"We are comfortably situated at the City Hotel in Broadway. After we had selected our rooms, I sallied out into that gay and brilliant promenade, which intersects the city from north-east to south-west. You may there see, on a fine sunshiny afternoon, all the fashion and beauty of this great city; the neat, tasteful, Parisian costume, in close contrast with the more sober guise of London. There you may hear intermingled the language of the Gaul, the German, and the modern Roman. To the right and left you see the spires of various Christian temples; and smiling faces, and happy hearts, will greet you at every step. "To a secluded college novice like myself, there is something new and moving in all this life and bustle; it irresistibly brings to my mind ideas of gay feats, tilts, tournaments, and brilliant fairs. Within the finished bow-windows are wealth and splendour, and brilliancy, which we poor southerns have not seen in our own native land; marble buildings, stores with granite columns, and the streets crowded with immense omnibuses (these are stages to transport persons from one part of the city to another); splendid private equipages, _republican_ liveries, and carts loaded with merchandise. "Seeing some trees and a comfortable green plat a little farther up the street, I worked through the crowd of persons, and carts, and stages, and found myself in the midst of the far famed Park, and immediately in front of that proud edifice the City Hall. I ascended the marble platform, and surveyed the gay throng, as they moved on in one continued and dense current, with merry faces, miserable hearts, and empty heads and pockets; but to talk of these stale things, you know, in the present age, is all stuff and sheer nonsense. I therefore put my reflections in my portfolio to carry home with me, and proceeded to the house-keeper's room, as I had been directed, to obtain the good lady's pilotage, or that of some deputy, to the governor's room, which I readily found. There is nothing remarkable in the two rooms which contain the paintings, except that they command from the windows a fine view of the park and the surrounding streets. Yes, there are two venerable old stuffed chairs. The one in the north wing was used by Washington at his inauguration as first President of the United States, and the one in the east room by the elder Adams. There are portraits of George Washington, George Clinton, Alexander Hamilton, Commodore Bainbridge, Monroe, Jackson, Duane, Varick, Livingston, Clinton, Willet, Radcliff, Captain Hull, Governor Lewis, Macomb, Yates, Van Buren, Brown, Perry, La Fayette, Decatur, Tompkins, Colden, Allen, Paulding, Hone, Stuyvesant, Bolivar, Columbus, Monkton, Williams: some of these last are only half-length.