would kindly imagine what
your feelings would be on beholding Upper Oxford Street on a November
day--with a few draggling flags hung across it, one or two "blocks" of
brown-stone buildings interspersed between its rows of uneven shops, and
a lofty-spired church, like Saint Margaret's, jutting out into the
roadway by the Marble Arch--you will have a general idea of my
impressions when first looking at the magnificent thoroughfare that our
cousins love.

It has evidently secured its reputation, from being the only decent
street in New York--just as Sackville Street in Dublin is "a foine place
entirely," on account of its being the only one of any respectable
length or width in the city on the Liffey--if you will kindly permit the
comparison for a moment?

I was disappointed, I confess.

Ever since boyhood I had pictured America, and everything belonging to
it, from Fennimore Cooper's standpoint. I thought I was going to a spot
quite different from any locality I had previously been accustomed to;
and, lo! New York was altogether commonplace. Nothing original,
nothing tropical, nothing "New World"-like about it. It was only an
ordinary town of the same stamp as many I have noticed on this side of
the water--a European city in a slop suit--"Yankee" all over in _that_
way!

In regard to its extent, which I had been led to believe was quite equal
to, if not surpassing, our metropolis, I found that I could walk from
one side of it to the other in half an hour; and traverse its length in
twice that time--the entire island on which it is built being only nine
miles long. "Why," thought I, when I had arrived at this knowledge,
"some of our suburbs could beat that!"

When bright days came, Broadway undoubtedly looked a little better--
Barnum's streamers, "up town," floating out bravely over the heads of
the "stage" drivers--but I was never able to overcome my first
impressions of it and New York generally; and, to make an end of the
matter, I may say now, that the longer I stayed in the "land of the
settin' sun," north, south, east, and west--I had experience of all--the
less I saw to like in it.

The country and the scenery are well enough; but the people!

Ah! if the Right Honourable John Bright and other ardent admirers of
everything connected with the "great Republic" on the other side of the
ocean, would but go over, as I did, and study it honestly from every
point of view for three years, say, they _must_ come