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ent suburbs, where the Lord Mayor has magisterial power, is stated at 127,859. Yet the population of LONDON (the whole metropolis) is recorded by the same census as amounting to 2,362,236-and might have been properly calculated as large as 2,399,004.

This vast metropolis has no common government except the Queen (that is, Her Majesty's Cabinet Council) and Parliament. The acting Chief Magistrate of the Metropolis, is Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department at present, Viscount Palmerston. At least, his powers and functions bring him nearest to that position.

A characteristic which New York has in common with London, and, indeed, in a greater degree, is the continual intermingling of its inhabitants, by passing to and fro in all parts of the city and suburbs. Nearly the whole adult population is in almost daily communication with the most distant sections of the metropolis. Williamsburg thus keeps up a constant connection with Jersey City, by a line of vehicles across the island of New York, specially provided for that purpose. The easternmost and southernmost parts of Brooklyn have equal facilities for reaching the northernmost parts of the city of New York; and all these means of conveyance are constantly employed in maintaining an active circulation of the atoms of the great mass among one another. There are other large cities, in which the people in different sections and suburbs remain all their lives as distinct and insulated from each other, as if they were inhabitants of different towns fifty miles apart. But, the peculiarity of the chief city of America is, that all New York knows all New York. The population of all the shores of the inner harbor has, therefore, acquired a consolidated unity, and maintains an intimate community of feeling and interest, not only in business, but in social relations, that cannot be discovered in any other city. A mere legislative act framing a common municipal government for its present divisions could hardly increase the general sense of this spontaneous unity.

There is a legal union of all parts of the metropolis, under one tolerably definite term and title, fixed by the Federal laws. And that is, the PORT of New York. The inhabitants of the Port of New York-that is, of its shores for a mile or two from the water-are, there

fore, in that point of view, members of one community, numbering more than a million of people-far enough beyond all competition with any city in America, and with any in the world, but London, after the year 1860.

It should be observed that LONDON now includes, with the chartered city and its subject borough, the City of Westminster, and a great number of parishes, or towns, formerly containing country villages, which have been gradually connected with the great metropolis and absorbed in it, as it has grown around and far beyond the little nucleus of the ancient city. These annexed suburbs constitute a great group of parliamentary boroughs, each represented by two members of parliament.

Of these, the Tower-Hamlets (a name now grown absurd, though not obsolete), Finsbury and adjacent parishes, St. Pancras, Mary-le-bowne (as they will spell it, instead of Marie-la-bonne, the name of the original parish church, though they pronounce it " Marrow-bone "), and others, are each more populous than the chartered city itself.

The great city of New York is too great-too confessedly and indisputably great to be injured by such misrepresentations as have been induced by the publication of statistics which limit its reported population to the bare, rocky shores of Manhattan Island. Limit it thus, if you please; and yet, it is, and ever will be, the most populous "city. and county " of all America. But the scholars, and students, and statists (that's the last form of the word) of Europe are looking to census reports for facts, concerning the growth of American cities; and they do so without feeling a particle of interest in the value of real estate in any American city, or in the quoted price of the stocks of railroads leading to them. It will astonish many people in New York to hear (or read) that there are any such persons in this world, who feel any interest in the growth of the city. But it is an incontestable fact; and owners of real estate, and railroad stock here, can only mourn over an incomprehensible feeling, which, in their practical view of things, can amount to nothing else than an absolute hallucination.

But, strange as it may seem, there is a scientific world-a little world-that wants to know the facts of this matter, without even the slightest regard to any pecuniary interests that are likely to be benefited by such a revelation. It is

possible that there may be in New York not less than five, and perhaps, as many as a hundred men, capable of viewing the same facts in the same 66 dry light."

And when New York shall have developed within itself a larger (and proportionally larger) community of men of that unpractical" order, its vast material bulk will acquire a now muchneeded dignity and moral elevation, which will give to its greatness a brighter and more lasting renown.

The three great progressive cities of the world at this time are London, Paris, and New York. The great city of Constantine may at no distant day revive, and resume the power and dignity to which its unequalled location entitles it. For the first Constantine and the first Napoleon but expressed the unanimous judgment of all deliberate observers when they pronounced it to be the place for the Capital of the World. Even now it increases in population by internal augmentation, while St. Petersburg, Vienna, Stockholm, and other cities, are constantly diminishing the number of their native inhabitants, and cannot hold their own without a continuance of the supply of people from the adjacent rural districts: an uncertain and variable

resource.

Berlin lost one hundred thousand of its inhabitants during the alarms and turmoils of the two years beginning in March, 1846. In 1845, New York was exceeded in population by Berlin, Vienna, and Naples. In 1850, it (the chartered city) surpassed them and every European city, except the British, French, and Ottoman capitals. As for the cities of Asia, there is no good reason for believing that one of them contains a population of 1,000,000. Of those in India, the largest, Benares, is not estimated by any one to include more than 600,000 inhabitants. The cities of China and Japan, such as Canton, Pekin, Soo-Tsheu, Yedo, Miako, etc., whose population has sometimes been conjecturally stated at various and uncertain amounts, from half a million to three millions, probably do not now contain in any instance more than 600,000 or 800,000. Composed as they are of houses only one story, or one and a-half, and with an immense space which must be uncovered by buildings on account of the total absence of sewerage, either of them would require an area four or five times as large as any city of the West for any given number of inhabitants. Not one

of them is known or believed to equal London, Paris, or New York in ares. The cities of China, moreover, within a few years past must have been very greatly reduced in population by the havoc of merciless civil wars. And those of Japan have undoubtedly suffered equal losses, though slow and gradual, from causes operating since the researches of Kaempffer and his associates, and probably for more than a century-perhaps for centuries. Every perfectly isolated nation, every people or race whose insular situation cuts it off from frequent communication, and from all admixture of blood, invariably and inevitably degenerates, generally in the physical and moral force of the individual, and always in the number of the aggregate. The Guanches and the Picts, as well as the Tahitians and Hawaiians, are sufficient instances of this.

London incloses its 2,400,000 in a space of 76,000 acres. Philadelphia (consolidated) in 1854 claimed a population of half a million within its new chartered limits, containing 70,000 acres. New York, in 1850 (June 7th), had a population of 515,500 within an area of 13,920 acres, or rather in less than half that space; for most of the city stands on the southern third of an island seventeen miles long; and the official survey includes not only these uninhabited, square miles of rock and forest, but also five other islands in the harbor of New York. The three municipalities now united in the new corporation of Brooklyn contained in 1850 more than 130,000 on a territory a little larger than the whole space within the jurisdiction of the city of New York. The population of all Brooklyn now can hardly be less than 220,000. That of New York alone is probably under-estimated at 780,000. So that within an area of about 30,000 acres, we have a population of 1,000,000. In addition to Brooklyn, other suburbs, such as Tompkinsville and other villages on Staten Island-Morrisania and the almost continuous settlement from Harlem River to Fordham-Jersey City and Hoboken-contain almost exclusively a New York city population of at least 70,000, which should be included in an estimate of the actual and real people of the whole city of New York.

It is reasonable and safe, therefore, to repeat, that at this time, the four great cities of the world-the greatest-are unquestionably London, Paris, New York, Constantinople. The first named

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is secure of its supremacy for a great portion of the remainder of the nineteenth century. But for the calamities which have befallen both the cities and the interior of the United States since the first of July 1854, the State Census to be taken in June next would have shown the city of New York (in the just sense of the term) to be equal, if not superior to Paris in population, and second only to London in that particular.

In commerce, in shipping, and maritime wealth, and conveniences for its increase, it is already by far the greatest city of the whole world. In 1854, its tonnage was double that of Londonwas more than that of London and Liverpool added together. Never was there, either in ancient or modern time, a city equal to New York in this essential element of power on sea and land. Of all ancient cities, probably Sicilian Syracuse was the nearest to it in this respect. But neither that, nor Tyre and Carthage united, could have displayed a tithe of the marine force of mediaval Venice, when Venice alone conquered and ruled Constantinople, and a large portion of the empire of the East. And what was Venice, compared with modern London? There are in India one hundred and fifty millions of people now subject to the crown of Great Britain, who would never have known that dominion but for the original enterprise of an association of London merchants, incorporated more than a hundred and sixty years ago, when London had not one-half as many inhabitants as New York has to-day.

Of the whole federal revenue during the last fiscal year (ending June 30, 1854), almost $42,000,000 were paid by the custom-house in the city of New York. Boston paid about $9,000,000, and the other custom-houses of New England and New York paid nearly another million of dollars to the federal treasury.

The whole receipts of the Federal Treasury from the customs during that year were $64,224,190 27. Subtract from that the item of $41,755,419 17, contributed by the port of New York alone-and from the remainder take also Boston's contribution-and then $14,000,000 is a liberal estimate of all the money paid into the treasury from custom-houses, except those in these two cities.

In the fiscal year ending June 30, 1853, the total amount of revenue col

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lected by the Post-Office Department of the United States was $5,084,464 57of which $2,108,764 48 came from the post-offices of New York and New England-$1,175,516 06 from the State of New York alone-and from the City Post-office in Nassau street $434,691 95 -besides, $2,621 43 from three other post-offices on Manhattan Island. The post-offices of. Brooklyn and suburbs, paid nearly $21,000 additional-those of Jersey City and Hoboken, more than $3,000-and those of other strictly suburban appendages of New York, about $1,300 more. So that within the proper and true circuit of the whole metropolis $461,672 03 of postages were collected. The returns for the last fiscal year are not yet published; but the books of the City Post-office show an increase of $185,844 09 over the receipts of the previous year—the sum actually paid to the department clear of all expenses being $620,505 04-that is, about onetenth of all the postages in the United States, of which the total for the year was $6,255,586 22. A proportional increase in the receipts of the other postoffices in the city and metropolitan district would make a total of more than $660,000 for the year.

It is an interesting fact in this connection, that while the post-offices in the State of New York paid the department more than $1,500,000 (net) during that year, the total expenses of the transportation of mails in the State were but $455,019 76, if the report of the preceding year may be assumed as not exceeded. No State south or southwest of Delaware, except Louisiana, pays an amount of postage equal to the expense of its mail-transportation. Several of them cost the department more than double or triple the revenue they pay to it. No western State, except Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa, furnishes a postoffice revenue equal to the cost of transportation. Every northern and eastern State, from Maine to Delaware inclusive, yields the general post-office a large net

income.

And how much of all the commerce, foreign and internal, implied in these statistics, does New York owe to the Union as such, or to the favor or good-will of any State or individual on the continent?

NOT ONE DOLLAR'S WORTH!

It is not in the power of the government and people of the United States to augment the greatness, or accelerate the

growth of New York. And though all the rest of the Union were combined to injure the city, they could do little to diminish its commerce, wealth, and power, or retard its progress. How little can be accomplished in that way, may be easily estimated from the result of the utmost persevering efforts of some States to turn from New York the commerce which spontaneously flows into it from the interior of the continent, and from foreign lands.

Great cities have a vitality stronger than that of great nations. The governments within whose jurisdiction they are included from time to time may change; but, unmoved by the rise and fall of empires, great cities often survive a long succession of sovereignties exercising dominion over them. As it was with Babylon, Rome, Byzantium, Vienna and Paris, so it may be with London and New York.

THE GENIUS OF CHARLES DICKENS.

10 reveal genius is the highest office

richest fruits of poetry, are chiefly valuable as measures of the gigantic intellect of Shakespeare. All elevated and religious souls look through the work to the Creator, as truly in art as in nature. Literature too, like all art, has human character for its theme. It labors assiduously to express and record the achievements, the aspirations, and what lies behind both, the soul, of man. Biography, history, poetry and fiction are contributions to the science of human nature, and each, according to its form, represents human life.

Biography is essentially eulogistic. It represents the decencies of life. It defers to the judgment of private friendship and of public popularity. It straightens all eccentricities by a line of ideal excellence and completeness. Even thus only a few lines, full of activity, of marked result in history, are capable of this treatment. For all the rest, biography would be but a libel-the more so, in that it was true, since it takes note only of what a man actually achieves. We unhistoric persons are not quite willing to be judged by such a criterion. Our actual life we feel to have been but a shabby performance, the least accurate index of our character. Herculean labors lay in our path, which our sanguine youth was eager to undertake, but which destiny laid upon other shoulders. Heroisms lie stored in our heart against emergencies that never occurred, foes that never assaulted, and biography disdains us, because the occasion never offered for our style of greatness.

History, delineating the aggregate life of the race, is obliged by its own rules to overlook all the finer manifestations of character. In history, men are chiefly seen as parts of the mechanism of state, acting officially and in their political capacity. We see the orderly movement of armies, but do not know whether the individual heart be instinct with the virtuous courage of humanity, or with the ferocity of wild beasts. We see men playing with the implements of government, we note their ambition, the amount of their intellectual force, their adroitness at intrigue, their powers of effort and endurance; we know little of the attraction of their affections, the compunctions of their conscience, the revulsion of their mortal fears. History, therefore, is not true to human life, not in that it reports falsely, but reports that which is of so little worth. A man may find less in the historical records of ten generations to solve the great problems that baffle his own thoughts, than in a single sentence spoken from the heart of an inspired prophet or poet.

We need not wonder that minds endowed with highest genius have sought better methods of representing human life, than the literal histories of individuals and communities. Poetry rejects the impediments of fact. It describes man true to his own idea, fulfilling the condition of his own wants, achieving his purposes. Since, in the actual condition of things, the arrangements of society, the jostling of other characters, or their own cowardice and folly, check and distort the normal growth of men, poetry opens to them the range of the

ideal, and supplies such circumstances and relations as shall minister to their completeness. Whether good or bad, noble or mean, to the poet's eye men are true to their own kind. Life to him is intense and exaggerated only in reference to fact, not in reference to purpose and aspiration. For the ideal characters which poetry requires, the actual personages of history can furnish but traits and outlines, but genius can complete and animate them or import directÎy from the realms of imagination angels and men of larger mould than have lived on earth.

The only essential difference between the poem and the novel is, that the latter foregoes the advantage of verse, and drops into a ruder style, less fit for the manifestation of passion, but more flexible and copious, and better adapted to depict all the phases of feeling and action with which the novelist has to deal. The novelist is essentially a poet. As in the opera, the accompaniment of music, interpreting to the ear a class of feelings too subtle for language, hurries along the enchanted listener in circles of sound, so that he cannot stop to scan the slight framework of words by which the subject is expressed to his intellect; so the "fine frenzy" of the poet, communicated to his readers through the measured movement of language, raises them to the medium of his own passion. Assured of his readers' sympathy, the poet has only to pass from one salient point to another of his theme, heaping extravagance upon extravagance, and bidding defiance to all the limitations of science and probability. The novelist has no such fictitious advantages. With no tools but his mother-tongue, with no stage scenery or poetic spell, he must produce his effect by the sheer force of his imagination and skill. If we might liken the poet to the Indian conjurer, who stands upon his half-lighted stage, with the machinery of mock thunder and electric lightning at his command, to heighten by their terror the effect of his magical dress and weird aspect; the novelist might suggest the accomplished modern magician, who presents himself in an ordinary dress, and without any of the clap-trap of jugglery, even with the confessed purpose of deception, and by his adroitness and dexterity deludes and perplexes the keenest vigilance of

our senses.

We cannot quite enter into the sorrow of those somewhat hackneyed persons

who are wont to deplore, that the age of poetry is past. Writers of modern epics, though they have had the advantage of all the minute rules of art laid down in the canons of criticism, have failed to earn the fame of Dante or Milton. Wordsworth, conscious enough of his own powers, had floating in his brain for fifty years, the project of a great work, of which the Excursion was to have been but one of the middle chapters. Coleridge, with a more versatile intellect and more ardent impulses, got no further on in the great work expected of him by the circle of admirers, whom he fascinated with the genius of his conversation, than the incomprehensible fragment of Christabel. Hazlitt estimates that Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia alone was as voluminous as all the novels of Sir Walter Scott. Think of the old prose poet drawing home from the fields of the ideal, such a plenteous and copious harvest, when our best modern bards must return from the over-cropped and exhausted soil, bringing only spindling lyrics in single sheaves under their

arms.

Poetry, if not the ruder, is the earlier art. The ancients did not write until their passion forced them, and then their words broke forth in the natural eloquence of song. But we have learned to domesticate language, and to make it capable of various uses. Prose is better adapted than poetry to our complex modern life. It is more flexible to our modes of thought, a fitter medium for our sophisticated habits, a finer analyser of civilized characters. The poetical genius of this time, who takes his inspiration from his own age, will be led to express himself rather in polished prose, than in any of the forms of versification known in the poetical craft. Those who affect the antique, who find their themes or their heroes in other ages, will still adhere to the old forms. In fact, our successful poems are antique in spirit, and more or less happy imitations of a lost art. The man, who shall build in living literature a monument of this teeming nineteenth century, will find the novel a far fitter form of structure than the poem. We have no modern Iliad. The landing of the Pilgrims, the French revolution, and the settlement of California, absolutely refuse to lend themselves to the skillful hands of genius for any epic purposes. All the mechanic arts have found, in later times, better methods, and attained more complete

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