Then the American citizen of the world, pitying England, will cross to France, to another country, a new world, and in Paris will breathe more freely as being at last in the metropolis of the globe--always excepting New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, or Chicago, as the case may be. If he opens _Galignani's Guide_, the excellent and well-informed traveller will immediately discover that he is in another romantic city, and that there is something more to see and consider than the bal d'opera, and the Château Rouge; and if some Easy Chair accidentally encountered straying along the Boulevards, or seated at the door of a café, should chance to ask whether the well-informed traveller had ever taken a romantic stroll in Church Street, New York, he would be rewarded with a smile for his admirable humor. By-and-by, after the coffee was drunk and the pipe smoked out, the Easy Chair and his approving Mentor would perhaps stroll about until they came far away from the haunts of to-day to the respectable old Place Louis Quinze. It is always an attractive spot for that well-informed traveller. He looks at it with pensive emotion, and turns warmly to the Easy Chair and says: "How delightful this is! Here dwelt the noblesse! This is the Fifth Avenue--what do I say?--the Murray Hill of old Paris! And now all is gone! Fashion is an emigré. Inquire in the Faubourg St. Germain. What a pity we have nothing of this kind in America." "But we have," replies the Easy Chair. The incredulous well-informed traveller again smiles a mild, melancholy smile at the inscrutable methods of Providence, which has provided no Place Louis Quinze for the Yankees and aborigines. "We certainly have," persists the Easy Chair. "Where, pray?" "Well, Church Street." The reply seems to be beating out a jest very thin; but gradually the Easy Chair contrives to explain. The movement of life in New York is so rapid, fashion and trade sweep from one point to another with such impetuosity, that the romance of changed interest can be enjoyed in the same spot twice or thrice in a lifetime. In older cities, in Paris or London, it is not the individual experience, but history only which covers the change. The gentlemen and dames of the Louis Quinze era do not moralize over the Place from which the glory has departed, but only their descendants. The change is so gradual that it is not within their personal experience. It is a tide that rises and falls once in sixscore years, not in six hours. But the fortunate New-Yorker has his romance making for him while he sleeps. The sorry streets of to-day will disappear within a dozen years, and the instant they are gone, or seen just at the moment of the final lapse, they have passed into the realm of romance.