ime, the head of him who wrote _Romeo and
Juliet_.

While in this literary vein we would say a word of the newspapers.
These, the true finger-posts of thought in a community, are apt in
manufacturing cities to be conservative and timid, as trade is timid.
The very special attitude of Wilmington, however--a Yankee town in
perpetual protest with a Bourbon State--has inspired its press with
peculiar political energy. No more vehement Republican organ can be
found in the land, for instance, than the Wilmington _Commercial_: it is
not in its columns that you will see ingenious defences of the
whipping-post at Newcastle or of the crushing taxes levied at Dover,
whereby a lazy State feeds greedily upon a hard-working metropolis. The
_Commercial_ (Jenkins & Atkinson) is a staunch Administration sheet,
sound on the subject of industrial protection, and highly appreciated by
the manufacturers. Founded in 1866, it was, we believe, the sole daily
until eighteen months ago, when some of the sober-sided weeklies began
to understand that they must bestir themselves and put forth a diurnal
appearance. The _Gazette_ (C. P. Johnson), a paper nearly one hundred
years old, now appears daily, and expresses the opinions of the State
Assembly, where the Senate has but a single Republican member, and the
House of Representatives stands fourteen Democrats to seven Republicans.
Here the conservative thought of Kent and Sussex counties is kneaded up
into the requisite coherency and eloquence. _Every Evening_ (Croasdale &
Cameron), a smart paper without political bias, flies around the city as
the shadows begin to lengthen, selling at one cent a sheet, and liked by
everybody.

[Illustration: HOUSE OF COLONEL HENRY McCOMB.]

To be candid, however, we do not suspect that this unique old city
thinks through its newspapers. The circumstances here are so peculiar,
the neighborhood so close, activity so concentrated, and the
circumjacent neighborhood so little congenial, that an order of things
has been established unusual in modern times. Mind acts on mind by
personal contact; the strong men meet and support each other; the Board
of Trade assembles daily in beautiful rooms, and discusses every
interest as quickly as it arises. It is like the order of things of old,
ere the press and telegraph undertook to express our views before we had
formed them ourselves. We are reminded of the guilds of labor in ancient
Flanders or the _fondachi_ of Venice. The