by cultivated land and elegant residences. Several fortified islands diversify this bay, and numerous forts occupy the points and headlands on either side. The general appearance of the bay is that of great beauty, of the milder sort. The shores are rather low, but finely wooded, and the approach to the city from the ocean very striking. The battery, a promenade covered with fine old trees, offers a rural front, but the forests of masts stretching far up either river attract the stranger's attention much more forcibly. Thecoup d'œilis here magnificent. Brooklyn, on Long Island, a large city, whose white columned streets gleam along the heights, giving a palatial grandeur to the view, is just opposite New-York, on the south-east, and divided from it by so narrow a strait that it appears more truly to be a part of it than the Surrey side of the Thames to belong to London, although the rush of commerce forbids bridges. On the west side, the banks of the Hudson are lined with towns, an outcrop of the central metropolis.
Entering the city from any quarter, we are sure to find ourselves in Broadway, long the pride of the inhabitants, though its glories are rather traditional than actual, as compared with the greatest thoroughfares of commerce in older cities. It extends, eighty feet in width, two miles and a half in a straight line, northward from the Battery; and then, making a slight deflection at Union Park, runs on,ad infinitum, though it is at present but sparely built after another mile or so. Nearly all the best shops in the retail trade are in this street, some of them comparable to the richest of London and Paris, and the whole affording means for every device of elegant decoration and boundless expenditure. Residences here are comparatively few, especially in the lower part, the din of business and the ceaseless thunder of omnibuses having driven far away every family that has the liberty of choice. Many churches still exist in Broadway, which, on Sunday, is as quiet as any other street. Other architectural decorations there are few. The City Hall, a costly building of white marble, too long and low to make a dignified appearance, but standing in a well-wooded park, of some eleven or twelve acres in extent, has a certain beauty, especially when seen gleaming through the spray of a fountain, which sends up a tall jet at some distance in front of the building. Farther on is a hospital, of rather ancient date for this western world—built in 1775, and now surrounded by venerable trees, and clothed in the richest ivy. After this, scarcely a break in the line of dazzling shops, until we reach the vicinity of Union Square, a pretty oval park, with a noble fountain in the midst, and lofty and handsome houses all round, situated on perhaps the highest ground on this part of the island. Half a mile beyond is Madison Square, a green expanse, about which wealthy citizens are now building elegant residences of brown freestone, with some attempt at architectural display. Near this, still northward, is the lower or distributing reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct, standing on high ground, and looking something like a fortress—no great ornament, perhaps, but an object of much interest.
Fifth Avenue, on the west of Broadway, stretching north from Washington Square—an inclosure of about ten acres, well plantedwith elms and maples—it is the Belgravia of New-York—in the estimation of those who inhabit it; a paradise of marble, upholstery and cabinet work, at least; not much dignified, as yet, by works of high art, though the region boasts a few specimens, ancient and modern; but in luxury and extravagance emulating the repudiated aristocracy of the old world. This is, and is to be, a street of palaces and churches throughout its whole extent, always provided that the changeful current of Fashion do not set in some other direction too soon, carrying with it all themillionairesthat are yet to arise within the century. In that event, the costly mansions of Fifth Avenue will inevitably become hotels and boarding-houses,—a reverse which so many grandly intended houses of elder New-York have already experienced.
The distinction of East and West is marked in New-York as in London, though for different reasons. In London, the prevalence of westerly winds drives the surge waves of coal-smoke eastward, blackening every thing; in New-York the western part of the town is cleaner, because newer and built on a better plan. Broadway is the dividing line; and it is a violent strain upon one's standing in fashionable life to live eastward of it, below Union Square, even in the most expensive style. But the eastward world has its own great thoroughfare, wider than Broadway, though not as long, running nearly parallel with the main artery of the grander world. The Bowery—so called when it was the high road leading through the public farms orBoweries—is a sort of exaggerated Bishopsgate-street and Shoreditch united; more trades and callings, more articles offered for sale in the open air, more noise, more people, and at least as much natural, undisguised, vulgar life. A railway for horse-carriages passes through it, and hundreds of omnibuses and stage coaches, not to speak of carts and country wagons without number. A "rowdy" theatre or two, a hay-market, great clothing-shops, and livery-stables, a riding-school, an anatomical museum—such are its ornaments. Not a church countenances its entire length, nor any other public building aiming at elegance or dignity. The goods displayed in the windows are of a secondary quality, at best; and the people who throng the pavements are people who want second-rate articles. Yet the Bowery is worth walking through by a stranger, little as it is known or valued by the native citizen, whose lot has been cast in choicer neighborhood. The common pulse of humanity beats audibly and visibly there, wrapped in no cloak of convention or pseudo-refinement. The fundamental business of life is carried on there as being confessedly the main business; not, as in Broadway, as if it were a thing to be huddled into a corner to make way for the carved-work and gilding, the drapery and color of the great panorama. There is another reason why the Bowery has a claim on our attention. Strange as it may seem, it is from the people who haunt the Bowery that the United States take their character abroad. Foreigners insist upon considering the "Bowery b'hoys,"—a class at once an enigma and a terror to the greater portion of their fellow-citizens,—as distinctive specimens of Americanism, much to the horror of their more fastidious countrymen. This we think a great mistake, though truly there are worse people in the world than the "Bowery b'hoys," who are noted for a sort ofbonhomie, in the midst of all their coarseness.
As to parks and public promenades, New-York is lamentably deficient—the whole space thus appropriated being hardly more than eighty acres, for the refreshment of a population which will soon cease to be counted by hundreds of thousands. "Eight million dollars worth of land," say the city fathers, "is as much as we can afford!" The penurious estimate which has resulted in this miserable deficiency has been long and ably combated by patriotic and clear-headed citizens, but their influence has as yet proved wholly unavailing. Public meetings have been now and then held, with a view of exciting a general interest in this important matter, but they invariably end in fruitless resolutions. The island still affords good sites for public gardens, but there is scarce a gleam of hope that any of them will be reserved. The few breathing spaces that now exist, are thronged, and by the very people who most need them—children and laboring people. The vicinity of the fountains is full of loiterers, quietly watching the play of the bright water, and growing, we may hope, milder and better by the gentle influence. At certain hours of the day whole troops of merry children, with their attendants, make the walks alive and resounding. The hoop, the ball, the velocipede, the skipping-rope, rejoice the grass and sunshine, and the eyes of the thoughtful spectator, who sees health in every bounding motion, and hears joy in every tiny shout. It is strange that the citizens do not, one and all, cry aloud for the easy and happy open-air extension of their too often crowded homes. London is the world's example in this thing.
A park suited to riding and driving is especially needed because of the wretched pavement which still disgraces the greater portion of New-York. The first thing that strikes an American returning from Europe is the inferiority of the pavements of the Atlantic cities; and New-York, in particular, is, in this respect, hardly a whit before the far-famed corduroy roads of the wild West. In 1846 a great improvement was begun, called, after the inventor, the Russ pavement, and thus far seeming to meet all the difficulties of the case, including the severe frosts andsudden changes of the climate. The plan is, however, so expensive that it will probably be long before it is fully adopted. It requires square blocks of stone, about ten inches in depth, laid diagonally with the wheel-track, and resting on a substructure of concrete, which again rests upon a foundation of granite chips, the whole forming a consolidated mass, eighteen inches thick, so arranged as to be lifted in sections to afford access to the gas and water pipes. This has been largely tried in Broadway, and has stood the test for six years.
Foreigners are apt to complain, not only, as they justly may, of the bad pavements of New-York, but, somewhat unreasonably, of the obstructions in the street, caused by incessant building, laying pipes, &c. They say, "Will the city never be finished?" Not very soon, we think. It is difficult to do in fifty years the work of five hundred, without a good deal of bustle and inconvenience. Rapid growth in population and wealth necessitates continual improvement in accommodation. We may, indeed, be allowed to fret a little, when the street is for weeks or months encumbered by the building materials of a merchant, who sees fit to pull down a very good house in order to erect one that shall cost a quarter of a million, merely because his neighbor has contrived to outshine him in that particular. But when sewers and gas, and Croton water, are in question, we must not grumble. These great public blessings are spreading into every quarter, carrying health and decency with them. The great sewers are arched canals of hard brick, from three to nine feet in diameter, and laid in mortar in the most durable manner. Above them are the gas-pipes, an immense net-work; and nearly on a level with these last are the huge veins and arteries, by means of which the Croton supplies life and health to the inhabitants, once half-poisoned by water which shared every salt that enters into the subsoil of a great city. Analysis shows the Croton water to be of great purity—holding in solution the salts of lime and magnesia in proportions hardly appreciable, only about two and eight-tenths of a grain to the gallon. The river springs from granitic hills, and flows through a clear upland region, free from marsh, and covered with grazing farms.
When the Aqueduct was undertaken, New-York numbered but two hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants, so that the supply provided was a magnificent gift to the future. The work was completed within five years, years of great commercial difficulty; and what is more remarkable, the whole cost camewithinthe estimate of the chief engineer. The abundance of water may be guessed from the fact that two of the city fountains throw away more water than would suffice for the consumption of a large city. The solidity of the structure is such that none but slight repair can be needed for centuries to come.[10]
This great work was opened, with appropriate ceremonies, and a splendid civic festival, on the 14th of October, 1842. The British consul, in accepting the invitation of the Common Council, to assist at this festival, justly remarked, "Tyrants have left monuments which call for admiration, but no similar work of a free people, for magnitude and utility, equals this great enterprise." Public feeling was very warm on this occasion. Of the procession of the trades, &c., which was three hours passing a given point, an enthusiastic citizen declared in print, that he "watched and scrutinized it closely, and could discover neither a drunkard nor a fool from first to last." It might be a difficult matter to decide on the moral and intellectual condition of the individuals composing such a procession, but we may concede that drunkards and fools are not the persons most likely to join in rejoicing for the introduction of pure water without stint or measure.
The great Aqueduct is forty-one miles in length, commencing with a dam across the Croton river, six miles above its mouth. This raises the water one hundred and sixty-six feet above tide level, forming a lake or reservoir of four hundred acres in extent, containing five hundred million gallons, above the level that would allow the Aqueduct to discharge thirty-five million gallons per day. From the Croton Dam to Harlem River, something less than thirty-three miles, the Aqueduct is an uninterrupted conduit of hydraulic masonry, of stone and brick; the greatest interior width, seven feet five inches; the greatest height, eight feet five inches; the floor an inverted arch. The commissioners and chief engineers passed through its whole length on foot, as soon as it was completed; and, when the water was admitted, traversed it again in a boat built for the purpose. It crosses the Harlem River by a bridge of stone, fourteen hundred and fifty feet long, and one hundred and fourteen feet above high-water mark. At the Receiving Reservoir forty miles from the Dam, the masonry gives place to iron pipes, through which the water is conveyed two miles further, to the distributing reservoir, from which point it runs, by means of several hundred miles of pipes, to every corner of the city. On the line of the Aqueduct are one hundred and fourteen culverts, and sixteen tunnels, and ventilators occur at the distance of one mile apart throughout the route. The Receiving Reservoir covers thirty-five acres, and contains one hundred and fifty million imperial gallons. The Distributing Reservoir has walls forty-nine feet in height, and contains twenty million gallons. The supply to each citizen is at present almost unlimited, andafforded at a very moderate annual rate. The managers complain to the Common Council of the enormous waste during the summer, when "sixty imperial gallons each twenty-four hours to every inhabitant," are delivered. But even at this enormous rate the quantity is ample, and it can be increased at will by new reservoirs. No decent house is now constructed without a bath, an advantage to the health and comfort of the city, hardly to be over-rated. Fountains adorn almost all the public places of any importance, and although in few instances as yet dignified by sculpture, these tastes and glimpses of Nature are in themselves invaluable, offering to the people at large a continual reminder of beauty, tranquillity, and innocent pleasure in the open air. There remains yet to be added those public vats for the use of poor women in washing, that may be found in so many European towns.
The facilities afforded by this abundance of water for the extinguishment of fires, are such as can hardly be over-rated. We have no space for details on this point, nor does it need. It will easily appear that, with an unlimited supply of water, and plenty of fire-plugs, a few moments suffice to bring into action whatever is needed in case of conflagration—a glorious contrast to the tardy succor of former days, when water was laboriously pumped from the rivers on either side the city, and conveyed by means of hose to the scene of danger. The perfection of the London Fire Brigade is yet to be accomplished for New-York; but promptness, or rather zeal of service, distinguishes the corps of firemen, who make their business a passion, and the perfection of their instruments their pride and glory. They receive no remuneration except exemption from military and jury duty.
After these few words on the supply of pure and life-preserving water, we may turn, by no very violent transition, to the facilities extended by New-York to her children in the matter of education,—a point on which she is naturally and justly somewhat vainglorious. The number of public, and absolutely free schools, is one hundred and ninety-nine; embracing fifteen schools for the instruction of colored children. More than one hundred thousand scholars attend in the course of the year; though the average for each day is something less than forty thousand. All is gratuitous at these schools—instruction, books, stationery, washing-apparatus, fuel, &c. Besides these, there are fifteen evening schools, for those who cannot avail themselves of the other public schools, and whose only leisure time is after the close of the labors of the day. The ages of the scholars in these schools vary from twelve to forty-five years.
This magnificent offer of instruction by the city to her children is confined to no class, country, sect, nor fortune. Every child, without exception, is received, taught, and furnished with all the requisites for a good school education. Not content with this, a free academy for the classics, modern languages, natural sciences, and drawing, was established in 1848, with fourteen professors, and proper appliances, including a handsome and commodious building. This academy receives male pupils from the common schools, after due examination; and retains them for a four years' course, or longer, if desirable. It is contemplated to establish a free high school for females, on a corresponding plan.
It is not to be supposed that the benefit of the public school system is shared only by the necessitous. The children of respectable citizens, of the plainer sort, make up a large part of the attendance. It is computed that only about twenty thousand children of both sexes are found in private schools. There are many free schools of private charity, some of which receive by law a certain share of public money, as the school of the House of Refuge, various orphan asylums, &c., including, in all, about three thousand five hundred children. The Roman Catholics have some free schools of their own, but most Roman Catholic children are educated at the public schools. The prodigious amount of immigration (on the day on which we write, we happen to know that the number of steerage passengers arrived in the city is seventeen hundred and seventy-nine, and, on another, within a week, three thousand)—makes this provision for education doubly important; since a large portion of the hordes thus emptied on these hospitable shores are entirely unable to pay any thing for the instruction of their children.
This fact gives added lustre to the no less munificent provision by the city for the gratuitous care of the sick and indigent—a care almost monopolized by foreigners, because comparatively few Americans are in a condition to need it. All accidental cases are provided for at the New-York Hospital; the attendant physicians and surgeons of which, selected from the most eminent of the profession, give their services without pecuniary remuneration. A branch of this institution is the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane. The New-York Dispensary provides some thirty thousand patients annually with advice, medicines, and vaccination, gratis. The Almshouse Department maintains five establishments, which, together, support about seven thousand persons, and afford weekly aid to some three thousand others. The Nursery Branch of this department maintains and instructs more than a thousand children of paupers and convicts. The Institution for the care of deaf mutes has about two hundred and fifty pupils, of whom one hundred and sixty are supported at the expense of the State. The Asylum for the Blind, originally established by a few members of the Society of Friends, has about one hundred and fiftypupils. Besides these, private charity has opened refuges for almost every form of human misery and destitution, so that it may safely be said that no one of any age, sex, nation, or characterneedsuffer, in New York, for lack of Christian kindness in its ordinary manifestations. Among these beneficent offers of relief and aid, we may mention one in particular, whose worth is not as fully appreciated by the public as that of some others, though none is more needed. The Prison Association takes care of the interests of accused persons, whose poverty and ignorance make them the easy prey of the designing and heartless; attends to them while in prison, and after their release, holds out the helping hand, and provides relief, occupation, and countenance for all those who are willing to reform. A house with matrons is provided for discharged female convicts, who are instructed and initiated into various modes of employment until they have had time to prove themselves fit to be recommended to places. The success of this most benign and difficult charity has been very encouraging.
It would be vain to attempt, in this desultory sketch, any account of the means of morals and religion in New-York. In these respects she differs but little from English commercial towns. The number of places of worship is something under three hundred, and each form of religious benevolence has its appropriate society, as elsewhere. Sabbath Schools are very popular, and attended by the children of the first citizens. An immense number of persons are associated as Sons and Daughters of Temperance, who present a strong front against that vice which turns the wise man into a fool. But as there is nothing distinctive in these and similar associations, we pass them by. A puritan tone of manners prevails; that is to say, with the mass of the well-to-do citizens, puritan manners are the beau-ideal of propriety and safety. Yet New-York is fast assuming a cosmopolitan tone which will make it difficult, before very long, to speak of any particular style of manners as prevailing. Representatives of every nation, and tongue, and kindred, and people, meeting on a footing of perfect equality of political advantages, must in time produce a social state, differing in some important particulars from any that the world has yet seen. The population of New-York will, at the past rate of increase, be in ten years greater than that of Paris, and in thirty equal to that of London. How can one speculate on a social state formed under such circumstances? The present aspect of what claims to be New-York society is certainly rather anomalous.
An exceptional American—John Quincy Adams—in some patriotic speech, mentioned, among other occasions of thankfulness to Heaven, that excellent gift, "a heritable habitation;" but there is nothing which the prosperous citizen of New-York so much despises. If he read Ruskin, he thinks the man benighted when he utters such sentiments as these: "There must be a strange dissolution of natural affection; a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught; a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our father's honor, or that our lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only * * * *. Our God is a household god, as well as a heavenly one. He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly, and pour out its ashes!"
If ever there were any substantial tenements of stone and brick on which might well be written the motto "Passing away!" it is those of the great commercial metropolis of the western world. The material substance is enduring enough to last many generations; their soul is a thing of the moment. After it has inhabited its proud apartments, and looked out of its beautiful windows for a few years, it departs, to return no more for ever, and its deserted home becomes at once the receptacle of a soul of lower grade, and its destiny is to pass down, and down, and down, in the scale, as time wears on, and "improvement" sanctifies new regions. One might suppose the pleasure and pride of building would be quite killed by the idea that as soon as one's head is laid in the dust, all the achievements of taste, all the devices of ingenious affection, all the personality, in short, of one's dwelling would be turned out to the gaze and comment of the curious world now so carefully shut out; exposed, depreciated, contemned, and sold to the highest bidder, under circumstances of inevitable degradation. But the ruling spirit of the New World progress seems to reconcile even the reflective to these things. They shrug their shoulders, and say it cannot be helped! Truly, these seem the days "when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere than his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn; when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and live in the hope of forgetting the years they have lived; when the comfort, the peace, and the religion of home have ceased to be felt." In these particulars, however, the severity of the New World is in a state of transition. Under circumstances so novel, it is not to be wondered at that no leisure has yet been found for the complete harmonization of the social theory in all its parts.
Whether the universal and incessant subdivision of estates will ever be found to allow the addition of the charm of poetic associations to the possession of wealth is a question not yet determined. When all passes under the hammer, what becomes of heir-looms,and whatever else in which family life and interest are bound up? And why should splendor prepare for perpetuity when that which supports it is to be shared among half a dozen or a dozen descendants? Will a rich man be likely to collect works of art under the consciousness that, when "cutting up" time comes, not one of his children will probably be rich enough to retain possession of these treasures that bring no tangible income? Truly, republicans ought to be philosophers, caring only for things of highest moment, and capable of saying to all others—"Get ye behind me!"
But the denizens of New-York Belgravia are not philosophers, at least not philosophers of this stamp. Content with the good things of to-day, they leave the morrow to take care of itself; and many of them live in a style which, even to those who have seen European splendor, seems no less than superb. Their dwellings are unsurpassed in convenience of arrangement and luxury of appliance; their entertainments are of regal magnificence, so far as regal magnificence is purchasable; and for dress and equipage they pour out money like water. In cultivation and accomplishments, they are of course very unequal; for, in a country where the great field of competition has a thousand gates, all opened wide to all comers, and moneyed magnates come from every class in society, and bring with them, to the new sphere, just what of a strictly personal kind they possessed in the old. He that was refined is refined still, and he that was sordid is sordid still. If the gentleman enjoys the power of indulging his tastes, and choosing his pursuits, so does the vulgarian; and, unhappily, no Belgravia, English or American, has yet been found capable of inspiring its inmates with dignified tastes or elevated aims. There is no permanent nucleus of elegant society in New-York; no reservoir of indisputable social grace, from which succeeding sets and advancing circles can draw rules and imbibe tastes. There is not, even at any one time, an acknowledged first circle, to whose standard others are willing to refer. This being so, the most incongruous manners often encounter in the social arena; and it is only in very limited association that any appreciable degree of congeniality is expected. Wealth always fraternizes with wealth to a certain extent. The maxim announced here on a certain public occasion, that "the possession of wealth is always to be received as evidence of the possession of merit of some kind," is conscientiously acted upon; but beyond this, social affinity is very limited as yet. Conversation has no recognized place among accomplishments, and of course only a doubtful one among pleasures. Coteries are unknown, and the continual shifting of circles precludes the pleasure of long-ripened intellectual intercourse. Many there are who regret this state of things in a society in which there is in reality so great a share of general good feeling; but they are found not among the rich, who possess some of the means of remedying the evil, but among those who, removed from the temptations which riches, suddenly acquired, array against intellectual pleasures, lack, on the other hand, the means of uniting with those pleasures, theagrémenswhich are at the command of easy fortune. In Paris, intellect and cultivation can draw together those who value them, even though the place of meeting be a shabby house in the suburbs; in New-York it is not yet so, nor could it be expected. No socialposéhas yet been attained; and each is too much absorbed in making good his general claims to consideration, to have leisure for the calmer enjoyments that might be snatched during the contest. Ostentation is, as yet, too prominent in the entertainments of the rich; and the not rich, with republican pride, will rather renounce the pleasures and advantages of society than receive company in an inexpensive way. Even public amusements are not fashionable. Large numbers, it is true, attend them, but not of the fashionable classes. The Opera, alone, has a sort of popularity with these, but it is as an elegant lounger, and a chance of distinction from the vulgar. A low-priced opera, like those of the Continent, with music as the main object, and magnificent costume put out of the question by twilight houses, is yet to be tried in New-York. In the opinion of some, this is one day to be the touchstone of American musical taste. A passion for popular music the Americans certainly have. The Negro Melodists, numerous as they are, draw throngs every night; and their music, whether gay or sad, has all the charm that could be desired for the popular heart. But the people of any pretensions enjoy this kind of music, as it were by stealth, not considering that the pleasure it gives is in fact a test of its excellence. Many of the negro airs are worthy of symphonies and accompaniments by Beethoven or Schubert, but until they have been endorsed by science the New-Yorker would rather not be caught enjoying them.
If we should venture to suggest what it is that New-York society most lacks, we should say Courage—courage to enjoy and make the most of individual tastes and feelings. The spirit of imitation robs social life of all that is picturesque and poetical. Living for the eyes of our neighbors is stupefying and belittling. It gives an air of hollowness and tinsel to our homes, stealing even from the heartiness of affection, and sapping the disinterestedness of friendship. It tends to the general impoverishment of home-life, the privacy of which is the soil of originality and the nursery of accomplishments. It is hardly consistent with the pursuit of literature or art for its own sake, since a desire to do what others do, and avoid what others contemn, excludes private and independentchoice, except where the natural bias is irresistibly strong. There is, in truth, very little relish for home accomplishments in New-York. Music is too much a thing of exhibition, and drawing is scarcely practised at all. Two or three of the modern languages are taught at every fashionable school; but the use of these is seldom kept up in after life, even by reading. No people are so poorly furnished with foreign tongues as the Americans, and New-York forms no exception to the general remark.
We shall not venture to touch that most sensitive of all topics, native art, on which no opinion can be expressed with safety, Suffice it to say, that New-York has a National Academy of Design; the nucleus of a free gallery; an Art-Union, largely patronized; an Artists' Association, with a gallery of its own; and various exhibitions of European pictures. Lessing's Martyrdom of Huss has been for some time exhibiting in a collection of paintings of the Düsseldorf school. Statuary is as yet comparatively rare; for, although American art has sprung at once to high excellence in this direction, the sculptors generally reside abroad, for the sake of superior advantages for execution. The present year sees thedébutof a young sculptor of New-York, named Palmer, who has just finished a work of great promise, for this spring's exhibition of the National Academy, an exhibition most cheering to the friends of American art, from its marked superiority in many respects to any that have gone before it. A Home-Book of Beauty is in progress, for which a young English artist, son of the celebrated Martin, is making the portraits. This promises to be very popular, since the reputation of American female beauty is world-wide.
These slight notices of New-York as she is, are intended rather to give foreign visitors a hint whatnotto expect, than to serve as any thing deserving the name of a description of one of the commercial centres of the world. It is quite possible to come to New-York with such letters of introduction as shall open to the stranger society as intelligent and well-bred as any in Europe; but as this is composed of people who never run after notabilities as such, it is often unknown and unsuspected by the visitor from abroad, who, consequently, returns home with such broad views as we have been attempting, quite satisfied that there is nothing more worth seeking. It is noticeable that the most favorable accounts of American manners have been given by the best-bred and highest-born foreign travellers; while disparagement and abuse have been the retaliation of those who have, to their surprise, found the Americans quite capable of distinguishing between snobs and gentlemen. The intelligent traveller must know how to take New-York for what she is, and he will not undervalue her for not being what she is not. She is a magnificent city—a city of unexampled growth and energy; of the noblest public works, of unbounded charity, of a most intelligent providence in the instruction of her children, of fearless liberality in the reception and treatment of foreigners, and of a growing interest in all the arts which adorn and harmonize society. Those who visit her prepared to find these traits will not be disappointed; those who will accept nothing in an American city of yesterday but the tranquil and delicate tone of an assured civilization, should not come westward. Yet in real, essential civilization, that city cannot be far behindhand, in which the duties of a street police are almost nominal, and where every ill that can afflict humanity is cared for gratuitously, and in the most humane spirit. Justly proud of these proofs of her preparation for the outward gloss of manners which is all in all to the superficial observer, New-York can well afford to invite the scrutiny of the intelligent citizen of the world.
As we began our little sketch with some Knickerbocker reminiscences, so we feel bound, before we close, to say a word or two of the traces that still remain of the honored origin of much of the wealth and respectability of New-York. Whatever we may allow for our English superstructure, we cannot forget that the Dutch foundation was most excellent. "The Batavians," says Tacitus, "are distinguished among the neighboring nations for their valor;" and in the seventeenth century the countrymen of Van Tromp and De Ruyter had not degenerated from their Batavian ancestors; and in the gentler qualities of peace, industry, perseverance, energy, honesty, and enterprise, the States-General were surpassed by no European community. For their notions of law, we may consult Grotius; for their taste for art, the exquisite works which constitute a school of their own. The Dutch masters of New-York were people of high tone and character, and to this day there lingers a flavor of nobility and dignity about the very names of Van Rensselaer, Van Cortlandt, Van Zandt, Brinkerhoff, Stuyvesant, Rutgers, Schermerhorn, &c., represented by families who still retain much of their ancient wealth, and a great deal of their ancient aristocratic feeling. Many jokes have been founded upon the unwillingness of these lords of the soil to be disturbed; one of the best of which is Washington Irving's story of Wolfert Webber, who thought he must inevitably die in the almshouse, because the Corporation ruined his cabbage-garden by running a street through it. But they make excellent citizens, and their aversion to change has been but a much needed balance to the wild go-ahead restlessness of the full-blooded Yankee, who sees nothing but the future. The Dutch have customs, and, of course, manners; while the tendency of modern New-Yorklife is adverse to both. The citizen of to-day cannot help looking on the Dutch spirit as "slow," but he has an instinctive respect for it, notwithstanding.
One single Dutch custom still maintains its ground triumphantly, in spite of the hurry of business, the selfishness of the commercial spirit, and the efforts of a few paltry fashionists, who would fain put down every thing in which a suspicion of heartiness can be detected. It is the custom of making New Year visits on the first day of January, when every lady is at home, and every gentleman goes the rounds of his entire acquaintance; flying in and flying out, it is true, but still with an expression of good-will and friendly feeling that is invaluable in a community where daily life is so much under the control of that cabalistic word—business. Ladies are in high party-trim, and refreshments of various kinds are offered; but the main point and recognized meaning of the whole is the interchange of friendly greetings.
No one, not to the manor born, can estimate the glow of feeling that characterizes these flying visits. "As iron sharpeneth iron, so doth the countenance of a man his friend." The mere looking into each other's faces is good for human creatures; and when the sincere even though transient light of kindly feeling beams from the eyes that thus encounter, something is done against egotism, haughty disregard and blank oblivion. Many a coolness dies on New Year's Day, under a battery of smiles; many a hard thought is shamed away by the good wishes of the season. Old friends, who are inevitably separated most of the time, thus meet at least once a year, for the enthusiasm of the hour is potent enough to make the valetudinarian forsake his easy chair, and the cripple his crutches. Visiting hours are extended so as to include all the hours from ten in the morning until ten at night, and, in order to make the most of these, the gentlemen take carriages and scour the streets at the true American pace, so as to lose as little time as possible on the way. If a storm occur, it is considered quite a public misfortune, since it lessens, though it never altogether prevents the fulfilment of the annual ceremony. It is true that both ladies and gentlemen are death-weary when bed-time comes, but that for once a year is no great evil. It is true that some young men will take more whisky-punch, or champagne, than is becoming; but for one who does this, there are many who decline "all that can intoxicate," except smiles and kind words. In some houses the blinds are closed, the gas lighted, and a band of music in attendance; and each batch of visitors inveigled into polkas, or kedowas, for which the lady of the house has taken care to provide partners. But this is considered a degeneracy, and votedmauvais tonby those who understand the thing. To "throw a perfume o'er the violet," bespeaks the Frenchcoiffeuror theparvenu; the simplicity of the ancient Dutch custom of New Year visits is its dignity and glory. Long may it live unspotted by vulgar fashion! Well were it for the island city if she had kept a loving hold on many another quaint festivity of her ancestors on the other side of the water. Her prosperity would be none the worse of a respectful reference to the good things of the past.