The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-22 00:00:00

THE WESTERN METROPOLIS.

(From the 'Special Correspondent of the Times.)
NEW YORK, Dee. 7.
These who love the crush, the racket, and the roar
of London would feel very much at home amid the
din and rattle cf New York. In the way of noise
this city of one street has little to envy the Babylon
with the hundred thoroughfares. There is nothing
in the world mere distracting, more fretting, more
inspiriting than a walk along the Broadway trot-
toirs from one hour after sunrise till long after the
closing of the shops in the evening. In Broadway
you have Oxford-street, the Strand, King William-
street, and London-bridge in one street between
two and three miles in length ; one main artery for
,he pulsation of one million human tide. Starting
from the Old Battery., at the waters edge, where
the North and East Rivers blend their streams,
forming by far the noblest harbour and one of the
most charming sites upon earth, and making for
Union-square or the Park, where interminable rows
of dull transverse streets, at right angles, with
s,_ately bat silent and somewhat dreary longitudinal
s.vanues, spread out into the Belgravias and Tybur-
rime of this Weetern London, the city has, through-
out, no other direct line of communication than this
one. There is not one omnibus or heavily laden
waggon, and hardly a private vehicle or a pedes-
trian, no matter oa what errand bound, that can
avoid the throng and swarth of Broadway, and there
is hardly a human face, out of the hundreds of
thousands dwelling in the town and its suburbs,
that does not love to show itself in Broadway from
choice, when not driven into it by necessity.

Truly this street, which gives New York its peen.
liar character of oneness, is well worth all the affec-
tion that these Manhattan people evidently bear it.
Not that it has any particular -object to attract the
attention of a travelled stranger, but it is as gay as
the Boulevards, as trim and glittering as Regent-
street; it has a grandeur and loftiness all its own.
Shops, I beg their pardon, " stores," that take in
the whole, not of a house, but 3f a huge block of
houses, basement, ground floor, upper storeys, gar-
rets, and all ; hotels that present 150 ft. front to
the etreet, and nearly as high es they are long and
broad ; marble warehouses, stylish as palaces, solid
as castles; and churches, and hails, and theatres,
all that other towns scatter about in their various
quarters, much also that other towns bide away oat
of sight—all is here mustered Up in two parallel
rows of buildings, on a tolerably straight, but by no
" up town and down town.''
means monotonous line,
The real fascination of Broadway, however, lies in
its noise ; not in mere brick and mortar, but in the
ebb and flow, in the heaving and eddying of the
wave that incessantly sweeps along it. The pride
of Broadway is the omnibus, that peculiar institu-
tion of modern Republicanism, which flourishes no
where so hantiantly as in this headquarters of the
'Model Republic; the omnibus, not sober and dun as
London, not slow and unwieldy as in Paris, but
gly and gaudy and motley, now all beautifully
white with red and gold letters, now quaintly
daubed over with lana...ca.pes and sea pieces, and
the elßgits of odd revolutionary " gays" in cocked
hats and pigtails ; a throng of omnibuses, three or
four of them often abreast, or as many arrayed
against ono another, running foul of each other,
tilting with their )ong poles, erumsily driven, with
uncouth ehoats and savero oaths, and an occa-
sional crash, as horses slip, stumble, and tumble
ou this the most treacherous and murderous pEi,vcs
moat that ever disgraced a Christian community ;
for there is no Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals in this country, and
no one !:as leisure for the cultivation of
humane I never once walked along

:Broadway, morning or evening, without seeing a
least 022:11ckiet:s hoi•ee dewn ; never was in New York
on Sunday without being saddened by the eight of
cue poor hcrae, the. carcase rotting on the steno
where it feel, awaiting the cart which was to con-
vey it to the lenackee's on the first working day.
Through the medley of there busses, and the heavy
carts, and the light spider-legged buggies which
venture into the fray (cabs are not among American
institutions, and the few lumbering hackney coaches
doing duty for them do their utmost to scare their
" fares" away by thievish charges)—throughout
this awful medley, I soy, the great bai,iness of
the Western world must force its way. Crossing
the street; at Aster-house or at the turning of Wall-
etazet is by far a greater feat than anywhere in Pic-
cadilly and Cheapside ; and the softer sex would at
ell times give rap the attempt as hopeless, were it
rot for the intervention of a set of loungers, with
the garb aed name of policemen, but with the man-
ners of the daintiest gentleman in all the land, whose
only duty is that of squiring the ladies; tall, stal-
wart men in long frock coats and round leathern
e3pes, who take hold of the fir one's arm as they
plunge with her into the vortex at one street corner,
and never slacken their professional grip until they
emerge cut of the melee at the other corner.
Through the midst of all this chaos of men, women
and things which constitute the ordinary traffic of
New York, these warlike times send now a regi-
ment of foot, now a battery to clog the whole pave-
bamt with its heavy measured, inexorable tramp;
aild more often a fire-engine, or a long row of fire-
"giute come dashing up, tearing up, fighting their
14`7,Nvith hose, escape, ladders and al!, drawn by
:it" hatless and coat less, very fiends in human shape,
tugging for very life, and curdling your blood with
yells borrowed from the wild Indians--the Fire
Brigade, " old familiar sight in New York, the
pride of Asa,.
'.!an skill and daring, the kind of work
host suited
eto
veviving.
cause tha `4 temper of a people who, even while
humanity, must needs obey
the instinct which
sites them revel in scenes of
'levee and destree:
Such is eutwardaZ:
th:
,'Ynork—a city to the greatness
raid prosperity
, habitams of wbiehProvi-
dencE„, has set no.bnaits. .
etuate, if you will, the
Nvorl: of the present Southern Secession ; set up the
the East; tiplit up
West in open rebellion against
the Union into nv,v States
mittens; cut no the
map
pnlolpzsillstroeds and patches
Stars and Stripes into as
seduce the
as now make up the
V...ork to that of „3.Pe
importance of New
ears its re capital of
the Empire State which b' ta'a'a; constitute
it into a mere kind of lianseatic city,
and
always have hero the centre of North rtt will
merican
movement and life. Its port and its river, the
'1
the White area
between the Allegheny and
ate"
Mountains, will always give New York the
raady e
Green
mitr
over the trade of the Western world-
Alrea
old shipping importance of Salem, Portland, and
Boston itself, and the bankirg 13n:3,e:13in:en" of
Philade7phia, are rapidly absorbed by their Man.
hattan rival ; for "unto everyono that
bath shaltbe given," and whatever may be the career of New
(rleans on the Golf of Mexico, or San Francisco on
the Pacific, New York will share with none of her
sister cities the sovereignty of the Atlantic. But to
the usual,, nehecked, headlong progress—to the
iesolent good fortune of this mushroom city, the
great civil war has now come to give a fresh, mo:nea-
tons impulse. The calamities which are desolating
the South and crippling the West have thrown
many a windfall into the lap of this great eastern
emporium, whose shouts of joy have echoed back
the groans of New Orleans and the cries of distress
°'Louis. The whole of America is flocking •to
New I a have heard of European travellers in
whose opinion New "York is a representative city—
th. Pattern and summary of all Americanism. The
etty hog seer
in bad odour with the natives them-
selvep, Cyrn
s-.tivistch the dwellers therein,who look upon
it us the
1 . all alien misery and corruption—the
asylum of lawk,
a Irish and godless Germans, of all
the worst set of adventurera from the Old World.
Few of the New -yorketc
Nov
yorit. They
ere profess to be at home in
all people who have come to
eagletheir fortune, 0,..) ,ay.
•" mg made it, only tarry
till t bay r:Yalie." It is a treating, Ming pepnla-
sell, and bat tew of th
ti on, 'with no roots to the
n.utual lie. Mn. The city is but
vvhich bind man to
re e
th.oronghfare, a place
a shop and e to make money
it Int
but not one
and to spend Which to enjoy
one's leisure or to close one's heppy
d Ede, or to

rear ose's children.
With all this nomadic character, 61,,,
ever,
York is fl crowded i.nce at all times—just _
greatly overcrowded plt.ce. la a town Where bar:
rack-like hot,:lsarci frcrivnt, lz-o less than five Cr
six of these establishments en the most gig„tie
scl!e arc vow Ving built, W:Y! fited up, end their