New York.] UNION SQUARE. 81 The American Geographical Society and the American Institute are also quartered in this building. A little way to the westward is Washington Square, a park of nearly ten acres, laid out on the site of the old Potter's Field, where over 100,000 human bodies are buried. The University of the City of New York, a building of white marble, in English collegiate architecture, occupies part of one side of the square, and has a venerable antiquity of fifty years, and a roll of nearly six hundred students. The Union Theological Seminary is in the vicinity, and is a famous school where Presbyterian youth are prepared for the office of the ministry, in one of the ugliest buildings in New York. The library consists of 35,000 volumes, with countless pamphlets and valuable MSS. and incunabula. On the eastward, near St. Mark's-in-the-Bowerie, stands the yellow sandstone building owned by the New York Historical Society, and containing a great number of rare curiosities, the Abbott Collection of Egyptian antiquities (1,100 pieces), the Lenox Collection of Assyrian sculptures, and a picture-gallery of over 600 paintings. If the pictures be all genuine and authentic (which they probably are not), this collection may make some show of competing with many European galleries, for it contains compositions attributed to Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Murillo, Velasquez, Guido, Cimabue, Leonardo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and almost every other painter famous in the history of British and Continental art. There are also fifty-seven pieces of valuable statuary; and the society's library contains 64,000 volumes, chiefly Americana and local histories. Union Square is on the line of Broadway, and is a very pleasant miniature park of three acres or so, with green trees and grass, and surrounded by broad plazas, over which tower immense hotels, and the head-quarters of the great sewing-machine companies. This locality, now so brilliant and active, was anciently known as The Forks, and in 1831 the city council voted to lay it out like the Place Vendôme. Fifteen years later, it was the fashionable residence quarter; but the march of trade up town has driven out the old patrician families, and left the square to the use of the money-changers. The colossal equestrian statue of General Washington is one of the finest works of art in the city; and on the other side of the square stands a bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln; while a statue of Lafayette, designed by Bartholdi, adorns a contiguous corner. The park is oval in form, with a murmuring fountain in the centre, surrounded by scores of lamps, and many seats for the accommodation of the people. The permanent population is composed of a large and noisy colony of English sparrows, very tame and audacious, who were imported for the purpose of ridding the trees of worms. The wide plaza at the upper end has become a favourite locality for military reviews and great out-door meetings of the people. Not far from Union Square are two verdant little parks, Stuyvesant and Gramercy, which are surrounded by the residences of some of the oldest and most honoured families of the city, bearing names which are household words in America. St. George's Churcha great Gothic building of brown-stone, with twin spires 245 feet high, and withal the citadel of the Low-Church Episcopalians of New York-fronts on Stuyvesant Square. All Souls Unitarian Church is located in this district, and presents a somewhat singular appearance, with its alternate bands of red and white stone, resembling in many respects the mediæval cathedrals of Tuscany. The Tammany Society has its head-quarters near Union Square, in a spacious building constructed for the purpose. It happened that at the close of the Revolutionary War the officers of the American army, encamped on the Hudson river, formed an association called the Society of the Cincinnati, to be perpetuated (as it still is) among their descendants as a patrician and patriotic order. Reacting against the aristocratic tendency of this association, a large number of gentlemen formed the Benevolent Society of St. Tammany (named in honour of an ancient Indian chieftain), which has in later years become the central power and controller of the Democratic party in the State of New York, and one of the most potent political organisations in the Republic. The meetings held in the hall are often of the stormiest and most turbulent character. The great dry-goods shops are in this vicinity, and attract thousands of ladies every fair day. The largest of these establishments is that of A. T. Stewart and Co., which is often called the greatest retail store in the world. It is an enormous building of iron and glass, five storeys high, with fifteen acres of flooring, and 2,000 employés. The sales average £12,000 a day. In the same district are several of the chief places of amusement, foremost among which is the Academy of Music, the Opera-House of New York, where many a famous prima donna has made her first appearance before admiring and uncritical American audiences. Wallack's and the Union Square Theatres are also hereabouts, and draw large and brilliant audiences. Steinway Hall and Chickering Hall, pertaining to rival firms of piano-makers, are near by, and gather many audiences of cultivated people to listen to musical entertainments and lectures. The New York Hospital is a large new building, six storeys high, just off the square, sumptuously furnished and equipped, and accommodating 150 invalids; charging the wellto-do from £1 8s. to £10 a week, and receiving the penniless poor freely, for sweet charity's sake. The society which owns and conducts this institution was chartered by King George III. in 1771. A long way across town is Bellevue Hospital, a municipal charity with 800 beds, conducted at a cost to the city of £20,000 a year. The vicinity of Madison Square-another bright little park opening off Broadway, six blocks above Union Square-is full of interest, and forms one of the favourite regions for promenading and sight-seeing. The Fifth Avenue Hotel, the Hoffman, the Brunswick, and other immense hotels front on the square; and several of the chief clubs of the city have their houses in the same neighbourhood. The square is adorned by a bronze statue of William H. Seward, the head of the American Cabinet during the perilous era of the Secession War; and also by a granite obelisk erected in honour of Gen. Worth, a hero of the war with Mexico. Among the fashionable clubs in this quarter are the St. Nicholas, comprising 200 gentlemen of old New York families, mostly of Dutch origin and names, devoted to social pleasures and historical researches; the Union League, with 1,500 members, the head-quarters of the Republican party in New York, and very rich and powerful; the Manhattan, with 400 members, pledged to advance the principles of the Democratic party; the Lotos, consisting of 300 gentlemen devoted to art, literature, the stage, and the learned professions; the Century, having 600 members, in Fifteenth Street, a Conservative New York.] BOOTH'S THEATRE. 83 literary and æsthetic organisation; the Army and Navy, comprising 400 officers and exofficers of the regular and volunteer armies and the militia; the Knickerbocker, with 500 members, a very exclusive organisation; the New York, a fashionable club in Madison Square; the University, consisting of 500 gentlemen of liberal education; the Union, with 1,000 members, a very wealthy and aristocratic society; and the Bullion, with 145 members, devoted to the development of American mining. The Caledonian, famous for Scottish athletic games, in Thirteenth Street; the Philharmonic and Liederkranz, composed of musical people, and many other minor clubs also flourish in this region. Near Madison Square, also, are the famous restaurants, which leave nothing to be desired, of the Trois Frères Provençaux and the Café Anglais. Delmonico's and the Hôtel Brunswick afford ménus as varied and tempting as the fondest fancy of a modern Epicurus could imagine, served in marble halls between frescoed walls, stained-glass windows, fountains, flowers, crystal candelabra, and furniture of the richest and quietest character. In adjacent streets are several large Italian and French restaurants, famous for their table d'hôte dinners, with wines, where actors, artists, and journalists find congenial resorts. A little way toward the Hudson river stand several interesting structures. Here is Booth's Theatre, one of the finest in the country, founded by Edwin Booth, the great tragedian, and for a long time devoted to the revival of Shaksperean plays. It accommodates nearly as many auditors as old Drury Lane itself. On the opposite corner is the Masonic Temple, a ponderous granite building which cost more than £200,000, and is occupied by all manner of lodge-rooms, grand lodges, and other mysterious chambers. The gentlemen bearing pompous and anachronistic titles who hold conclave here exhibit a divine method in their madness, for the order of Masons is one of the most wise and generous of the philanthropies of America, and all the revenues of this costly temple are set apart for ever as a fund for the support of the needy widows and orphans of their brethren. The Grand Opera House is in this district, and has the largest auditorium in the city, but is so far isolated in an unfashionable street that performances of a high grade are not profitable, and the stage is usually occupied by spicily-flavoured sensational and spectacular pieces. This was one of the many enterprises of the notorious speculator and adventurer, Colonel Jim Fisk, whose main object in the venture seemed to be that he might have free admission to the green-room and behind the scenes. It was perhaps natural that he should be shot to death in a discreditable quarrel. A little farther out is the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, richly endowed and highly flourishing, and occupying several plain stone buildings in a verdure-clad park. A majority of the churches of New York are of this ancient denomination, and a tolerant and peaceful Episcopal jurisdiction seems to allow the widest liberty among them, from the ultra-ritualistic medieval services at St. Alban's and St. Mary the Virgin's down to the severe simplicity and Methodistic plainness of St. George's. There are several small diocesan institutions for the education of the clergy elsewhere, but the General Seminary is the chief source of supply for the entire American Episcopal Church and missions, composed of 62 bishops, 3,200 clergymen, and 324,995 communicants. The National Academy of Design is to the United States what the Royal Academy is to Great Britain, including in its membership the foremost of American artists, and instructing several schools and classes of students in the principles and practice of art. The home of the National Academy is in Fourth Avenue, near Madison Square, and in its artistic beauty is worthy of the associations which have already begun to cluster around it. The principal material used in the construction is marble, grey and white, and the style is the Gothic of the twelfth century; so that amid these staring modern streets, above the tinkling horse-cars, and over against high-towering piles of Americanised French. Renaissance, rises this dainty little Venetian palace, rather spick-and-span, to be sure, and without the hallowing stains of the sea and of the centuries, but sacred to the glories of a divine art. Whoever shall enter at its rich and elaborate portal, in the spring season and early summer, may find in the galleries hundreds of glowing canvases by the New World artists, the winter's harvest from the studios, concentrated in the annual exhibitions. The Suydam Collection is kept here permanently, and includes many brilliant and select landscapes from American easels, besides a few pictures of the modern French school, and an alleged Correggio. As in London also, there is a rival organisation, the Society of American Artists, largely made up of artists of the Munich school of painting. The American Water-Colour Society, now composed of sixty-five members, holds exhibitions every spring in the Academy galleries. Opposite the National Academy stands the enormous Renaissance building of the Young Men's Christian Association, constructed of brown and yellow sandstone, five storeys high, and with long and ornate façades on two streets. To the stranger in New York, belonging to the Evangelical section of the Church, this institution affords, without cost and without need of introduction, something of the comforts which the great clubs give to the cosmopolitan traveller with high credentials. The parlours, library, reading-rooms, music-room, and other pleasant conveniences are free to all who care to use them, and in a manner quite fraternal, and not in the least perfunctory. A similar institution for young women, in Fifteenth Street, provides the working girls of the metropolis with free readingrooms, libraries, classes in sundry branches of study, lectures, concerts, and protection in various ways. Madison Square is three miles from the Battery; and Broadway, emerging from its upper corner, runs for two miles in a rather irregular diagonal across the line of the avenues, through a region of shops, apartment-hotels, churches, and houses, to Central Park, where the most vexed and crowded and trampled street in the world happily loses itself among the delicious lawns and the shadowy trees. The Faubourg St. Germain of America is the region included between Lexington Avenue and Sixth Avenue, Madison Square and Central Park, a district about half a mile wide, and a mile and a half long. Here dwell the Croesuses of New Amsterdam, the old patrician families, the less-old aristocrats, the new-rich-the descendants of the De Peysters and Livingstons, as well as the recently-crowned petroleum and railway princes. Lexington Avenue, Madison Avenue, above all the famous Fifth Avenue, and the thirtyfive streets which join them, are crowded with the homes of the men who make their fortunes in the busy whirl towards Wall Street and the Battery. Enormous as the |