plunges, with its train, toward the station, which is now, by local significance, well known as the place where our modern Kubla Khan, Mr. George Vanderbilt, must alight to visit the matchless pleasure dome he has decreed on the heights beyond the summer lodge of the Fair One with the Golden Locks, where, in imagination, we are now spectator. It is needless to repeat how much Mr. Vanderbilt has spent or will continue to spend upon what fame heralds as the most complete and magnificent estate owned by any private gentlemen, and one that few royal personages could obtain. Without summing up the oft-repeated and dry statistics of the dimension of his residence, out-houses, stables, barns and acres, it is enough to understand that, after the method of another marvelous man who has metamorphosed St. Augustine, unstinted opulence and modern art have met for material transformation. No amount of money could reproduce the natural splendor of the location, but science and skill and Aladdin’s lamp, which is ready money and a superabundance of it, can rear castles and improve grounds in a way to be worthy of such scenes of Arcadian majesty and beauty all around. It speaks well for the rich young man, who is highly educated, most accomplished, and a lover of literature in all of its development, while kind and gentle and benignant, that he should have determined upon this place of all the places in the world to rear his incomparable home and be a veritable monarch of much that he surveyed, though not all. And yet, having once had vision of this alluring sphere, it would be indeed a source of astonishment if it failed to exercise upon him the sorcery I so feebly portray. The fancy takes flight and pictures to itself what may be the result of such a scheme. Will he, when the palace is completed and everything exhausted to fashion it as he aspired, be any more content than he was before? Will he abandon the mighty Babylon of the East and abide at his gorgeous Southern hermitage, with its imperial setting? Will he simply flit there, from time to time, and, at other seasons, leave his domain, like a haunted palace, a stupendous show-place or proverbial folly? Will he settle there, and perchance wed the Fair One with the Golden Locks, becoming racy of the soil of the Old North State, dispensing joy, hospitality, munificence and rational bounty? Will he, having more than emulated the author of Vathek in construction, live, like Beckford, to behold the ruin of his aspiration? But what is the use of tossing these gilded juggler balls in the air of imagination, and making inquiries of that future which does not belong to any mortal? Suffice it practically, that young Mr. Vanderbilt has appreciated the South, yielded homage to her natural magnetism, and made his deeds speak louder than words of praise. Let us take for granted that he will never weary of his designs and that Providence has in store for him and his surroundings special and exceptional benedictions.