river. From this stream an aqueduct of stone, brick, and cement descends to New York, carrying 115,000,000 gallons of water daily, and filling the great reservoirs in the Park and the huge old Distributing Reservoir, in heavy Egyptian architecture, built on Murray Hill (Fifth Avenue). There are over 400 miles of iron mains under the streets, distributing water to the houses, the daily consumption being 95,000,000 gallons. The works were begun in 1842, and have cost more than £5,000,000. The deep and picturesque defile of the Harlem river, within the city limits, is crossed by the High Bridge, a magnificent granite aqueduct, 124 feet high and 1,460 feet long, on thirteen arches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was chartered in the year 1870, and occupied its present spacious quarters in 1880. This edifice, erected by the city, stands in Central Park, near the Fifth Avenue, and is of brick and sandstone, in Gothic architecture. The plans are recorded by which this shall become an integral part of a vast pile of buildings, covering an area of several acres, and devoted to the uses of the Museum. There are several large and small picture-galleries, the chief of which, lighted from an arched roof of glass, is 109 feet long and 95 feet wide. The ancient pictures here preserved, numbering over 200, are mainly of the German and Dutch schools of art-Rubens, Van Dyck, and others-with a few French, English, and Italian pictures, and specimens of Murillo and Velasquez. Many American pictures may also be seen, including an inchoate collection of works by deceased artists. There are large numbers of paintings owned by wealthy gentlemen of New York, which are from time to time sent to the Museum, and hung in the galleries of the loan collection, for the people to study and admire. The chief feature of the institution, however, is the Cesnola Collection of antiquities, found in the ruined cities and tombs of Cyprus, including 4,000 pieces of terra-cotta ware, 1,700 pieces of Greek and Phoenician glass-ware, numerous bits of gold and silver jewellery and ornaments, and several thousand other articles-statuettes, copper utensils, lamps, weapons, and various votive and mortuary pieces. General di Cesnola, an Italian noble, who fought in the American National Army during the war of 1861-5, was sent out as consul to Larnaka, Cyprus, in 1865. During the next seven years he superintended extensive excavations on the sites of the ancient Greek and Phoenician cities, Idalium, Paphos, Citium, and Golgos, from which he unearthed the materials of this collection. The British Museum and the young Metropolitan Museum competed for the prize, and the latter was the winner. Various other collections and curiosities are displayed here, and the sphere of the enterprise is continually widening. Visitors are admitted without charge on four days of each week.

Cleopatra's Needle, a monolithic obelisk, the companion to the one now in London, a work coëval with Moses, and now 3,400 years old, was presented by Ismail Pasha to the city of New York in 1877, and carried from Alexandria to its new home three years later, in the hold of an Egyptian steamer. It stands upon a rocky knoll in Central Park, near the Museum of Art, where its ancient inscriptions, far antedating the arts of Greece and the legions of Rome, look down upon the noisy civilisation of the New World in strongest contrast. This was one of the twin obelisks set up by King Thothmes III. before the Temple of the Sun-god, at Heliopolis, and which were brought down to Alexandria during the domination of the Romans.

New York.]

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

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The American Museum of Natural History, incorporated in 1869, occupies one wing of a future great pile of buildings nearly opposite the Museum of Art, across the Park. The corner-stone of the structure was laid by President Grant, in 1874; and the work was finished late in 1877, when the rich collections

animals, marbles and building stones, specimens of wood, and wax fruits. The second storey is devoted to mounted birds, arranged in geographical order, and to archæological curiosities, including the Squier Collection from the Mississippi Valley, the De Morgan Collection of stone implements from the Valley of the Somme (France), the Bement Collection from the stone age of Denmark, and extensive lines of antiquities from the Swiss lake-dwellings, the islands of the Pacific, and the Indians of the prairies and the Rocky Mountains. The third storey is devoted to geological specimens; and the fourth storey is divided into small

rooms for work and study, with the idea that these rich collections may offer opportunities for careful and fruitful research on the part of scholars and specialists. The situation of the two museums, on the edge of the beautiful Central Park, in a high and quiet part of the city, and in close contiguity to restful and attractive rambles, is all that could be desired; but the architecture of the buildings themselves is far from being worthy of the locality. When the plans are all carried out, however, they will be imposing from their very mass, and meantime kindly ivy and shubbery may mitigate the angularity of the structures as they now exist.

The region bordering on Central Park is becoming the most fashionable and aristocratic quarter of the city, as its streets afford fine opportunities for architectural effects, and are on high and healthy ground. Here and there, palatial buildings are being erected fronting on the Park, and the price of real estate advances rapidly and without reaction. Between the Park and the rivers, on either side, there are several large and notable institutions, built with generous dimensions, in wide and airy spaces. The Roosevelt Hospital, a highly ornate structure on the pavilion plan, accommodates 180 patients, and receives the poor without charge. The Presbyterian Hospital, a handsome Gothic building which Mr. James Lenox endowed with £100,000, lifts its cluster of spires not far from the lake in the Park. The Mount Sinai Hospital, erected by the Hebrews, is a spacious pile of buildings in Elizabethan architecture, erected at a cost of about £70,000. Among the other palaces of charity with which this region abounds, are many which to name is to define the Baptist Old Ladies' Home, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, St. Luke's Home for Indigent Females, the Coloured Home, the German Hospital, the Shepherd's Fold, the Magdalen Benevolent Institution, St. Luke's Hospital, the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, the Juvenile Asylum, and several others, bearing witness that the love of God and humanity is a mighty power, even amid the tremendous ambitions, rivalries, and secular activities of New York.

The Lenox Library fronts on the Park, near the Casino, and is a very spacious and massive new structure of bright-coloured limestone, in the modern French architecture, with projecting wings which form an enclosed court. The land and building, which cost over £200,000, a permanent fund of £50,000, and the precious collections of literature and art were given to the people by the late Mr. James Lenox. The library contains 30,000 volumes, including a great number of block-books, incunabula, MSS., and other literary treasures, back as far as the twelfth century. The picture-gallery has about 150 paintings, including Turners, Reynoldses, Wilkies, Leslies, works of the old Continental masters, and Munkacsy's "Milton Dictating 'Paradise Lost,"" the finest picture in the Paris Exposition of 1878.

The Normal College, for the education of teachers, stands in this vicinity, and is the most thorough and best-equipped institution of the kind throughout America, having been erected at a cost of £70,000. The ecclesiastical architecture of the building gives it the appearance of a wealthy nunnery, but the halls within are the scenes of very practical and intense nineteenth-century work. The free public schools of New York entail on the city an expense of over £600,000 a year, and contain 3,300 teachers and 265,000 pupils; besides which there are hundreds of private and parochial schools, caring for a large additional

Brooklyn.]

THE CHIEF SUBURB OF NEW YORK.

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number. Attendance at school is made compulsory by law for all children between eight and fourteen years old; and the evening schools, with 20,000 pupils, the industrial schools, and the nautical school provide for various special classes.

The armoury of the 7th Regiment, National Guard, occupies an entire square east of the Park, with a large new building of brick and granite, affluent in towers, and completed in 1879, at a cost of £60,000. The 7th is the "crack" militia organisation of the city, and includes in its ranks nearly a thousand young men of property and family. The First Division of New York Militia, a well-drilled and finely-equipped organisation of nearly 7,000 men, is composed of citizens of Manhattan Island, divided into nine regiments of infantry, one regiment of cavalry, and three batteries of artillery. The old Scottish and French regiments (79th and 55th) have been disbanded, but there remain two infantry regiments (5th and 11th) of Germans and one (69th) of Irish, while all the cavalry and artillery are Germans. These troops, many of whom are veterans of scores of battles, are the main reliance of the authorities in times of domestic disorders, the Orange riots, and dangerous strikes, and at once arouse confidence in the minds of law-abiding citizens, and terror in those of the rioters and enemies of the fixed order of things. The rifle-range of the National Rifle Association, at Creedmoor, fourteen miles from the city, is occupied by the militia several times a year, in order to improve their efficiency at arms.

On the upper part of the island is the large suburb of Harlem, beyond the picturesque rocky heights of Mount Morris Park; Manhattanville, the seat of the great Gothic convent and schools of the Sacred Heart, and Manhattan College, conducted by the Christian Brothers; Audubon Park, on the estate formerly owned by Audubon, the naturalist; Fort Washington, on heights 238 feet above the sea, where Lord Percy, with the Black Watch, the Grenadiers, and other British and German troops, defeated and captured 2,600 American troops in 1776; Carmansville, near several ancient seigniorial mansions; and Inwood, at the mouth of the Spuyten Duyvil. There are several summer hotels and great asylums on these breezy heights; and in Trinity Cemetery repose the remains of Bishops Wainwright and Onderdonk; Philip Livingston, the statesman; Audubon, the artist-naturalist; and John Jacob Astor, the merchant-prince. Beyond the Harlem river are the picturesque rolling ridges of the lately-annexed towns of Westchester County, between the Bronx river and the Hudson, with dozens of bright little villages in their valleys and on the high plains. Here are several points of interest to the citizen-Jerome Park, the head-quarters of the American Jockey Club, and the most famous race-course in the United States; the Mother House of the Sisters of Charity, and the Academy of Mount St. Vincent; St. John's College, a Jesuit school with over 200 students; and Woodlawn Cemetery, covering 400 acres, and reached by funeral trains on the Harlem Railway.

BROOKLYN

is the chief suburb of New York, from which it is separated only by a narrow strait. Incorporated as a city, covering an area of twenty-one miles, and with a population of 566,689, Brooklyn is so far mediatised by New York that it still preserves many of the interests and much of the quietude of a provincial town, and is almost devoid of mercantile affairs, except on its long shore-line and up the busy artery of Fulton Street. The Huguenots were the first

settlers on the Breucklen (Broken Land); and a majority of its citizens of the better classes are immigrants from New England and their descendants, who give a conservative tone to the public sentiment which is developed here. In 1776 the great battle of Long Island was fought, on these now populous hills, when 27,000 American soldiers were defeated by a smaller but better-disciplined army of British and German troops, whose leader, General William Howe, was knighted for his victory. The Americans lost 1,650 men, and the city of New York; and the entire army would have been destroyed but for General Howe's indolence and sluggishness. During the remainder of the war, the Americans captured by the royal armies were confined in prison-ships, moored off the Brooklyn shore, and 11,500 of these unfortunates died in their captivity.

The chief reason for Brooklyn's existence is that it is an annexe to New York, a convenient and comfortable place where scores of thousands of men who work in the great hive across the river keep their families and their homes. The immense Atlantic Docks and Erie and Brooklyn Basins, on the southern water-front, and the United States Navy-Yard, the chief naval station of the Republic, with the petroleum refineries and lumber-yards beyond the northern water-front, give employment to small armies of labourers; but above them, on the Heights and the broad plateau beyond, stretch leagues on leagues of quiet residence-streets. It has been said that Brooklyn has fewer hotels and more fine churches, in proportion to its population, than any other American city, whence its popular title of "The City of Churches." Of the 250 churches in Brooklyn, the most famous is the plain brick structure, seating nearly 3,000 auditors, where Henry Ward Beecher has preached for many years. The Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity is the handsomest in the city, being a graceful Gothic building of brown-stone, with a spire 275 feet high, and rich stained windows. Then there are Talmage's Tabernacle, an amphitheatre seating 3,000 persons; St. Ann's-on-the-Heights, an ornate Anglican church; two or three handsome Dutch Reformed churches; and the slowly rising walls of an immense Roman Catholic Cathedral.

The public buildings include the City Hall, an Ionic white marble structure, with a tall tower upholding an illuminated clock; the Court House, also of marble, with a rich Corinthian portico and a lofty dome; the Academy of Music and the Academy of Design, adjoining each other, and dedicated to amusements and to art exhibitions; the Long Island Historical Society's house, a costly building containing a large library and museum; and the Mercantile Library, a Gothic edifice enshrining about 60,000 books. In its ring government and municipal corruption, its acrimonious politics, and its public institutions, Brooklyn follows afar off the example of New York, but in the same line. If we seek further analogies, Lower Fulton Street is the Broadway, Clinton Street the Fifth Avenue, and Myrtle Avenue the Bowery of the Puritan suburb.

But Brooklyn has two possessions in which she claims pre-eminence, namely, Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery. The first covers 550 acres, and is richly endowed with gardens and lawns, lakes and reservoirs, roads and paths, arches and observatories, fountains and statuary. There are graceful rolling hills, broad meadows, and groves of ancient trees on all sides, and the élite and canaille of the city find equal enjoyment in its pure air and beautiful scenery. The Lookout Carriage Concourse, nearly a mile around, is on a hill