In almost all the industries of the city you are struck by the ancestral aspect of the trades, the continuance of a business from father to son, or the gradual change of firms by the absorption of partners. Boughman, Thomas & Co., established in a handsome, modern-looking bookstore, represent a business as old as 1793, uninterrupted since the time when the founder, James Wilson, hung the sign of Shakespeare at his door. The young girl of the period, who goes to their place from one of the model seminaries of which Wilmington is so full to buy a little paper for confidential notes or perhaps a delicate valentine, sees the old brown advertisement framed against the wall, and behind it, in sign-painting of her great-grandfather's time, the head of him who wrote _Romeo and Juliet_. While in this literary vein we would say a word of the newspapers. These, the true finger-posts of thought in a community, are apt in manufacturing cities to be conservative and timid, as trade is timid. The very special attitude of Wilmington, however--a Yankee town in perpetual protest with a Bourbon State--has inspired its press with peculiar political energy. No more vehement Republican organ can be found in the land, for instance, than the Wilmington _Commercial_: it is not in its columns that you will see ingenious defences of the whipping-post at Newcastle or of the crushing taxes levied at Dover, whereby a lazy State feeds greedily upon a hard-working metropolis. The _Commercial_ (Jenkins & Atkinson) is a staunch Administration sheet, sound on the subject of industrial protection, and highly appreciated by the manufacturers. Founded in 1866, it was, we believe, the sole daily until eighteen months ago, when some of the sober-sided weeklies began to understand that they must bestir themselves and put forth a diurnal appearance. The _Gazette_ (C. P. Johnson), a paper nearly one hundred years old, now appears daily, and expresses the opinions of the State Assembly, where the Senate has but a single Republican member, and the House of Representatives stands fourteen Democrats to seven Republicans. Here the conservative thought of Kent and Sussex counties is kneaded up into the requisite coherency and eloquence. _Every Evening_ (Croasdale & Cameron), a smart paper without political bias, flies around the city as the shadows begin to lengthen, selling at one cent a sheet, and liked by everybody. [Illustration: HOUSE OF COLONEL HENRY McCOMB.]