State of Delaware, meanwhile,
comes up and looks in at the windows, only half satisfied with the rapid
fortunes making by the civic trades. What the Delaware yeomen know is,
that they have broad acres of sunny land, on which they are perpetually
wanting advances of money. They therefore instruct their legislators to
fix a legal rate of interest, and to fix it low. The abuse which
naturally follows on this blind policy is, that the wealth created by
the splendid industries of Wilmington is constantly leaving the State to
seek investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned
legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat
similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars
with whom he lived at Oxford, but he was keen enough to feel an envy of
the livelier marts of commerce. "How many goodly cities could I reckon
up," says Burton, "that thrive wholly by trade, where thousands of
inhabitants live singular well by their fingers' ends! As Florence in
Italy by making cloth of gold; great Milan by silk and all curious
works; Arras in Artois by those fair hangings; many cities in Spain,
many in France, Germany, have none other maintenance, especially those
within the land.... In most of _our_ cities" (continues the mortified
Englishman), "some few excepted, we live wholly by tippling-inns and
ale-houses."

[Illustration: CLAYTON HOUSE.]

The average Delawarean of 1873 is the average Oxford gossip of 1620,
with the scholarship left out. But he has the unfortunate advantage for
mischief that he is in a position to enact laws over the producers of
"all curious works." These anomalies, however, must soon pass away with
the march of the age, leaving Wilmington less individual perhaps, but
more free.

[Illustration: OPERA-HOUSE AND MASONIC HALL.]

How deftly, by the by, Burton picks up the distinction between an inland
city, living by handicraft, and a port city, handling weighty materials
and feeding freely on commerce! His livers by their finger-ends are
especially "those within the land." Just so the great capital of France,
arbitrarily concentred amongst her provinces, and deprived of a port,
can only thrive by her exceptional genius in fine and easily-moved
_articles de Paris_. The site now under our consideration, however,
means to have no such one-sided success. If her horoscope be not cast
amiss, this American Glasgow will both make whatever human ingenuity can
make,