The State Capital has for some time been rather notorious in the matter of corruption. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not aver that the bankers, gentry, merchants, and people of New York State _en bloc_ are corrupt. But it is quite certain that there has been for years established a caucus of wire-pullers at Albany, who influence or profess to influence the votes of the legislature or members of the legislature by the use of money. The community of the Empire City, at the time of our visit, was distracted by the contentions of rival parties, which it would be almost impious in me to attempt to analyse, but as far as we could judge from the accounts in the papers the newly elected mayor, Mr. Grace, a young Irishman who had acquired a considerable fortune in South America, was conducting an arduous investigation into abuses in the matter of street cleaning, police work, and public contracts generally, which had grown up under his predecessors, from which good results were expected by one set of critics, and nothing but evil by an opposite party. "The Augean stable," shouted some, "was to be cleansed out thoroughly." "This," said others, "is but a desperate rush of a new set of people on the public purse." Above these cries was to be heard the muttering of the thunderstorm which was so soon to burst over the whole of the Union--the great Roscoe Conkling and Platt controversy. The train had travelled over the 143 miles of rail at a rate of 35 miles an hour, and we had yet a long way to go before we reached Montreal, and so we were obliged to return to the station, where Governor Cornell, and the courteous gentlemen who had assisted him in entertaining the visitors, took their leave, and at 2.30 our journey was resumed towards the Canadian frontier. The pleasure with which we might have gazed on the delightful scenery through which the railroad runs, skirting Lake Champlain, and the interest we felt in the scenes which Cooper's novels had made familiar, were marred by the sultry heat. We were in a furnace--a heat-wave in which we were like to drown. The air was thunderous, but the thunder came not. "Pity 'tis, and pity 'tis 'tis true" that in such a condition of body no scenery can wean a man from the contemplation of his suffering--for "who can bear a fire in his hand by thinking of the frosty Caucasus?"--or looking at the green mountains of Vermont, or the slopes of the Adirondacks? I was not treated with even moderate civility when I tried to get up a little enthusiasm about Fort Ticonderaga, and the name of Plattsburg produced no impression on the perspiring pilgrims; but, truth to tell, perhaps there were few among us who had ever heard of Sir G. Prevost's defeat, and of the signal victory of the Americans; for, as a rule, we are not accurately instructed in the history of our reverses. And yet the region around was almost as rich in historic memories of the great struggle between the French and the