And what amiable visions do you carry away from Chicago besides the majesty of the lake, ever changing in colour and aspect, and the beauty of Lincoln Park? A single memory lingers in my mind. At sunset I saw a black regiment marching along Michigan Avenue,--marching like soldiers; and by its side on the pavement a laughing, shouting mob of negresses danced a triumphant cake-walk. They grinned and sang and chattered in perfect happiness and pride. They showed a frank pleasure in the prowess of their brothers and their friends. But, animated as the spectacle was, there was a sinister element in this joyous clatter. To an English eye it seemed a tragic farce--a veritable _danse macabre_. Unhappy is the city which has no history; and what has Chicago to offer of history or tradition? What has it to tell the traveller? Once she was consumed, though she was not purified, by fire, and she still lives in the recollection. A visitor to a European city goes forth to admire a castle, a cathedral, a gallery of pictures. In Chicago he is asked to wonder at the shapeless residences of "prominent" citizens. And when the present civilisation fades and dies, what will be Chicago's ruins? Neither temple nor tower will be brought to the ground. There will be nothing to show the wandering New Zealander but a broken city, which was a scrap-heap before it was built; and the wandering New Zealander may be forgiven if he proclaim the uselessness of size and progress, if he ask how it has profited a city to buy and sell all the corn in the world, and in its destruction to leave not a wrack of comeliness behind. NEW ENGLAND. If in a country town we find an Inn called New, it is a sure sign of ancientry. The fresh and fragrant name survives the passing centuries. It clings to the falling house long after it has ceased to have an intelligible meaning. Taverns with a nobler sign and more arrogant aspect obscure its simpler merits. But there is a pride in its name, a dignity in its age, which a changing fashion will never destroy. And as it is with Inns, so it is with countries. New is an epithet redolent of antiquity. The province which once was, and is still called, New England, is very old America. It cannot be judged by the standards which are esteemed in New York or Chicago. The broad stream of what is called progress has left it undisturbed in its patient backwater. It recks as little of sky-scrapers as of transportation. Its towns are not ashamed of being villages, and the vanity which it guards is not the vanity of shapeless size, but the rarer vanity of a quiet and decent life.