, is no sooner drawn than it is replaced in its
position. This ascending and descending stopper is hollow, carpeted,
with cushioned seats, and is watched over by two condemned souls,
called conductors, one of whom is said to be named Ixion, and the other
Sisyphus.

I love New York, because, as in Paris, everybody that lives in it feels
that it is his property,--at least, as much as it is anybody's. My
Broadway, in particular, I love almost as I used to love my Boulevards.

I went, therefore, with peculiar interest, on the day that we rested at
our grand hotel, to visit some new pleasure-grounds the citizens had
been arranging for us, and which I had not yet seen. The Central Park
is an expanse of wild country, well crumpled so as to form ridges which
will give views and hollows that will hold water. The hips and elbows
and other bones of Nature stick out here and there in the shape of rocks
which give character to the scenery, and an unchangeable, unpurchasable
look to a landscape that without them would have been in danger of being
fattened by art and money out of all its native features. The roads were
fine, the sheets of water beautiful, the bridges handsome, the swans
elegant in their deportment, the grass green and as short as a fast
horse's winter coat. I could not learn whether it was kept so by
clipping or singeing. I was delighted with my new property,--but it
cost me four dollars to get there, so far was it beyond the Pillars of
Hercules of the fashionable quarter. What it will be by-and-by depends
on circumstances; but at present it is as much central to New York
as Brookline is central to Boston. The question is not between Mr.
Olmsted's admirably arranged, but remote pleasure-ground and our Common,
with its batrachian pool, but between his Eccentric Park and our finest
suburban scenery, between its artificial reservoirs and the broad
natural sheet of Jamaica Pond, I say this not invidiously, but in
justice to the beauties which surround our own metropolis. To compare
the situations of any dwellings in either of the great cities with those
which look upon the Common, the Public Garden, the waters of the Back
Bay, would be to take an unfair advantage of Fifth Avenue and Walnut
Street. St. Botolph's daughter dresses in plainer clothes than her
more stately sisters, but she wears an emerald on her right hand and a
diamond on her left that Cybele herself need not be ashamed of.

On Monday morning, the twenty-n