newspapers were in this year added to the growing list of the city. The first of these was the Louisville City Gazette, a daily, published by John J. & Jas. B. Marshall; and the second, the Western Messenger, a monthly, under the care of the Rev. J. F. Clark. This last was originally published in Cincinnati, but was this year transferred to Louisville. As will be remembered a motion had been made several years before this time toward the erection of a bridge over the Ohio. This project had been discussed from time to time ever since that period, and finally in this year, the contracts were entered into and the corner stone of the bridge was laid with all due ceremony, at the foot of Twelfth Street. The work however never progressed beyond this, the contractor having failed to perform his duty, beside which the next year brought with it by far the most terrible calamity that had ever affected the city. The last few years had been years of such unexampled prosperity; confidence had become so thoroughly established, credit was so plenty, and luxury so courted, that, when the unexpected reverse came, the blow was indeed terrible. On the 19th of April, the Banks of Louisville and of Kentucky suspended specie payment, by a resolution of the citizens so authorizing them. Previous to this, the Banks all over the country had stopped; another awful commercial crisis had arrived, and one which Louisville felt far more severely than she had felt the former. Instead of passing lightly over her, as before, the full force of the blow was felt throughout the whole community. House after house, which had easily rode out the former storm, now sunk beneath the waves of adversity, until it seemed as if none would be left to tell the sad story. A settled gloom hung over the whole mercantile community. Main Street was like an avenue in some deserted city. Whole rows of houses were tenantless, and expectation was upon the tiptoe every day to see who would be the next to close. Each feared the other; all confidence was gone; mercantile transactions were at an end; and everything, before so radiant with the spring-time of hope and of promise, was changed to the sad autumn hues of a fruitless year.