IMPRESSIONS OF NEW YORK.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, February 4.
IT was on the brightest of bright winter days that I entered New York. The sky was blue, with a more than Italian depth of colour, and the hot sunlight sparkled brilliantly on the white snow-covered roofs. But for this I should at first have had but little sense of being in a strange country. Like the traveller of Horace I had crossed the sea, and like him I found that I had changed nothing but the sky. Everything around me seemed so like, or rather so little unlike, the old country. There were no soldiers or gendarmes to receive us on lauding ; the passport with which I, in common with most of my fellow-passengers, had provided myself, was un- called for; and we left the ship, on our several errands, without a question being asked of any of us ; and, indeed, up to the hour at which I write, my passport has been as little inquired after as it would be in England. Irish porters seized upon my luggage, as they would at the St. Katherine's-wharf in London. Street newsvendors pestered me with second editions of English printed newspapers ; and an old-fashioned hackney-coach carried me to my destination through dull English-looking streets, with English names, and cheated me at the end withgenuine London exorbitance.
Of course, a very short experience would teach any one to perceive the many startling points of difference which distvguish New York front an English city, but still, I am much struck by observing how completely and ,thoroughly the English element is here the predomi- nant one. There is no city in the Union where the foreign popula- tion is comparatively so large, or exercises so distinct an influence ; but the outward traces of its existence, as visible to a passer-by, are few and far between. All the shop notices, and all the thousands of placards which are stuck about everywhere, with an English dis- regard of artistic propriety, are all English, and addressed to English customers. Announcements in shop windows that Id on park francwis and Hier sprecht man Deutsch are but few, while the number of persons you meet in the streets speaking any languagei but English is smaller, I should say, than n London or Liverpool. The physiognomy of the population is not English, but it is very hard to say why or in what respect it is not so. The difference seems to me to be chiefly, that instead of the twenty varieties of feature and form you meet with in an English crowd, one English type, and one only, the sallow, sharp-featured, straight-haired one, is re- produced indefinitely. The coloured population is not numerous enough in the streets to give a foreign look to the crowd. The number of negroes I have seen about seems barely one in a hundred to the white population. At the hotels and in private houses a large proportion of the servants are blacks, but in the streets there are few of them, and the only signs I have observed of their being a class apart are, that I have never yet seen a negro walking with white man, and that on some few of the ears there is a notice, con- spicuous by its absence elsewhere, that "Coloured people are allowed to ride in these conveyances." But of this I shall have to write to you more at length.
The second disillusionnement, to use a 'French word, which awaited me in New York was to find so few outward symptoms of the great crisis in which the country is involved. I have been before now in countries where there was war and revolution, and everywhere I have noticed the same fact ; but still it is always hard to realize (what I suppose to be the simple truth) that, war or peace, order or revolution, the daily life of common people experiences but little change. Anyhow, there is small trace of excitement about New York. An incurious stranger, not given to enter into conversation or to read the newspapers, might, I fancy, live here for some time without becoming aware of the fact that the country was in the midst of a revolution and a civil war. There are forts being thrown up rapidly along the villa-covered banks of Staten Island which com- mand the sea entrance through the "Narrows," but, of late years, in England one has learnt not to associate the construction of expensive fortifications with any idea of immediate war. The number of uni- forms about the streets is small, about as large as it used to be in London before volunteers were heard of. A score or so of tents are pitched upon the snow at the Battery and in the City Park, but more apparently for ornament than use. Every now and then at the lower end of the Broadway, a recruiting-office exhibits large placards on which fine young men are tempted by the offer of a hundred dol- lars' bounty and the promise of immediate active service to join the Van Buren Light Infantry or the New York "Mounted" Cavalry, but there is no crowding and no excitement about the -doors of the re- cruiting-offices, and Barnum's Museum, which stands right in their midst, offers the chief attraction to the passing crowd. I have not beard a military band since I have been here, and in the shop win- dows I have noticed but few pictures of the war, or portraits of the war heroes. The newspaper boys, who invade omnibuses and coffee- rooms with the most absolute freedom, deafen your ears daily with the report of a great victory or a tremendous battle, but the public appears to receive their tidings with the most apathetic and deserved incredulity.
If, however, there is little trace of popular excitement, there is as little of any popular distress, or of hard. times. Residents here tell me that there is a great falling off in the brightness and gaiety of the city since this time last year. To a stranger, it is still one of the brightest and most prosperous-looking of cities it has ever been my lot to visit. The port and wharves are crowded with shipping. Broadway is daily rendered almost impassable by the never-ending rows of carts, vans, and carriages. Splendidly equipped fur-covered sleighs dash past one at every turning, and the pavement is thronged with ladies, the richness of whose dresses may sometimes be ques- tioned as a matter of taste, but, as a matter of fact, is obvious even to the most unobservant of bachelors. Gigantic stores are still being built up along Broadway, and the long endless streets and avenues, with their monotonous numerical appellations, which run out towards the base of the island triangle on which the city stands, are being carried further and further on. The rent of stores has fallen, I hear, in some quarters, nearly fifty per cent.; but I believe this fall in rents dates from a period far beyond the commencement of the revo- lution. As yet, you hardly see any notices of houses to let, and even in the suburbs I have not come across any large block of unoccupied houses, such as you always find in the new outskirts of London. The hotels are full, and the clubs, to a stranger's eye, appear flourish- ing. Without entering on the currency question, it is enough to state that the suspension of specie payments seems to have produced no effect, hitherto, on the retail transactions with which a traveller has to do. The five-dollar treasury notes arc received readily at par, and the sole complaint I hear from shopkeepers is about the difficulty of getting small change. The only beggars I have met with are Irish children, and even of them perhaps not a couple a day. How far all this apparent prosperity is real or lasting is of course a diffi- cult question. My Southern acquaintances deny its existence, or, more strictly speaking, assert that it is only of short-lived duration. According to them, New York is living partly on the spasmodic and unproductive expansion given to trade by the vast -war expenditure, partly on the credit of its past prosperity. That for the time being, be the cause what it may, there is no appearance of general distress at New York m, however, a fact on which I can entertain no doubt.
There is one other point on which I can now speak pretty confi-
dently. The pocket-revolvers and bowie-knives and sword-canes, with which I was urged at home to provide myself, and did not, would be almost as useful, or as useless, here, as they would prove in Pall- Mall or Piccadilly. There is an air of order and security about the city which I never saw equalled out of England ; while the fact that everybody you meet is comfortably dressed, gives no indication of the existence of those "dangerous classes" which always strike the eye of a foreigner in England. Speaking for myself, too, I can truly say that in every store, or bar, or conveyance nave yet been into, I have been treated, as an Englishman, with what seemed to me un- usual civility. The feeling against England as a country, as ex- pressed both in the press and in society, is painfully bitter, or rather reproachful ; but towards the "individual Britisher" the popular feeling appears decidedly friendly. An English friend of mine, who from his connexions with the Southern leaders is notoriously a mal- content, confesses to me that he has never experienced any social annoyance or molestation on account of his sentiments, though, na- turally enough, the divergence of his views from the popular opinion of New York has very much curtailed the circle of his acquaintance. It is only, I am assured, amongst the low Irish population that the fact of English nationality might expose one to personal annoyance. I see less excitement out of doors about the war than I expected. On the other hand, I hear enough of it in-doors. It is the one sole subject of conversation, though there is less heat about the discussions than might be supposed, probably from the fact that on the general issue popular opinion in New York is almost unanimous. On ques- tions of detail, the opinions I hear are too contradictory, and my means of personal observation have as yet been too limited, to enable me to speak positively, but on certain broad conclusions there is little difference of opinion. In the first place, for some weeks to come there can be no general movement of the Potomac army, from the simple fact that the roads in Virginia are now impassable ; and, secondly, as the unhealthy season commences in the South by the inidslle of May, a final attempt to invade the South must be made the moment the roads become passable. Within ninety days, so I hear on all sides, the question of invasion must be settled one way or other. There is also a general conviction that the only way to avoid a European intervention is to occupy the Southern seaport towns, and it is on this account, not for its actual influence upon the campaign, that so much importance is attached to the success of Burn- side's expedition. It is a curious instance, by the way, of the extent to which the Secession leaders arc able to control the Southern press, that, though Cape Hatteras is not more than 500 miles, as the crow flies, from New York, it was not until seventeen days after the sail- ing of Burnside's fleet that any tidings whatever of its move- ments were received at New York, though the fact of its arrival at Cape Hatteras must have been known over the South for upwards of ten days before. With regard to the abolition of slavery, it seems to me to be still popularly regarded as a possible eventuality rather than a probability, as, in fact, a last resource to be adopted if all other measures fail for the subjugation of the South; but not till then. Finally, in all conver- sations that I am present at, there are two assumptions which seem to be held, instinctively rather than on any definite reasons. The first is, that the Union must and will ultimately be restored somehow or other ; the second is, that the present system of government in
the United States has received a death-blow., Whatever else hap- pens," said an American to me, "there is one comfort, and that Is, that the nation has got rid of the delusion that one man is as good as another, and better too !"—Yours, &e.,
AN ENGLISH TRAVELLER.
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