In Europe, the American contemplates higher conditions of certain things than can be found in his own country. But to such advanced points is that country fast hastening. He meets a thousand objects he would carry home with him, and in almost every department does he see a spirit which he would gladly have transported thither. He is indeed unfortunate who, disliking these political systems, can therefore find nothing to admire in certain noble institutions and forms of life which have grown up beneath them. If in their contemplation, his heart be not expanded with wishes to see a kindred spirit to that which created them, active in his own yet undeveloped land, upon him may foreign travel well be said to have left unwrought one of its best influences.

I happened to be thus reflecting as, on this 25th morning of June, 1836, I, for the first time, ascended the Thames, in the Batavier from Rotterdam. I know not what may be the chief impression on others' minds, when thus approaching and first entering London. Nothing, I know, has so much impressed me, as the grand scale, the enormous magnitude, upon which every thing seems to be done. Within two hours previous to my landing, I had seen at least fifty steamboats, storming down the river, thronged, completely thronged with passengers. Then what multitudes of ships, merchantmen and men of war, momently, for miles and miles, met the eye! As we advanced, upon our left arose the great Greenwich hospital, that

immense repository of broken limbs and naval valor. Upon the right are now those vast works, the East India, the West India, and the London Docks, crowded with vessels, and showing forth, even in the distance, a bewildering wilderness of masts. England is said to be mistress of the sea. One cannot but be assured of her greatness on that element, if he approach the metropolis through the avenue of the river Thames. And yet, the thousands on thousands of vessels, I have this day seen, are but a small part of her maritime power.

Judging from the great number of buildings that lined the river-banks, I expected every moment to land. 'We are yet three miles from the customhouse,' said the helmsman. At length London bridge appeared. Barges, wherries, ships, coal vessels, steamboats of all sizes and shapes, seemed now to be trebly multiplied, all crowded together in the confusion that appeared not more inextricable than hazardous. 'We are here just over the Grand Tunnel,' says a passenger; 'more than forty men are at work, some fifty feet beneath our steamer.' At last we stood in front of the custom-house, itself a stupendous building, and one moreover wherein the traveller learns that if much is here done on a large scale, something is likewise done on a most minute and scrutinizing one.

The custom-house vexations ended, suppose that for curiosity's sake, you at once engage a conveyance to take you a few hours ride through the city. You may, if you like, get into 'Hansom's Patent Safety,'

an easy, cushion-like, one-horse vehicle, the lower part of whose body rises not more than six inches from the ground, and whose driver is perched right over your head. Or far better, you may ascend cabriolet No. 2005. Though upon its outside, under a crown flanked by the royal letters, W. R. you read, 'licensed to carry two persons,' you yet resolve to have the whole interior to yourself. The driver sits at your right hand, on a little seat constructed quite on the outside of the cab, and touches his hat every time he speaks to you.

Passing the lofty fire monument of 1666, you leave the Bank of England and the Exchange upon your right, and enter Cheapside. Here is a crowd in the streets, only to be paralleled by that which you have just left upon the water. Your cab now walks along slowly in a line of carriages, itself between two other lines, moving in the opposite direction. What shouts of drivers! what crying out of pedestrians! what cracking of whips! what rattling of vehicles! Here are cars drawn by dogs, and cars drawn by men; omnibuses with two horses, gigs with one horse, and coaches with four; and every now and then shall you see one of those enormous vehicles, only to be found in London, whose body reminds you of Noah's ark, drawn forward by animals whose stature and prodigious muscular developement proclaim the antediluvian, the veritable horse-mammoth. The confusion seems to be inextricable; and yet this little world of counter and cross interests moves on, slowly to be sure, but yet harmoniously and quite surely.

Now relieved from the crowd, you dart on past St. Paul's Church, pausing just long enough to wonder that any one could ever think of comparing it, discolored as it all is, and hemmed in by common-place buildings, to the isolated beauty and majesty of St. Peter's at Rome. Moving on through Fleet Street and the Strand, you may catch distant glimpses of Blackfriars and Waterloo bridges, among the finest in the world. You now enter Trafalgar Square, and turning by the large Italian Opera House, up Haymarket, you pass through the beautiful crescent, adorned with its hundred and forty cast iron columns, into Regent Street,—a street which after five minutes' observation you pronounce, from the regularity of its architecture, the splendor of its shops, its great breadth, and the gorgeous equipages that are coursing thickly over it, to be the most magnificent you have seen in foreign parts. Bid your cabman drive right ahead. You are thus conducted through Portland Place past the Colosseum. On your right now range those princely mansions, the Chester and Cumberland Terraces, while far away upon the left expands Regent's Park, with its four hundred acres of shrubberies, its beautiful sheet of water, its numerous intersecting paths, themselves shaded by noble English oaks. Under them you see clustering herds of cattle and sheep, the paths are full of promenaders, while here and there appears a villa, to complete a picture of grand and rural beauty, whose tout ensemble can be matched by no similar scene on all

the continent. It seems a noble specimen of the English Park, whereof perchance you have often read, but of which until now your eyes have never judged. Sweeping around it, you pass Hanover Terrace, and Sussex Place, and Clarence Terrace, and Cornwall Terrace, and, more magnificent than all, York Terrace. The designs of all these edifices are grand, and when you have passed them, you seem to have left behind, a city of palaces.

You may now come back to Oxford Street, and though you have travelled some five or six miles, you have found no thinning-out of houses, no less crowding of streets, and you feel that no less tremendous is the rush of life here, than where you this morning commenced your journey near the stairs of the custom-house. Men, women, and children are perpetually on the qui vive. This is certainly no place for loungers. The men with faces that speak of moneys to be made, not merely walk, they run, they rush. The women seemingly embued with the business-enthusiasm, move as if issues momentous depended on their motions. And the children, alas! they have not countenances exuberant with the careless joy of childhood, even they look solemn and calculating, they have the spirit of the day, they already help to carry on the energetic business amidst which they have just been born. How different these scenes from some I have lately left behind me! Imagine this Oxford Street and High Holborn, with their anxious faces and bustling bodies, suddenly trans