Syracuse is one of the handsomest cities of the Empire State. The New York Central Railroad passes through the centre of the business section, the locomotives and ordinary traffic sharing the main street in common, in front of the chief hotels and stores, for thus has the town grown up. Just northward, the Erie Canal also goes through the heart of the city, giving on moonlight nights scenes that are almost Venetian. The streets are broad, and ornamental squares are frequent, the chief residential highways--James, Genesee and University Streets--being bordered with imposing dwellings surrounded by extensive grounds. Magnificent trees line the streets and broad lawns stretch back to the dwellings, everything being open to public view, so that in these parts the town is practically a vast park. To the eastward rises University Hill, crowned by the buildings of Syracuse University, a Methodist foundation having eleven hundred students. Holden Observatory adjoins the grand graystone main college building, and from this high hill there is a magnificent view over the city and the oval-shaped lake and its salt marsh border off to the northwest. The southern view is enclosed by the Onondaga highlands, out of which Onondaga Creek comes through a deep and winding valley. Back among these dark blue distant hills still live in pastoral simplicity the remnants of the "Men of the Mountain,"--the Onondagas,--the ruling power of the famous Iroquois Confederation. AUBURN, ITHACA AND CORNELL.