when, in
1807, Robert Fulton initiated steam navigation, the vast system of
ferriage was established which inundated the main avenue of the city
with a perpetual tributary stream of floating population from all the
outlying shores of the Hudson and East Rivers, Staten and Long Islands,
and the villages above Manhattan. A lady who lived in New York forty
years ago, and returned this season, expressed her surprise that the
matutinal procession of rustics she used to watch from the window of her
fashionable domicile in the lower part of Broadway had ceased, so
completely had suburban citizens usurped the farmers' old homes. The
beautiful pigeons that used to coo and cluster on the cobble stones had
no resting-place for their coral feet on the Russ pavement, so thickly
moved the drays, and so unremitted was the rush of man and beast. In
fact, the one conservative feature eloquent of the past is the
churchyard,--the old, moss-grown, sloping gravestones,--landmarks of
finished life-journeys, mutely invoking the hurrying crowd through the
tall iron railings of Trinity and St. Paul's. It is a striking evidence
of a "new country," that a youth from the Far West, on arriving in New
York by sea, was so attracted by these ancient cemeteries that he
lingered amid them all day,--saying it was the first time he had ever
seen a human memorial more than twenty years old, except a tree! And
memorable was the ceremony whereby, a few years since, the Historical
Society celebrated the bicentennial birthday of Bradford, the old
colonial printer, by renewing his headstone. At noonday, when the
life-tide was at flood, in lovely May weather, a barrier was stretched
across Broadway; and there, at the head of eager gold-worshipping Wall
Street, in the heart of the bustling, trafficking crowd, a vacant place
was secured in front of the grand and holy temple of Trinity. The
pensive chant arose; a white band of choristers and priests came forth;
and eminent citizens gathered around to reconsecrate the tablet over the
dust of one who, two hundred years ago, had practised a civilizing art
in this fresh land, and disseminated messages of religion and wisdom. It
was a singular picture, beautiful to the eye, solemn to the feelings,
and a rare tribute to the past, where the present sways with such
absolute rule. Few Broadway tableaux are so worthy of artistic
preservation. Before, the vista of a money-changers' mart; above and
below, a long, crowded avenue