Rome is a city of palaces, monuments, and churches, that have already resisted centuries; New York, one of architectural expedients, that die off in their generations, like men. The Roman is proud of his birth-place, proud of the past, satisfied with the present, proud of being able to trace his blood up to some consul perhaps. In New York, so little is ancestry, deeds, or any thing but money esteemed, that nearly half of her inhabitants, so far from valuing themselves on family, or historical recollections, or glorious acts, scarcely know to what nation they properly belong. While the descendants of those who first dwelt on the Palatine cling to their histories and traditions with an affection as fresh as if the events were of yesterday, the earth probably does not contain a community in which the social relations, so far as they are connected with any thing beyond direct and obvious interests, set so loosely as on that of New York. “Which of these two people is the happiest,” I said to myself, as my eye roamed over the tale-fraught view; “they who dream away existence in these recollections, or they who are so eager for the present as to compress the past and the future into the day, and live only to boast, at night, that they are richer than when the sun rose on them in the morning?” The question is not easily answered; though I would a thousand times rather that my own lot had been cast in Rome, than in New York, or in any other mere trading town that ever existed. As for the city of New York, I would “rather be a dog and bay the moon, than such a Roman.” The Roman despises the Yankee, and the Yankee despises the Roman;—one, because the other is nothing but a man who thinks only of the interests of the day; and this, because that never seems to think of them at all. The people of the Eternal City are a fragment of the descendants of those who, on this precise spot, once ruled the world; of men surrounded by remains that prove the greatness of their forefathers; of those to whom lofty feelings have descended in traditions, and who, if they do not rise to the level of the past themselves, do not cease to hold it in remembrance: while the great emporium of the West is a congregation of adventurers, collected from the four quarters of the earth, that have shaken loose every tie of birth-place, every sentiment of nationality or of historical connexion; that know nothing of any traditions except those, which speak of the Whittingtons of the hour, and care less for any greatness but that which is derived from the largeness of inventories. The first are often absurd, by confounding the positive with the ideal; while the last never rise far enough above the lowest of human propensities, to come within the influence of any feeling above that which marks a life passed in the constant struggle for inordinate and grasping gain.—“Dollar, dollar, dollar, dollar; lots, lots, lots, lots!”