t, if
the ministry of this peace shall continue, may be looked for in the
future.

When the Dutch traders raised their storehouse of logs on yonder
untamed and desolate strand, perhaps as early as 1615; when the
Walloons established their settlement on this side of the river, in
1624, at that "Walloons' Bay" which we still call the Wallabout; or
when, later, in 1626, Manhattan Island, estimated to contain 22,000
acres, was purchased from the Indians for $24, paid in beads, buttons
and trinkets, and the Block House was built, with cedar palisades, on
the site of the Battery, it is, of course, commonplace to say that
they who had come hither could scarcely have had the least conception
of what a career they thus were commencing for two great cities. But
it is not so wholly commonplace to say that those who saw this now
wealthy and splendid New York a hundred years since, less conspicuous
than Boston, far smaller than Philadelphia, with its first bank
established in 1784, and not fully chartered till seven years later;
with its first daily paper in 1785; its first ship in the Eastern
trade returning in May of the same year; its first Directory published
in 1786, and containing only 900 names; its Broadway extending only to
St. Paul's; with the grounds about Reade street grazing-fields for
cattle, and with ducks still shot in that Beekman's Swamp which the
traffic in leather has since made famous: or those who saw it even
fifty years ago, when its population was little more than one-third of
the present population of this younger city; when its first Mayor had
not been chosen by popular election; when gas had but lately been
introduced, and the superseding of the primitive pumps by Croton water
had not yet been projected--they, all, could hardly have imagined what
already the city should have become: the recognized centre of the
commerce of the Continent; one of the principal cities of the world.

So those who have lived in this city from childhood, and who hardly
yet claim the dignities of age, could scarcely have conjectured, when
looking on what Mr. Murphy recalled as the village of his youth, "a
hamlet of a hundred houses," that it should have become, in our time,
a city of nearly 70,000 dwelling houses, occupied by twice as many
families; with a population, by the census rates, of little less than
700,000; with more than 150,000 children in its public and private
schools; with 330 miles of paved streets, as many as l