One sight I beheld in London which made me look up with rejoicing, which made me think "that old Ygdrasil is still budding." This was the so-called metropolitan buildings; a structure of many homes in one great mass of building, erected by a society of enlightened men for the use of the poorer working class, to provide respectable families of that class with excellent dwellings at a reasonable rate, where they might possess that which is of the most indispensable importance to the rich, as well as to the poor, if they are to enjoy health both of body and soul--light, air, and water, pure as God created them for the use of mankind. The sight of these homes, and of the families that inhabited them, as well as of the newly-erected extensive public baths and wash-houses for the same class, together with the assurance that these institutions already, in the second year of their establishment, returned more than full interest to their projectors, produced the happiest impression which I at this time received of England. These were to me as the seed of the future, which gave the promise of verdant shoots in the old tree. Nevertheless, when I left the shores of England, and saw thick autumnal fog enveloping them, it was with a sorrowful feeling for the OLD world; and with an inquiring glance of longing and hope, I turned myself to the NEW. Two years passed on--a sun-bright, glowing dream, full of the vigor of life!--it was again autumn, and I was again in England. Autumn met me there with cold, and rain, and tempest, with the most horrible weather that can be imagined, and such as I had never seen on the other side of the globe. But in social life, every where throughout the mental atmosphere, a different spirit prevailed. There, I perceived with astonishment and joy, there it was that of spring. Free-trade had borne fruit, and under its banners manufacture and trade had shot forth into new life; the price of all kinds of grain had fallen, bread had become cheap. This tree of liberty, planted by Cobden and Peel, had, with a strong and vigorous vitality, penetrated, as it were, the life of the English people, and I heard on every hand the soughing of its leaves in the free wind. The Crystal Palace was its full-blown, magnificent blossom--and like swarms of rejoicing bees flew the human throng upon the wings of steam, backward and forward, to the great world's blossom; there all the nations met together, there all manufactures, there all industry, and every kind of product unfolded their flowers for the observation and the joy of all ... a Cactus grandiflora, such as the world had never till then seen.