The size of New York is by no means its most notable distinction. Chicago some day may, by right of its more central position, win the prize of being recognised as the real if not the political capital of the United States. But the position to which Chicago aspires has, for nearly a century, been held by New York. For New York is one of the few cities in the States which are not of yesterday. Of course, compared with London, which dates back to the Cæsars, New York is but a mushroom upstart. But as in the realm of the blind the one-eyed man is king, so in the New World a city which can count its history by centuries may be regarded as possessing quite a respectable antiquity.

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To us in the Old World it is the window through which we look into America. Peter the Great built his capital on the Neva in order to have a window from which he could look into Europe. New York serves much the same purpose. It is through the window-pane of New York that the Old World sees what little it does see that is going on in the American Republic. All the newspaper correspondents of the European press without a single exception, so far as I know, cable from New York. Not a single British newspaper has a correspondent at Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, or Washington. As for the suggestion of publishing telegrams from New Orleans or San Francisco, it would be more reasonable to expect to see despatches from Mars. This leads, no doubt, to much misconception. The New York window is by no means of transparent crystal. Those who consent to see the United States solely through their New York window-pane will often be egregiously misled. Nevertheless, the fact remains that New York is the only window through which the Old World peeps into the New.

Nor is that the only special reason why New York is better known to us of the older branch of the race than any other part of the American Continent. New York is not more the only window than it is the only door of the New World. The Atlantic is furrowed by a thousand keels, but all the liners steer for New York. Steamers no doubt ply to Boston and to Philadelphia, but the great trade route—the only passenger route—lies past Sandy Hook. New York is the front gate of the Western hemisphere. Even Canada finds it more convenient to use the New York entrance than the ice-blocked mouth of the St. Lawrence. Hence, whatever else the Old World man may see or fail to see in the New World, the one place he is certain to see, the one place which he cannot avoid seeing, is the Queen of the Hudson.

And as New York is the first American city which every traveller sees, and the last which he leaves, so New York has attracted a greater number of European residents than any other city, with the doubtful exception of Chicago. In 1888, thirty-six per cent. of the citizens were either Irish or of Irish descent. The German element was in 1891 estimated at twenty-five per cent. In the City of New York the indigenous American only numbers twenty per cent.

But it is not its imported population which makes it so peculiarly European. Chicago is at least as cosmopolitan, but the city on Lake Michigan counts herself much more American than her sister on the Hudson. During the last Presidential Campaign New York was constantly singled out for attack by the Bryanite orators of the West and South as if it were a foreign and hostile colony encamped on American soil. Wall Street, the centre of the financial system of the United States, was as sound on the currency question as the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, and the advocates of Free Silver confounded New York and London alike beneath their savage anathema. Community of interest begets community of ideas, and the Western men angrily declare that New York is no more a typical American city than London or Liverpool. This is an exaggeration, no doubt. But neighbourhood counts for something, and New York is a thousand miles nearer to London than to Chicago.

New York is only six days’ steaming from Europe. It is the centre from whence the mighty shuttles ply back and forth across the Atlantic, weaving the ocean-sundered sections of our race into one. Of the threads, some end at Southampton and others at Liverpool. But they all start from New York.

ONE OF THE WINDOW-PANES OF THE WINDOW OF THE NEW WORLD.
Printing-House Square, New York.