Chicago well deserves its reputation. Its stores, and private houses and churches, are good, and would be so considered in any city. Its stores are in buildings, two floors higher than the shops of Oxford or Regent Street, as is generally the case in all the large American cities. They have an air of solidity, and are not entirely devoid of external decoration. There are suburbs containing many good private residences, the best of which are to be seen in Michigan Avenue, along the shores of the Lake. These are built of a cream-coloured stone, and many of them give one a favourable idea of the architectural taste, as well as of the wealth, of their inhabitants. From the gallery of the City Hall I counted twenty-three towers and spires; but this is very far from giving the number of churches, as perhaps the majority of them still being incomplete, or only temporary structures, are without these embellishments. In the central parts of the city, where all the buildings are good and massive, and the smoke—for here they burn bituminous coal—has put a complexion upon them something like that of London, you could never guess that you were standing in a city so young, that many of its inhabitants, still young themselves, remember the erection of the first brick house in the place; you would be more likely to suppose that you were surrounded by the evidences and appliances of the commercial prosperity of many generations. On my mentioning to a ‘citizen’ of Chicago the number of the churches I had counted from the top of the City Hall, ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘we are a religious people outwardly.’ In this, one of the youngest cities in the world, I observed some regulations that would be worthy of adoption elsewhere. For instance, wherever in the city a case of small-pox occurs, a large yellow sheet is pasted to the door of the house, announcing in conspicuous letters, ‘Small-pox here.’ I could not but compare this wise regulation with our carelessness on the same subject at home. This very disease of small-pox, or scarlet fever, or any other infectious disease, may have struck down many of the inmates of a house; yet, according to our custom, it is allowable for the occupiers of the house, if they keep a shop, to invite customers to enter, and to sell them articles of dress, or of food, which in some way or other may become vehicles of infection.