I thought I was going to a spot quite different from any locality I had previously been accustomed to; and, lo! New York was altogether commonplace.

Nothing original, nothing tropical, nothing "New World"-like about it.

It was only an ordinary town of the same stamp as many I have noticed on this side of the water--a European city in a slop suit--"Yankee" all over in _that_ way! In regard to its extent, which I had been led to believe was quite equal to, if not surpassing, our metropolis, I found that I could walk from one side of it to the other in half an hour; and traverse its length in twice that time--the entire island on which it is built being only nine miles long.

"Why," thought I, when I had arrived at this knowledge, "some of our suburbs could beat that!" When bright days came, Broadway undoubtedly looked a little better-- Barnum's streamers, "up town," floating out bravely over the heads of the "stage" drivers--but I was never able to overcome my first impressions of it and New York generally; and, to make an end of the matter, I may say now, that the longer I stayed in the "land of the settin' sun," north, south, east, and west--I had experience of all--the less I saw to like in it.
The country and the scenery are well enough; but the people! Ah! if the Right Honourable John Bright and other ardent admirers of everything connected with the "great Republic" on the other side of the ocean, would but go over, as I did, and study it honestly from every point of view for three years, say, they _must_ come to a different opinion about the nation which they are so constantly eulogising at the expense of their own! Don't let them merely run over to see it in gala trim, however, and have its workings explained only to them through a transatlantic section of the same clique of which they are members at home; but let them go in a private capacity and see things for themselves, mixing amongst all classes of the American community, and not only in one circle.
They won't, though.
The Manchester manufacturer of "advanced views" visits the Massachusetts manufacturer;--and, derives all _his_ knowledge of America and her institutions from him.

The trades' union delegate of England palavers with the working-men's societies of the eastern states; whence he gets _his_ information of Transatlantic polemics.