shortsighted. But the persons who should share the blame are those who tempt them to betray their trust. Several of my fellow-passengers, who had various effects on which duty was chargeable, boasted of the immunity which they had purchased for a sovereign. If a tithe of what I heard were true, then the utmost vigilance of the officers is required in order to circumvent the stratagems of dishonest travellers. An English acquaintance, who meant no harm, but whose manner was a little too abrupt to please the officials of the Republic, had some reason to complain of the treatment he received. He was a solicitor, of high standing and in large practice, who had determined to improve his holiday by paying a hurried visit to the United States. He would as soon think of smuggling as of committing the smallest breach of professional etiquette. An officer, who was too astute by half, fancied that this gentleman had resolved upon surreptitiously importing watches into the Great Republic. Being sharply questioned as to whether or not he had more than one watch in his possession, my acquaintance, astonished at the query, replied in a manner that seemed to confirm the suspicion which his demeanour had excited. To his surprise and annoyance, he was ordered to step into a room, where he was subjected to a minute personal search.

The natural conclusion is that an American Custom House has its good and its bad side; that the officers are neither wholly immaculate nor uniformly unbearable; that the warning against being too precipitate ought to be carefully observed there ; that patience and courtesy go a great way towards ensuring considerate treatment; that much depends on the temperament, the manners, and the appearance of the individual and not a little on the merest chance whether a traveller shall denounce all connected with it in the harshest terms of opprobrium, or speak of its officials as persons who discharge a difficult duty in a rational and defensible manner, and admit that they are neither much superior nor vastly inferior to Custom House officials all over the world.

There is nothing strange or foreign to English eyes in New York when beheld for the first time. The impression made on the traveller who, after having crossed the straits of Dover and landed at Boulogne or Calais, sees French soldiers in their national uniform, workmen in their blue blouses, servant girls in their neat white caps; who notices the peculiar arrangement of the shops, with prices marked in a foreign currency and signs printed in a foreign tongue; who hears the people on every side conversing in a language which he never heard

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spoken before, is an impression far more startling and lasting than that which his mind receives after the long voyage of three thousand miles is over and he alights in the streets of New York. If the feeling be one of disappointment at the absence of marked novelty in the spectacle, it is dispelled as soon as he enters one of the monster hotels for which America is famous. He then becomes conscious of the fact that Liverpool and London, Edinburgh and Dublin are indeed far away, and he discovers that any experience he may have gained when travelling through France, Germany, and Italy avails him nothing. All the arrangements are new to him: he is emphatically an ignorant and bewildered foreigner in an English-speaking land. Fortunately, he has not much trouble in learning the ways of the house. The arrangements are as simple as they are complete. Many of them are admirable. They are designed so as to combine the maximum of comfort to the visitor with the minimum of labour on the part of the servants. Grumblers who would stigmatise Paradise as a detestable place of abode if it differed in petty details from the land of their birth, have written bitter things about the hotels of New York and have been far too successful in misleading and prejudicing the English readers of their books. The truth is that in the Old World there

are royal palaces in which the occupants are less luxuriously housed and enjoy a smaller share of life's minor comforts than would be their lot if they sojourned in the splendid and well-appointed hotels which have been erected in the United States for the reception and use of the Sovereign People.

II.

NEW YORK TO SAN FRANCISCO: THE ROUTES TO THE WEST.

WHEN I first saw New York it did not appear to me a foreign city in the same sense as Paris, or Frankfort, or Milan. A closer and more leisurely examination produced a different impression. To walk along Broadway recalls a walk along Regent Street, but it also recalls a walk along the Rue de la Paix. What seems to be English is rivalled, if not outdone, by what is unmistakably French, while many things have neither a French, nor an English impress. The architectural effects are extraordinary in their variety. The want of simplicity and repose is as marked as the absence of a distinctively national style. Everyone has apparently followed the bent of his fancy, and the straining after originality has led to a confusion of ideas and a clashing of aims.

All nationalities seem to have sent their representatives to this city. Half the languages of Europe are spoken by the motley gathering. The