They belong to the greatest country upon earth; they alone enjoy the true blessings of freedom; they alone understand the dignity of labour and the spirit of in-dependence; and they have made up their minds kindly but firmly that you shall not forget it. Thus you carry away from New York a memory of a lively air, gigantic buildings, incessant movement, sporadic elegance, and ingenuous patronage. And when you have separated your impressions, the most vivid and constant impression that remains is of a city where the means of life conquer life itself, whose citizens die hourly of the rage to live. BOSTON. America, the country of contrasts, can show none more sudden or striking than that between New York and Boston. In New York progress and convenience reach their zenith. A short journey carries you back into the England of the eighteenth century. The traveller, lately puzzled by overhead railways and awed by the immensity of sky-scrapers, no sooner reaches Boston than he finds himself once more in a familiar environment. The wayward simplicity of the city has little in common with the New World. Its streets are not mere hollow tubes, through which financiers may be hastily precipitated to their quest for gold. They wind and twist like the streets in the country towns of England and France. To the old architects of Boston, indeed, a street was something more than a thoroughfare. The houses which flanked it took their places by whim or hazard, and were not compelled to follow a hard immovable line. And so they possess all the beauty which is born of accident and surprise. You turn a corner, and know not what will confront you; you dive down a side street, and are uncertain into what century you will be thrust. Here is the old wooden house, which recalls the first settlers; there the fair red-brick of a later period. And everywhere is the diversity which comes of growth, and which proves that time is a better contriver of effects than the most skilful architect.