Art stores, where Gerome's latest miracle of
Oriental delineation, a fresh landscape of Auchenbach, or a naive gem by
Frere, is freely exposed to the public eye, beside new and elaborate
engravings, and graphic war-groups of Rogers, or the latest crayon of
Darley, sunset of Church, or rock-study by Haseltine. These free
glimpses of modern Art are indicative of the growing taste for and
interest therein among us. Pictures were never such profitable and
precious merchandise here, and the fortunes of artists are different
from what they were in the days when Cole used to bring his new
landscape to town, deposit it in the house of a friend, and personally
call the attention thereto of the few who cared for such things, and
when the fashionable portrait-painter was the exclusive representative
of the guild in Gotham.

The Astor House was the first of the large hotels on Broadway; and its
erection marks a new era in that favorite kind of enterprise and
entertainment of which Bunker's Mansion House was so long the
comfortable, respectable, and home-like ideal. Yet it is noteworthy that
inns rarely have or keep a representative character with us, but blend
popularity with fashion, as nowhere else. One may be associated with
Rebeldom, another with trade; this be frequented by Eastern, and that by
Western travellers; and nationalities may be identified with certain
resorts. But the tendency is towards the eclectic and homogeneous;
individuality not less than domesticity is trenched upon and fused in
these extravagant caravanseries; and there is no fact more
characteristic of the material luxury and gregarious standard of New
York life, than that the only temple erected to her patron saint is a
marble tavern!

Broadway has always had its eccentric or notable _habitues_. The Muse of
Halleck, in her palmy days, immortalized not a few; and many persons
still recall the "crazy poet Clarke," the "Lime-Kiln man," the courteous
and venerable Toussaint,--New York's best "image of God carved in
ebony,"--tall "gentleman George" Barrett, and a host of "familiar faces"
associated with local fame or social traits. The representative clergy,
physicians, lawyers, merchants, editors, politicians, bards, and
beauties, "men about town," and actors, were there identified, saluted,
and observed; and of all these, few seemed so appropriately there as the
last; for often there was and is a melodramatic aspect and association
in the scene, and Burton