"So long as a man rides his hobby-horse peaceably and quietly along the king's highway, and neither compels you nor me to get up behind him, pray, sir, what have either you or I to do with it?"-TRISTAM SHANDY, chap. vii.

"But what shall we do, when he not only forces us to get up behind him, but makes us pay for the ride?"-CITIZEN'S CURRENT INQUIRY.

It was a lovely summer morning, in the old days of peace. A cloudless blue sky bent over the glittering metropolis-a bright sun flooded its busy streets with splendor-and a gentle wind made music in the trees that grace its parks and causeways. The haunts, alike of labor and of pleasure, were already thronged. Up and down Broadway and the Avenues, surged the customary tide of human beings. Horse-cars rumbled and jingled along their various tracks, and stages, carriages,

carts, and drays added volume and variety to the din of city life. All was light-activity-animation.

Especially in the City Hall Park!

There were no soldiers then in that verdurous region; nor barracks, nor recruiting tents, nor hospitals, nor artillery, nor vestiges of the "circumstance of glorious war." But the peaceful grass grew there untrampled, and birds flitted from tree to tree; and the fountain, which Mr. N. P. Willis has commemorated in song, played away in the cool and sparkling fashion peculiar to fountains; and the baked Jersey mud statue of General Washington-erected by a considerate posterity for the accommodation of the sculptor-gazed placidly at the City Hall, or seemed to smile upon the comfortable enterprise of those youthful Bohemians who thrive by polishing the boots of respectability. A scene of pastoral innocence and beauty!

Amidst that scene, and near the base of that imposing monument, there stood, on the lovely morning previously referred to, a man. He was wrapped in profound thought-and in seedy garments. His face was pale, and wore the expression of intellect tempered by timidity. His black clothes, though they had been carefully brushed, presented that glazed appearance which, except, perhaps, in the case of satinet, is the unmistakable evidence of age. His hat was greasy-his boots were soiled with dust. In his right hand he grasped a heavy walking stick in his left, a huge roll of white paper. And so he stood-now glancing at the City Hall clock, now at the stately edifice, towards the south-east, whence issue, daily and weekly, so many organs of public opinion, in the shape of newspapers.

He had waited there already during nearly two hours-a spectacle of superfluous patience, exciting the suspicion of neighboring police officers, and stirring up the ire of contiguous apple-women. For he seemed to have no legitimate calling, and he certainly bought no apples. Nor did he incline the ear of attention to the tattered youths who repeatedly said to him, "blag yer boots." The seedy man was plainly pre-occupied, and intent on serious things.

At length, as the bell tolled the hour of ten, the stranger emerged from his reverie, walked rapidly from the Washington statue, and disappeared within the principal edifice of Printing House Square.Let us follow his footsteps.

We shall find him in a spacious and handsome office, adorned with a large library, and with pictures, chiefly of a marine character. A close examination of the library would disclose many books of a scientific kind, such as "Mariotte's Law" and "Isherwood's Engineering Precedents;" and mingled with these, divers volumes of poetry and