St. Louis, since the war, has spread westward over the gentle ridges which parallel the river, and become a city vast in territory and most attractive in appearance. While the business portion has expanded into noble avenues with stately business and public edifices, the residence parts have a beauty, in handsome streets and varied architecture, that is a continual surprise to one who has not seen the city for twenty years. I had set down the length of the city along the river-front as thirteen miles, with a depth of about six miles; but the official statistics are: length of river-front, 19.15 miles; length of western limits, 21.27; extent north and south in an air line, 17; and length east and west on an air line, 6.62. This gives an area of 61.37 square miles, or 39,276 acres. This includes the public parks (containing 2095 acres), and is sufficient room for the population of 450,000, which the city doubtless has in 1888. By the United States census of 1870 the population was reported much larger than it was, the figures having no doubt been manipulated for political purposes. Estimating the natural increase from this false report, the city was led to claim a population far beyond the actual number, and unjustly suffered a little ridicule for a mistake for which it was not responsible. The United States census of 1880 gave it 350,522. During the eight years from 1880 there were erected 18,574 new dwelling-houses, at a cost of over fifty millions of dollars. The great territorial extension of the city in 1876 was for a time a disadvantage, for it threw upon the city the care of enormous street extensions, made a sporadic movement of population beyond Grand avenue, which left hiatuses in improvement, and created a sort of furor of fashion for getting away from what to me is still the most attractive residence portion of the town, namely, the elevated ridges west of Fourteenth Street, crossed by Lucas Place and adjoining avenues. In this quarter, and east of Grand avenue, are fine high streets, with detached houses and grounds, many of them both elegant and comfortable, and this is the region of the Washington University, some of the finest club-houses, and handsomest churches. The movements of eity populations, however, are not to be accounted for. One of the finest parts of the town, and one of the oldest of the better residence parts, that south of the railways, containing broad, well-planted avenues, and very stately old homes, and the exquisite Lafayette Park, is almost wholly occupied now by Germans, who make up so large a proportion of the population.