The fact is, Chicago has become an independent organism, growing by a combination of forces and opportunities, beyond the contrivance of any combination of men to help or hinder, beyond the need of flaming circulars and reports of boards of trade, and process pictures. It has passed the danger or the fear of rivalry, and reached the point where the growth of any other portion of the great North-west, or of any city in it (whatever rivalry that city may show in industries or in commerce), is in some way a contribution to the power and wealth of Chicago. To them that have shall be given. Cities, under favoring conditions for local expansion, which reach a certain amount of population and wealth, grow by a kind of natural increment, the law of attraction, very well known in human nature, which draws a person to an active city of two hundred thousand rather than to a stagnant city of one hundred thousand. And it is a fortunate thing for civilization that this attraction is almost as strong to men of letters as it is to men of affairs. Chicago has, it seems to me, only recently turned this point of assured expansion, and, as I intimated, the inhabitants have hardly yet become accustomed to this idea; but I believe that the time is near when they will be as indifferent to what strangers think of Chicago as the New-Yorkers are to what strangers think of New York. New York is to-day the only American city free from this anxious note of provincialism—though in Boston it rather takes the form of pity for the unenlightened man who doubts its superiority; but the impartial student of Chicago to-day can see plenty of signs of the sure growth of this metropolitan indifference. And yet there is still here enough of the old Chicago stamp to make the place interesting.