rance and
England in a more pronounced way than I found anywhere else in
America, but the names one sees over the shops seem predominantly
German and Jewish, accents we are familiar with at home resound in
our ears, the quarters we are first introduced to recall the dinginess
and shabbiness of the waterside quarters of cities like London and
Glasgow. More intimate acquaintance finds much that is strongly
American in New York; but this is not the first impression, and first
impressions count for so much that it seems to me a pity that New York
is for most travellers the prologue to their American experiences.

The contrasts between the poverty and wealth of New York are so
extreme as sometimes to suggest even London, where misery and
prosperity rub shoulders in a more heartrending way than, perhaps,
anywhere else in the wide world. But the contrasts that strike even
the most unobservant visitor to the so-called American "metropolis"
are of a different nature. When I was asked by American friends what
had most struck me in America, I sometimes answered, if in malicious
mood, "The fact that the principal street of the largest and richest
city in the Union is so miserably paved;" and, indeed, my
recollections of the holes in Broadway, and of the fact that in wintry
weather I had sometimes to diverge into University Place in order to
avoid a mid-shin crossing of liquid mud in Broadway, seem as strange
as if they related to a dream.[24] New York, again, possesses some of
the most sumptuous private residences in the world, often adorned in
particular with exquisite carvings in stone, such as Europeans have
sometimes furnished for a cathedral or minster, but which it has been
reserved for republican simplicity to apply to the residence of a
private citizen.[25] Yet it is by no means _ausgeschlossen_, as the
Germans say, that the pavement in front of this abode of luxury may
not be seamed by huge cracks and rents that make walking after
nightfall positively dangerous.

Fifth Avenue is not, to my mind, one of the most attractive city
streets in the United States, but it is, perhaps, the one that makes
the greatest impression of prosperity. It is eminently solid and
substantial; it reeks with respectability and possibly dulness. It is
a very alderman among streets. The shops at its lower end, and
gradually creeping up higher like the modest guest of the parable,
make no appeal to the lightly pursed, but are as aristocratic-looki