are sometimes associated, astronomers tell us, to form a binary centre in the heavens, for what is doubtless an unseen system receiving from them impulse and light. On a scale not utterly insignificant a parallel may be hereafter suggested in the relation of these combined cities to a part, at least, of our national system. Their attitude and action during the war--successfully closed under the gallant military leadership of men whom we gladly welcome and honor--were of vast advantage to the national cause. The moral, political, intellectual temper which dominates in them as years go on, will touch with beauty or scar with scorching and baleful heats extended regions. Their religious life, as it glows in intensity, or with a faint and failing lustre, will be repeated in answering image from the widening frontier. The beneficence which gives them grace and consecration, and which, as lately, they follow to the grave with universal benediction; or, on the other hand, the selfish ambitions which crowd and crush along their streets, intent only on accumulated wealth and its sumptuous display, or the glittering vices which they accept and set on high--these will make impressions on those who never cross the continent to our homes, to whom our journals are but names. Surely we should not go from this hour, which marks a new era in the history of these cities, and which points to their future indefinite expansion, without the purpose in each of us that so far forth as in us lies, with their increase in numbers, wealth, equipment, shall also proceed, with equal step, their progress in whatever is noblest and best in private and in public life; that all which sets humanity forward shall come in them to ampler endowment, more renowned exhibition; so that, linked together, as hereafter they must be, and seeing 'the purple deepening in their robes of power,' they may be always increasingly conscious of fulfilled obligation to the nation and to God; may make the land, at whose magnificent gateway they stand, their constant debtor, and may contribute their mighty part toward that ultimate perfect human society for which the seer could find no image so meet or majestic as that of a city, coming down from above, its stones laid with fair colors, its foundations with sapphires, its windows of agate, its gates of carbuncles, and all its borders of pleasant stones, with the sovereign promise resplendent above it-- 'And great shall be the peace of thy children.'" The newspapers tendered homage to the leaders of the Bridge movement, and to the guiding minds of the vast mechanical triumph--to John A. Roebling, Washington A. Roebling, Henry C. Murphy, William C. Kingsley, J. S. T. Stranahan, and others who had been prominent in the labors of organization and of execution.