The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-19 00:00:00

SUNDAY IN NEW YORK.

Tennyson says, "In spring a young man's fancies
lightly turn to thoughts of love." If the Poet Laureate
had lived in New York he would have said that at this
season the thoughts of most people lightly turn to rural
scenes, lavender kid gloves, and suburban lager beer,
Suburban lager beer ! No ; times have changed. This
German nectar can now be obtained everywhere, and
Greek fire in Hibernian liquor saloons is disposed of
openly ; in fact, the writer saw at a well known sheban
in Fulton-street a policeman under a soporific influence.
This blue-coated guardian of our liberties lay sprawling
over a round table, his massive club making a right angle
with the half-folded arms, no doubt meant to per-
sonify the equator. Hen. was a parody on the
Excise law of the most farcical kind. The
Bowery mermaids, the dives, half liquor, half
women, seemed to have taken a new lease of life, and
flourished in every-day salubrity. Crowds went in and out
with " no man to make them afraid," and ardent seekers
after the spirit were not slow in finding their way to the
altar of Mickey M'Gin or Pat O'Punch. The conse-
quence was that an increase of arrests told the pulse of
public morality, the police headquarters, that the Excise
law was not being observed in its full rigour, vide the
report of Inspector Jamison who asserts that the arrests
for the twenty-four hours were 346. The returns for
nineteen months in but one instance chews the daily
arrests to be as high as 300. That was in September,
1869, when they reached 314. It is not usual for the
Sunday arrests to go above 220, and the large increase is
evidently caused by the laxity with which the Excise law
is being enforced. Very few places make the slightest
pretensions to closing their bar-rooms, and the good old
days " when we went tipsy, then a long time ago," seem
to be redivivus•

But a more naturally exhilarating scene in the Park
than the gin mills of Gotham would be more acceptable
to the citizen weary of winter weather and fireside amuse-
ment. The delicate green tint of the sprouting foliage
seemed to cover the trees with a delicious, soft verdure, and
the general air of freshness imparted to the scene, made
it particurlarly acceptable to the denizens of the
crowded city. A few short days have made a wonderful
change, and where the chilling rawness of April pervaded
how the genial warmth of spring is felt. Vegetation has
been wonderfully rapid, and the lover of nature may
feast his sight with the delicate traces of the young leaves
before they assume either the parched appearance of
summer or the coarser lines of autumn. Crowds on
crowds were to be seen in every path, and every variety
of Gotham's cosmopolitan population seemed to have its
innumerable representatives. Here could be seen the
buxom wife, with her flock of healthy children, accom-
panied by her adipose husband, nature suggesting the
idea that if all flesh were grass, they would makea good
load of hay. Behind them, swaggering, came the groomed
ruffian, with a large corporation, diamond pin glittering
on his degraded bosom, and not far off slouched the raga-
muffin, who only lacked instinct to be a perfect brute.
Then sauntered past the exquisite and pretty little mil-
liner, looking half coyly, half invitingly, at the handsome
dry goods clerk, who wants to make their acquaintance,
but is afraid. Carriages, bearing not exactly the elite,
who don't do the Park on Sunday, but respectable citi-
zens of the middle class, who have the privilege of living
in the way they choose—a choice denied their more aris-
tocratic brethren—rolled past in long continuous lines.
The balmy, pleasant air, however, changed at nightfall
to one more chilly, and the cars were eagerly sought to
convey humanity,. tired with expanding its lungs on pure
ether, to their domiciles.

BETTING PROSECUTION.—At the Liverpool Police-
court yesterday John Maccall, a pablican and printer, was
fined £75 and costs for permitting betting on his premises.

Oliver Wendell Holmes says that widows who cry
easy are first to marry again. There is nothing like wet
weather for transplanting.

MR. W. T. TOWNSEND.—The interment of this
lamented dramatist took place this afternoon, at two o'clock,
at Finchley Cemetery. A great number of gentlemen con-
nected with the dramatic profession were present. Few
there were who had not impersonated at least one character
drawn by the author of not less three hundred acted plays.

GOVERNMENT EMIGRATION.—An order received
from the Admiralty directs that no more applications
from the workmen at Chatham dockyard to emigrate at
the expense of the Government will be received by the
Admiralty after Thursday next. The applications from
the hired and other workmen who are desirous of being
sent out to Canada by the Admiralty are very large—not
as the Globe said, very small.

THE METROPOLITAN DISTRICT RAlLWAY.—Tempo-
rary erections have been set up in the new Queen Victoria-
street, with the full approbation of the Metropolitan Board of
Works, to whom the street belongs, and who, with the Cor-
poratio a of London, are opposing the deviation of the Metro-
politan District Railway to the Mansion-house, to show the
manner and extent to which the proposed extension would
affect the new thoroughfare in its general appear-
ance and the public convenience it is designed to
afford. These temporary erections have been raised
to indicate practically the arrangements which the
company propose to make for lighting and venti-
lating the intended Mansion-house station on their line,• iu
the event of their obtaining Parliamentary powers for tho
purpose, and they are said further to represent the eompany's
owe model in that respect, with the exception of sonic ex-
ternal ornamentation, which does not affect the question
at issue between the company on the one hand and the
Corporation and the Metro. olitan Board on the other. The
erections now completed aro four in number, and two of
them are each 60ft, and two each 70ft in length ; all four
being each 15ft wide and about 6ft high. '1 hay run longi-
tudinally along the very crown of the causeway, commenc-
ing at the southern end of Queen-street, and going in the
direction of the Royal Exchange. Two of them are 16ft
apart, and the remaining two are divided by 37ft 3is
those interstices being designed as crossings of the main
thoroughfare for foot passengers. It is right to add thecom-
pany proposed to make up for the extent to which the pro-
posed structures detract from the breadth of the new street
by widening it on either side, so that practically, perhaps,
the width of the carriage way would be the same, only that
it would be divided or split, which would be an inconve-
nience. But nothing, as it seems to us (says the Tines),
would compensate for the extremely unsightly ap earauce
which those structures, however externally ornamented,
and however necessary for light and ventilation, would
present in so imposing and spacious a thoroughfare as the
new street will eventually be, or for the vexatious interrup-
tion they would occasion in the fine vista which would be
opened up from beginning to end. Let any man walk along
the new street from its junction with Cannon-street to the
point at which it becomes merged in the open space in front
of the Mansion-house, and form his own judgment on the
matter. He will see four wooden boxes of the dimensions
which have been stated iu the very centre of the roadway,
and prese,iting in some respects the appearance of a rail-
way train not in motion, minus the engine and tender. The
likeness will be complete, and the bad effect aggravated,
when puffs of steam are seen every now and then
issuing from these ventilating shafts with every pass-
ing train, as they will be should the proposed ar-
rangement be carried into effect. If those shafts to.
gather form at all a correct representation of what the com-
pany intend to construct three, should the deviation be sanc-
tioned by Parliament, it would be worth while for the
Lords' Committee, by whom the matter is now being
considered, to proceed to the spot and judge cf the effect
for themselves, unless, indeed, it be a case in which every
other consideration is to give way to a purely utilitarian
object. It is material also to bear in mind that, in the
event of the proposed extension being made, li tie more
than 300 feet would be saved, compared with the distance
between the Cannon-street Stati.n and the Royal Ex-
change.