te uniform of the "Old Continentals," with the
red shirts of the firemen and the miniature banners of a Sunday-school
phalanx,--the gay citizen soldiers who turned out to honor Independence
or Evacuation Day, with the bronzed and maimed veterans bringing home
their bullet-torn flags from the bloody field of a triumphant patriotic
war,--the first negro regiment raised therefor cheerily escorted by the
Union League Club, with the sublime funeral train of the martyred
President. Including party demonstrations, popular ovations, memorable
receptions and obsequies,--Broadway processions, historically speaking,
uniquely illustrate the civic growth, the political freedom, the
cosmopolitan sympathies, and the social prosperity of New York.

The mutations and ameliorations of Broadway are singularly rapid. It is
but a few years since the eye of the passenger therein often caught
sight of pleasant domestic nooks,--bulbs in bloom, a canary, gold-fish,
or a graceful head bent over a book or crochet-work, at the cheerful
window,--where now iron fronts and plate-glass of enormous size proclaim
the prosperous warehouse. One of those sudden and sweeping
conflagrations, which so frequently make a breach in the long line of
edifices, destroyed within a few months the tall white walls of the
American Museum, with its flaring effigies of giants, dwarfs, and
monsters, and its band of musicians in the balcony, so alluring to the
rustic visitor. The picturesque church of St. Thomas and the heavy
granite facade of the Stuyvesant Institute, the "Tabernacle," the
Art-Academy, and the Society Library buildings have given way to palaces
of trade, and been transferred to the indefinitely extensive region of
"up town." Stewart's lofty marble stores redeemed the character of the
east side, long neglected in favor of the more crowded and showy
opposite walk; and his example has been followed by so many other
enterprising capitalists, that the original difference, both of aspect
and prestige, has all but vanished.

Among the most noticeable of the later features are the prevalence of
flower-venders, and the increase of beggars; as well as the luxurious
attractiveness of the leading confectioners' establishments, which, in
true American eclectic style, combine the Parisian cafe with the London
pastry-cooks and the Continental restaurant,--delectable rendezvous of
women who lunch extravagantly. Another and more refined feature is the
increase of elegant