in the large cities of England. Many of them are still built entirely of wood. The old-fashioned style of house described by Dickens, in which the bricks were so very red, the stones so very white, the blinds and area railings so very green, and the knobs and plates on street doors so very bright and twinkling, have nearly passed away. It is quite true that green blinds of Continental ugliness still shade many of the windows in New York, and that wooden houses, with no more pretension to beauty than barns, enfilade along numerous streets; but in all the eastern cities the great majority of the buildings are solid, well-built, and commodious. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington there are mansions quite equal to anything in London. Some of them are built of white marble, and fitted up equal to the palaces of kings. The Vanderbilt houses in New York are as fine as anything to be met with in London. The palisades are real bronze, and the paving-stones leading up to the front door are the largest of their kind in the world. They are just the width of the passage-way to the door, and are about thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide.

Inhabiting a big country, the Americans are generally lovers of big things. In point of sign-boards and advertising, though we are by no means over-fastidious, yet we are immeasurably behind the Yankees. It is said that the signs of New York can be seen from the moon without the aid of even an opera-glass; and most certainly they are both large and numerous. What the shops are built of is often only conjectural, from the wonderful productions of the sign-painter's art. Each tradesman seems to vie with his neighbour in having the largest letters and the brightest colours, and not contented with plastering over every inch of the shop front, sign-boards are hung over the footpath until the causeway looks as though it were ceiled with advertisements. And even in sign-boards the New-Yorkers flatter themselves that they can show the biggest thing on earth.

On one occasion I visited Coney Island, the popular resort of the New York citizens, particularly on Sundays, and here I found an advertisement claiming the proud distinction of being the largest in the world. It measured 2860 feet long, and the letters were 21 feet high. It was executed with great skill, it could be read distinctly from end to end, and belongs to a modest furnishing company of Brooklyn.

We

In travelling accommodation the New York public are admirably cared for. Tram-cars run in almost every direction, elevated railways surround the city, and in addition to these, there are the old-fashioned omnibuses on Broad Way, which follow each other at an interval of about fifty yards. By these agencies travelling is both cheap and pleasant, but beyond them the expense of getting around in New York is enormous. sometimes deplore the jobbery which stains civil life in our own country, but the worst corporation in England might sit for a model of purity as contrasted with New York. The whole city is controlled by one section of our own emigrants, and say what we may for the few, in their effects generally monopolies are always injurious. The masters of New York are Irish Americans, and it is ruled from top to bottom in their interest. The result is, that as many of the Irish are, what we should call, hackney coachmen, the cab system of New York is an abomination. No cabby will move an inch under one dollar, and if he does not feel very gracious he demands two. I paid two dollars on landing to be taken to the Park Avenue Hotel; and on my return I paid two and a half, or 10s. 6d., to be taken to the docks-say a distance of one mile. This is the will of Paddy, and no man who might value his seat in the Council Chambers of New York dare utter a word against it. The Irish vote there is paramount, and it always goes to the highest bidder. The finest ecclesiastical building in America is the Catholic Cathedral in the Fifth Avenue. It has one of the best and most commanding positions in the city, and stands on a plot of land worth two million dollars. And as a sample of how New York is ruled, I was informed that this plot of land was conveyed to the present owners for one dollar, in order to secure the Irish vote.

But if the municipal atmosphere of New York is heavy, foggy, and corrupt, the physical atmosphere is as bright, clear, and pure as Paris or Italy. The city is absolutely smokeless. There are no tall stalks discharging clouds of unburnt carbon. No smuts smear the face of pedestrians, or blacken the buildings, or destroy the foliage of the city trees. With one or two exceptions, such as Cincinnati and Pittsburg, anthracite coal is burned throughout America. Bituminous coal commands the famine price of sixteen dollars per ton (£3, 6s.), and of course is only used by a few of the most wealthy inhabitants. Anthracite is burned both in

stoves and ordinary grates. The houses are heated from a common furnace by means of hot-air shafts, and where necessary this is supplemented by the open fireplace or stove in each room. The furnace is lighted at the beginning of winter, and it never goes out, night or day, until the return of warm weather in the following spring. Disliking walking, and being very fond of sitting, the Americans keep their rooms at a higher temperature than the English. It was not very cold weather when I reached New York, but in the hotel where I stayed the thermometer registered 75° Fahr. throughout the whole building. But while the love of warmth may perhaps be carried too far, yet the principle is right; and in this particular we might take a lesson from the Americans with great advantage. In some respects the Yankees are recklessly wasteful, this is so in food, timber, land, and money; but on the other hand they are the greatest economists living. They go straight at a thing, and never potter, and compromise, and fiddle-faddle. If they want cheap and good watches, they do not set men to make them by hand, but they make them to certain patterns with all the parts interchangeable. If they want more sewing than men or women are able to do, they make a machine to supersede the bulk of hand labour. And if they want warmth, they use coal so that none of its heating power shall escape unused. Pre-eminent in wastefulness, they are equally pre-eminent in time, money, and labour-saving invention. In America the stove is everywhere, and heat-pipes carry an even temperature from the dining-room through the passages, and up as far as the remotest attic. The heat-pipe is cheaper than the open grate or stove, and discarding sentiment about a pokable fire, the Americans take the warmth first, and whether they get the chimney-corner or not, they stick to the warmth.

Heat-pipes are also found in almost every railway carriage. The whole car is warmed throughout, and heat is not doled out in tinfuls for the feet only, as it is with us, leaving the rest part of the body shivering in the uncongenial and freezing atmosphere of winter.

All in all, New York is the least American-like city in the whole continent. Its populace is probably mixed beyond that of any other place of the same magnitude, and it goes to every possible extreme in every possible direction, whether in religion or irreligion, in politics, social life, pleasure, or hard work. Poverty and affluence, crime and virtue, saintliness and sinfulness, jostle each other in New York, in forms of heavenly loveliness on the one hand, and in the most appalling aspects on the other. The curious can find whatever he pleases, either on

one or another of the many sides to its seething life. Is it Paris gone into trade; its vivacity and life are enormous, it caters for every faculty, and gathers to itself the peculiarities of the whole people; and while it has some things to teach which would be better unlearned, yet no one can visit it, even casually, without carrying away some happy reminiscence of a people whose youthful vigour and growth are both new and singular in the history of our race. (To be continued.)

THE LATE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

THE Archbishop of Canterbury holds a great place in England, and a change in the person holding the office always excites a great deal of public attention. The late Archbishop passed through many sorrows, which doubtless exercised a powerful influence in the formation of the exalted character by which he was distinguished. If, in the estimation of High Churchmen, he failed to magnify his office, he could not be accused of magnifying himself. In a highly eulogistic article on the death of Dr. Tait, the Times says, "He never gave himself the airs of a great Prelate, but he held his high place in the world by the masculine force of a strong intelligence, and by the native dignity of a character which gave at least as much authority to his office as it derived from it." The Archbishop, whose own sentiments were those of the Broad Church, was tolerant to the several schools of thought in the establishment; and while earnestly devoted to the building up and extension of the Church of which he was Primate, he cheerfully recognised the Christian character of the dissenting Churches. The Guardian, the organ of the High Church, does not speak of the departed Primate with the same unqualified approbation as the Times. He was, in the estimation of this organ, the bishop of the people rather than the overseer of the clergy. He doubtless saw and felt that if the Church was to continue to hold its high place in the land, it must secure the goodwill of the people. He wished to draw the people to the Church, and to keep them there by the benefits they received from its ministry. Such a life, even though mistaken in doctrine, was noble, and exercised, as it could not fail to exercise, a powerful influence on English society.

Book Notices.

THE BRAIN CONSIDERED ANATOMICALLY, PHYSIOLOGICALLY, and PHILOSOPHICALLY. By EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. Edited, translated, and annotated by R. L. TAFEL, A.M., Ph.D. Vol. I. THE CEREBRUM AND ITS PARTS. James Speirs, Bloomsbury Street, London.

To present to the readers of this Magazine anything like an adequate conspectus of this wonderful work would require the genius of Swedenborg himself. To ordinary minds even fairly versed in anatomical and physiological details it requires a sustained attention of no ordinary kind to follow the reasoning and grasp the conclusions which are deduced from the structure and arrangement of the brain, and the distribution of its nervous dependencies throughout the human body; but if this attention be afforded, the accuracy, beauty, and force of most of the views presented in the book increase, and grow upon the mind, and the reader passes from the cold and lifeless anatomy and physiology of the schools, into the view of the human frame animated, by a conscious and living soul, in all and singular its parts. Only a man possessed of a truly scientific, philosophical, and inductive mind, cultivated to the highest point, and imbued with a profound veneration for the Supreme Creator and Disposer of all things, could write such a book; but such a man was Swedenborg, and this work is only another evidence that this author was so prepared, from his youth upwards, as that by passing through the spiritual Egypt and Assyria, he could enter the spiritual Israel, and so become the apostle of a new scientific, philosophical, and spiritual age. To us, as New Churchmen, this admission will be easy even while we may dissent from certain erroneous data, due to the defective investigations and so-called scientific facts of Swedenborg's time; for while the defective facts may, and doubtless will, modify particular conclusions, they cannot injure the grand generalizations due to an accurate adherence to the principles of Swedenborg's reasoning, as based upon the doctrines of form, order, series, and degrees, and the tracing of ends, through causes, to effects; and where the facts of structure and function are established, such a method of reasoning cannot fail to develop conclusions far in advance, and discoveries greatly anticipatory of those of modern science and philosophy. That such is the case we need only, amongst others, refer to the animatory motion of the brain as a discovery of Swedenborg's satisfactorily confirmed. That this work on the brain must, as a whole, be a text-book for the future physiologist rather than