is known to-day. It is a curious and interesting study to trace this cognominalogy, from the primeval forest cradles of giant cities through the generations of their growth in wealth and in varied culture and influence. It seems, that, as a rule, a name must not only be euphonic, but like the ambitious politician, must have "money back of it'' in order to "get the nomination or election;" and other things being equal, the name with the longest purse is pretty sure to win. For other reasons, however, than those of having a good name and a long THE OLD CITY HALL. purse, the Calverts, particularly Leonard and Cecilius, my Lord Baltimore, well deserved the honors of having the fifth city in "the Union" called after their name. They not only braved the swamps and woods and Indians that originally occupied "My Maryland," but, Roman Catholics as they were, established, as early as 1634, at the town of St. Mary's, free religious toleration, and instituted and practiced a system of "equity and humanity" toward the Indian tribes; and did not, as far as we can learn, burn witches, or drive off the Baptists, as the ultra New England Protestants of those days did; nor did they, as far as now appears, sell whisky and rifles by wholesale or retail, by government post-traders or other "republican institutions," to wild Indians, and then, with knavish idiocy, expect them to act like sane angels all the while, as the reformers of these days have done and will do. Verily, the world moves, as we moderns say. It took our forefathers a good while to find out that the spot on which the City of Baltimore now stands, was the most eligible site for a great city to be found in the neighborhood of Chesapeake Bay; the spot most get-at-able by the largest number of tillers of the soil, and manufacturers and general laborers, and at the same time possessing more commercial advantages than any other locality in the State. They were not geese enough in those days to fly around in oilcloth balloons, either on voyages of pleasure or discovery, generally to come dangling down to mother earth with their necks broken; and they had not the fine railways, and perfect atlases to guide them, as, thanks to patient and faithful engineering, we have in these days; they had to find their chosen spots slowly. But nature helped the genius there and then as always, and gradu ally it became apparent that not Providence--later Annapolis, or St. Mary's-but Baltimore, was to be the great city of the State, and in many respects destined in later years to be no mean rival of the greatest cities in the Union. With remarkable accuracy, and without any explanation of the discrep ancy, it is stated in Appleton's "New American Cyclopedia," in the article on Maryland, Volume XI., page 249, that "in 1729 Baltimore was laid out," and in the article on Baltimore, Volume II., page 548, just as positively, "On January 12, 1730, a town of sixty acres of land"-it would hardly be of water-" was laid out by the county surveyor and commissioners, west of Jones's Falls, and called Baltimore in honor of Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore." At all events it was not until 1729-30, with probably a little of the work done in both years, that the fates and the powers that be seized hold of the fertile, well-watered, undulating and well-drained acres, at a cost of about ten dollars an acre, and began in official earnest to plant and build the City of Baltimore, now the solid, earnest, thriving Monumental City of the Union; the home of many reconciled national contradictions, possessing a most varied population of black and white, rich and poor, and in many respects the most magnetic and attractive place in our whole country. As early as 1662, a certain Charles Gorsuch, a Quaker, possessing the inevitable "practical turn," might have been seen perambulating the arms of the Patapsco with indications of a thoughtful large planning under his characteristic broadbrim. He patented fifty acres of land on Whetstone Point, opposite the eastern section of the present city; but how much actual labor and improvement in person or by proxy he put into the soil does not as clearly appear. It is an affliction to have such a name as Gorsuch, and of course no part of the acres was ever called after this man. In 1682 a David Jones, more favored of the naming powers, and the first settler on the north side of the harbor, got his name attached to the small stream which now divides Baltimore into "Old Town" and "New Town ;" and as late as 1732, a new town of ten acres, in twenty lots, was "laid out" on the east of Jones's Falls, and called Jonestown, in honor of said David, the first settler. In a few years Mr. Jones had to yield the name, however. Baltimore looked eastward as well as north and west, and in 1745 Jonestown, now represented by the section known as Old Town, fell into the embrace of the more distinguished family name of the Calverts. In 1730 Mr. William Fell, a ship-carpenter of the period, but evidently with ideas beyond the mere work of caulking, and not outraged with an ugly or common name, "purchased a tract" of land east of Jones's Falls, and called it Fell's Point, a name which, under many newer sectional names, the tract still bears. The growth of the city has always been what might be called slow and sure—that is, in comparison with some of our newer Western cities. In 1752 Baltimore contained but twentyfive houses and two hundred inhabitants-really a village with a house here and there on the hills. OLD CONGRESS HALL. Twenty-one years later William Goddard, a printer from Rhode Island, began to publish the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, the first newspaper in Baltimore. To-day the Baltimore American, the outgrowth of Goddard's enterprise, and The Sun rank among the best and most enterprising daily papers in the country, and The News, "the four o'clock News," as the ragged persistent newsboys yell right in your ears on the street and in the horse-cars, within two minutes after the town clock has struck that hour every afternoon,' is a gossipy and spicy vehicle of the large and small talk of Baltimore and the world. Baltimore has several other luminaries of the modern political home and foreign talk and tattle; and if the Sultan of Turkey has the ear-ache, or the President of the United States has made a speech, the residents of the fifth city in the Union know it, and exult or mourn over it as soon as the dwellers in New York or Berlin or London; so perfect in these days are our means for carrying the small talk and small doings of the world. In 1769 a few public-spirited men bought the first fire-engine at a cost of £99, and the same year the first Roman Catholic church was erected on the site now occupied by Calvert Hall, a school of the Redemptorists, on Saratoga street. In the same year that William Goddard began his newspaper, 1773, the Baltimoreans got a line of stage-coaches on the road, rough and rugged enough in those days, between their town and Philadelphia, and gave themselves two or three years ago it was the very last house at the west end. The spot is now in the centre of the business portion of the city. Baltimore is situated on a crooked sort of arm or feeder of the Patapsco River, 14 miles from Chesapeake Bay, 178 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, 38 miles by rail northeast of Washington, 97 miles southwest of Philadelphia, and 185 miles southwest of New York. The approaches to the city by rail are comparatively tame at all seasons of the year, but particularly barren-looking in winter. To the left of the railroad, as you enter, on one of the hills near the city, is the inevitable almshouse. In this instance it has at least the advantage of high ground and such of Nature's breezes as travel that way. WILLIAM KNABE & Co.'s PIANO FACTORY. The building itself is a pale, red brick structure, of abundant proportions, but looking like the inmates, a very poor mixture of the "matter and force" of this most serious universe. Before leaping over the city limits, the locomotive is definitely reminded by a placard in black and white, that four miles an hour is the highest speed allowed through the streets; SO the fast traveller days in rickety, hard and jolting old wagons, | of the nineteenth century has to come back to called stages, to accomplish the distance which one gets over in these days, in the richly-cushioned, easy-spring railway coaches of the finely managed Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, in three or four hours. Now, the world does move in that line, without a shadow of doubt. In 1775 Baltimore contained 564 houses and 5,934 inhabitants; to-day, in 1877, the population is something over 270,000. While the British kept possession of Philadelphia in 1776, Baltimore had the honor of being the seat of the National government, the place of meeting being Jacob Fite's building, located southeast corner of Baltimore and Liberty streets. According to John Adams, this temporary "Congress Hall" was in those times owned by "a Quaker, who built it for a tavern." A hundred old stage-coach time as he enters the boundary lines of our progressive temples of Mammon, the cities of these new days. This slow speed gives abundant time to cast one's eyes about, and to become sufficiently impressed with the size and venerableness of the city of the Calverts. Baltimore has a venerable and proud look even in its poorer sections. It is a little stiff and starched looking, too; the feeling that there are several fine old aristocratic names to maintain, apparently getting into the buildings and looking out at you from all the windows and even the stores. Baltimore resembles Boston in general contour, hilliness and appearance, more nearly than any other American city; and in some sections, it has the staid and aged look of such English cities as Liverpool and Manchester. The steam cars of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad escort you to the foot of President street, where the horse cars pick you up, and take you to almost any part of the city you may wish to go. The impression one gets on entering Baltimore is that it is, as the facts prove, a city of considerable commercial importance. The shipping being massed in a bay, is more impressive to the eye than the same number of vessels would be if extended along lengthy river fronts, as in New York and Philadelphia. As it were in the midst of the countless masts of ships, two or three enormous grainelevators lift their huge proportions, indicating that Baltimore seeks and holds a fair portion of that traffic which binds the prairies of the Western States to all the cities and homes of the Old World. Thus, even to the eye of the ordinary traveller, the harbor and its surroundings offer palpable evidence that Baltimore is a city of no mean standing and destiny. The bare reference to the annual statistics of its shipping and railroad Eusiness will confirm this impression, and show conclusively how steadily this city of the South is growing in all the material prosperity of the times. The following statistics of shipping, flour and grain receipts, etc., for the month of February, 1877, are worthy of perusal : 11, schooners 10; of which 34 brought cargoes, and 16 were under the American flag. The principal articles imported were 1,219 hogsheads, 74 tierces, 5,531 bags and 69 barrels sugar; 875 hogs MOUNT VERNON PLACE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. There were 90 vessels arrived from foreign ports, viz: Steamships 5, ships 4, barks 60, brigs heads melado; 29,745 bags coffee; 15,260 boxes oranges; 2,525 boxes lemons; 1,296 tons, 5,964 sacks, 17,956 bushels salt; 1,270 tons iron ore; 370 barrels vinegar; 15,595 boxes tin-plates; 1,900 tons guano; 570 tons brimstone; 65 blocks Italian marble; 190 tons chalk; together with chemicals, glass, earthen- and iron-ware, etc., brought in steamships and sailing vessels. There were 122 vessels cleared for foreign ports, all with cargoes, viz: Steamships 6, ships 4, barks 85, brigs 15, schooners 12. The principal articles exported were 2,434,494 bushels corn, against 1,413,035 bushels in January; 37,117 bushels wheat, 37,927 barrels flour, 1,308,712 gallons petroleum, 708,079 pounds lard, 601,099 pounds bacon; 2,108 hogsheads, 1,536 cases, 30,000 pounds tobacco; 815 hogsheads tobacco stems, 5,774 bags bark, 1,020 sacks clover seed, 152 rolls leather, 2,179 bales cotton, 3,373 tuns coal, together with miscellaneous products. Total value of exports, $2,839,627. fully defended against the imprudent British. The event is mainly memorable, however, from the fact that on this occasion Francis S. Key, while a prisoner on board one of the British vessels (the historians do not tell us which vessel), but on an actual British-oak ship, then in Baltimore Bay, his patriotic soul chafing under captivity, and his eyes straining, peering out of such ship's hole as they put him in, did under most trying circumstances, compose our famous song, "the Star-Spangled Banner," the sole national hymn of any force and fire that the patriotic Muse has inspired and given us, even down to these days. "The Star-Spangled Banner," I mean the song, is worth the war and all the men who died in it, and it does seem that to bring forth such flaming snatches of soul-fire, the birthpangs and general agonies of peace and war are permitted in this world. At all events this pri soner Key and his burst of song are almost the 6,848 sole surviving, actual and commanding heroisms that are left to us from those days; and if the days ever come when men will be really sane, to say nothing of Christian, will they not turn Fort McHenry into a monument to this port prisoner, spike its guns and devote its expenses, say to national music or some culture of the mind? The comparative receipts of grain for the months of February, 1876 and 1877, were as follows: Rye. Oats. 420,098 28,962 February, 1876. Increase. Lt. Pt. C'n Ml. 10,119 3,636 2,295 333 8,244 1,979 1,341 Southern coastwise trade was in the usual volume, exports comprising groceries, provisions, dry goods, etc., and imports including cotton, naval stores, lumber, tobacco, etc. Receipts for duties in coin at the custom-house were $284,518.45, and from all sources $298,456.02. Another side of our "modern Christian civilization" is well represented by Fort McHenry, situated on a point of land between the harbor and the Patapsco. Here, in 1814, the English Britishers and the American Britishers (for there was hardly time in those days for real Americans to be born) felt called upon to pound and pepper each other with cannon-balls and red-hot shot, over the trifling questions that lay at the bottom of what is known as the War of 1812. The fort was bravely commanded, in those days, by a Colonel Armistead, otherwise, like other millions of his fellows, long since forgotten; and was success Many years afterwards Edgar Allen Poe wrote some beautiful, and many weird and ghastly verses here, laboring under the influence of quite another bondage, not so noble or ennobling, as that of Key; but the Muse still hovers over the spot. Not to speak of the many tootings and fifings of amateur Baltimore poets of the male and female persuasion, the city has given us in these days Mr. Sidney Lanier, one of the special pets of a Philadelphia cotemporary-a most irregular, fanciful, sentimental, extravagant and grandiloquent kind of poet, who has written Centennial cantatas, and much else of the same sort, in these last three or four years; a man of considerable, real poetic feeling; a sort of combination of some of the features of Milton and Swinburne, without the dignity of the one or the genius and culture of the other—a poet such as the literary editor of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin can praise extravagantly, which is not saying the most compli mentary thing in the world. By a necessary law of the American continent, Baltimore, like most of our cities, grows mainly from east to west and from south to north. It is |