graving-docks, investigates factories and workshops, drives an engine, or goes deeply into the working of a farm or of a fire brigade, he excites something like enthusiasm, especially if he be discreetly moved to express his feelings of admiration to those around him. It was considered by all the Duke's friends that a banquet at Delmonico's was obligatory, and to the refined taste and discrimination, polished by long experience of many capitals, of "Uncle Sam," to the brilliant originality of Mr. Hurlbut, and to the sober judgment and critical acumen of Mr. Butler Duncan, with the proviso that there were "not to be too many dishes," the task of ordering "a quiet little dinner" at that famous restaurant was confided. What the notion of the _chef_ as to "much or many, more or most," under ordinary circumstances, may have been, it would not be easy to determine, but his inventive genius was confined within the limits of a moderate _menu_, and the result quite justified the reputation of the house in regard to _cuisine_ and cellar. Especially admirable was the arrangement of the table in the cabinet, which was set forth with exquisite flowers and fine fruit. There is no single establishment of the kind in Paris, or in any other city, as far as I know, which can rival Delmonico's new restaurant. It serves the purpose of Willis's Rooms, the London Tavern, the Albion, the Freemasons', and similar establishments in London, for public banquets and breakfasts, civil, military, political, and social; for anniversary convivialities as well as for little dinners and suppers; and of the Café Anglais, Bignon's, Voisin's, &c., in Paris. It is provided with many pretty suites of rooms, and some vast _salons_, with a very large restaurant _à la carte_. It is a blaze of lights and mirrors at night, and there is a _cliquetis_ of steel, plate, and glass, a coming and going of ladies and gentlemen in evening dress, a constant movement and an animation in the corridors and approaches, which make one think that, if they be always in force, New York must be in a state of perpetual festivity and luxurious enjoyment. It should be remarked that the charges are high in comparison with the highest standard with which I am acquainted, and that the _habitués_ should belong to classes to whom money is no object.[3] And yet close at hand there is much poverty, if not absolute misery. The sewerage of streets not far off the Fifth Avenue in all its glory was, we were told, in the worst possible condition, and some of the houses, filled with squalid people packed as they are in the lowest parts of London, were pestilential and poisonous. Some people who do not like Republican Republicanism in power, though they do not object to Democratic Republicans in office, seem inclined to lay the blame of bad sewers, bad air, bad pavements, and bad water on the various Commissioners, the elected of the people, who have charge of such things in the Empire City.