of metropolitan life; behind, the lofty
spire, gothic windows, and archways of the church, and the central group
as picturesquely and piously suggestive as a mediaeval rite.

Vainly would the most self-possessed reminiscent breast the living tide
of the surging thoroughfare, on a weekday, to realize in his mind's eye
its ancient aspect; but if it chance to him to land at the Battery on a
clear and still Sabbath morning, and before the bells summon forth the
worshippers, and to walk thence to Union Square in company with an
octogenarian Knickerbocker of good memory, local pride, and fluent
speech, he will obtain a mental photograph of the past that transmutes
the familiar scene by a quaint and vivid aerial perspective. Then the
"Middle Road" of the beginning of this century will reappear,--the
traces of a wheat-field on the site of St. Paul's, still a fresh
tradition; Oswego Market, opposite Liberty Street, is alive with early
customers; the reminiscent beholds the apparition of Rutgers's orchard,
whose remaining noble elms yet shade the green vista of the City
Hospital, and which was a place for rifling bird's-nests in the boyhood
of his pensive companion, whose father played at skittles on the Bowling
Green, hard by the Governor's house, while the Dutch householders sat
smoking long pipes in their broad porticos, cosily discussing the last
news from Antwerp or Delft, their stout rosy daughters meanwhile taking
a twilight ramble, with their stalwart beaux, to the utmost suburban
limit of Manhattan, where Canal Street now intersects Broadway,--then an
unpaved lane with scattered domiciles, only grouped into civic
contiguity around the Battery, and with many gardens enhancing its rural
aspect. Somewhat later, and Munn's Land Office, at the corner of what is
now Grand Street, was suggestive of a growing settlement and the era of
speculation; an isolated coach-factory marked the site of the St.
Nicholas Hotel; people flocked along, in domestic instalments, to
Vauxhall, where now stands the Astor Library, to drink mead and see the
Flying Horses; and capitalists invested in "lots" on Bayard's Farm,
where Niblo's and the Metropolitan now flourish; the one-story building
at the present angle of Prince Street was occupied by Grant Thorburn's
father; beyond lay the old road leading to Governor Stuyvesant's
Bowerie, with Sandy Hill at the upper end. In 1664, Heere Stras was
changed to Broadway. At the King's Arms and Burr's Coffee