Growth of St. Louis.- While the fogies along the Rhine and the Zuyder Zee are putting up an half dozen windmills, a large city is built in the West.
San Francisco, now sitting at her Golden Gate, wealthy and prosperous, sprung up as if under the magical influence of some fabulously energetic Aladdin: Chicago, great and splendid, bringing to Lake Michigan the trade of ships
“From lands of snow and lands of sun,”
and the rapid progress of St. Louis, form a small town a few years since to the business and dimensions of an emporium whose steam tonnage is third in the list of commercial cities, are in striking contrast with the volanteism of Europe.
Men are yet in their prime who saw St. Louis grow form babydom to the full-limbed, strong-breasted giant that it now is, and will yet live to see the city become the Western metropolis.
Last year three thousand houses were erected within the city limits and about one thousand in the suburbs. It is thought that at the end of the present year the improvements of this kind will be equal to that of the year gone. These buildings are of a most substantial character being of stone and brick. The almost total absence of frame buildings evince the good sense of the people in securing safety and durability.
Nor is architectural elegance forgotten in the intoxication of trade and speculation. Many of the new residences and business houses are models. The two new hotels, now going up , the Lindel and Southern, demonstrate the growing taste of the people of St. Louis for architectural beauty. The Linden Hotel, on Washington Avenue, yet in an unfinished state, will be one of the grandest caravansery’s for travelers in the Union. It is of stone, with iron ornaments, and six stories high. It covers nearly a square, presenting a full front on the Avenue.
When the hotel arrangements are complete, St. Louis yet needs something else to make it attractive to strangers. And what is that? A new theatre. Our St. Charles is great compared with the dark, dreary and barn-like appearance of that left dramatic arm of our manager. One of the features of St. Louis is the splendor of its underground saloons. “Kings,” a bijou of a place, deep in cellardom, cost fifteen thousand dollars in the fitting up, and surely if Bacchus wanted a home he would find it there. Blessed be compensation! The city is so hot in summer and so bitingly cold in winter, that every means to cool and warm one’s system should be regarded as a god-send.
With all its handsome public buildings, its clean streets, and means of internal transportation, St. Louis can not yet be said to equal in point of genuine attractiveness.
“The Queen City”
Beyond, question, Cincinnati is one of the cleanest and certainly the most beautiful city of the West. There are buildings on Third, Fourth and Fifth streets that for showiness and comfort are not excelled in the great cities of the Atlantic seaboard.
Its location is unsurpassed. Rising gradually from the brink of the Ohio, until it is enthroned upon hills, one falls in love with it immediately. Its quiet , shady streets, the elegance of the private residences and its suburban beauty cannot fail to attract a stranger.
A singular illusion takes possession of the eye while standing at any point above the Burnet House. The streets of Newport correspond with those running down to the river. The Ohio looks like a thread of silver flashing in sunlight, and so slender that it does not seem to separate Cincinnati from its little Kentucky neighbor on the other side. Then at sunset, as pic-nic parties return from festivities over the river, it seems as if the little pattering feet of the ladies came over dry-shod to the hills of the city, and the gallants, like the followers of Mahomet, passed over a gossamer Surat bridge to get to the home region of the Houris and the Tuba trees.
Yet the “Queen City” is by no means so fast as St. Louis. It is far quieter. People move more leisurely and take life in an easy-going style. It is becoming like Philadelphia, a place to line in, and not a place run made after Mammon.
Oh dit.- The terrible storm which swept over Cincinnati tore away the roof and considerable portion of the walls of the Commercial Office, dedicated to the cause of Lincoln, the Black Republican. The Enquirer was not damaged. This is significant of the effects of the political storm in November.
Dulness of Washington.
Baltimore, after the adjournment of the National Democratic Convention, was dell enough, but the Federal city was a very Desert of Dulness.
The Executive Session of the Senate held the “potent, grave and reverend Seignors” of that body to a temporary residence. And we may just here mention a peculiar trait of the representatives or misrepresentatives of the people. While the Senate was engaged in the transactions of business, with closed doors, a new and finely-polished business talbe in the House was surrounded by men, who rested their feet upon it in regular sane cullotte style. Some of them resembled old Jacob Collamer, with whom we traveled from Washington to New York- the man, by the way, who talked of drawing a “white line” around the Slave States, and whose physiognomy, hard, severe, and cold as the ice on a peak of the White Mountains, was a fine specimen of the New England “slave-hater.”
The new Halls of Congress are immense improvements on the old, bell like halls one can see and hear distinctly. Though an immense deal of gilt “gingerbread” work meets the eye, it is apparent that the artist studied, in their construction, comfort, elegance and acoustics. The new wings and dome are being rapidly finished. And in spite of the nude and ungainly marble statues in the rear portico, the Capital is an honor to the Republic.
Not so with the White House. That edifice is mean when contrasted with the new Treasury Buildings, the Patent Office and other public edifices. The Treasury Buildings completely shut it in from view. Not a few private gentlemen in the South can boast of handsomer homes. Towards the Potomac the fence is going to decay, and even the grounds are not kept in fine order.
But we started to say something of the dullness of Washington after Congressmen and hangers-on have deserted it . Pennsylvania Avenue is then but a sandy road, and thinly populated. The summer sun is intolerable, the dust abominable. A julep assist the temporary sojourner to tolerate the “City of magnificent distances,” but a feature in Washington trade destroys even that comfort. What is this feature? You lay down a quarter and never got any change! This is but retail robbery, but what of the grand system of robbery going on in Government departments? George Macduffe said, when leaving the city, “I have turned my back upon Sodam and Gomorrah.!”
To a metropolitan citizen, Washington is a Tadmor of the most approved quality in summer time.
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A Striking Fact.- Leaving the “Queen City” one is struck with the number of new, thriving and really beautiful towns and villages on the railway route to Cleveland. And on the Lake Erie Railway the number seems to increase.
From Cleveland to Erie there are some eighteen stopping points, fifteen of which are young and flourishing villages. All along the route tall spires point their tapering fingers heavenward. Every town and village has handsome and really fine churches. The same phenomena may be noticed from Buffalo to Albany. Considering the size of some of these places the traveler wonders how it is that so many churches can be supported. All along this route abolition fanaticism reigns supreme. The all pervading, never ending , almighty “nig-er question” here is discussed day by day, and William Loyd Garrison, Wendal Phillips and John Brown are held as deities of “human freedom.” The same feature is observable in Western Pennslyvania.
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Pittsburg.- The hot-bed of Black Republicanism and abolitionism is another example of this strange fact. Dull-looking, and dusky, with blazing furnaces and clouds of smoke, this place in the very personification of hell! The Prince of Wales, we see is to pass through this smoke-begrimmed city on his way to “Porkopolis.” It is a pity that the King of Dahomey could not contrive to come instead of the young Guelph. The “gent with the wonderful tail” would walk down Fifth or Smithfield streets when the furnaces are in full blast across the Monongahela and Allegheny perfectly well satisfied that he was at home, particularly if his Majesty had been on a spree the night previous. The British “crook-back” could ask almost every morning:
“Who saw the sun to-day?”
Yet we find good people everywhere. Pittsburg is not without them. And such specimens of the better part of human nature serve to make the city endurable, sooty, and ungainly as it is.
One of its attractive features consists in the number of substantial iron bridges which span each river. Some are models of beauty, and durability in their way, and however ironically the traveler may be inclined to speak of the city after having his face daubed with smut, he cannot but speak with admiration of these iron conveniences.
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A Pleasant Custom.- Throughout the North, pic-nic parties on a large scale constitute a grand feature of the summer programme. Like the people of Sweden, they make the most of the short summer, and dance a quadrille of pleasure all through June, July and August.
On any bright, agreeable day, bands of music and crowds of ladies, gallants and staid matrons and men as well, rush from the cities to some rural nook, taking Longfellow’s advice in his sweet prelude to the Voices of the Night:
…
These parties are productive of a vast deal of good, in a physical and social point of view. The Northern people know it, feel it, and go into this sort of innocent pastime with a “dash.”
It would be well did our folks at home imitate the example. Such recreation is constantly resorted to at the North. In the South it is sporadic. Has it ever struck any one that we are getting to be a non-social people? It is so, notwithstanding we have the reputation of being an exceedingly hospitable, fiery-souled and chivalrous people.
We may as well stop. This pen-dashing benumbs the fingers, however lubricated by the juices of the brain. Adios.
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THE DISUNION SCHEME.- It is not impossible to comprehend how men can be brought to regard with greater favor the advancement of their material interests than the conservation of their political rights, and to prefer local prosperity to national greatness and renown.
We say it is not impossible to comprehend all this, provided the individuals so disposed can only be convinced that their own substantial well-being can, by such preference, be infallibly secured. In other words, it is not difficult to realize that there are men in South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas and perhaps elsewhere, who have been brought to believe, or who , by the practice of some strange and unaccountable self-delusion have seduced them-selves into the belief, that all that is required to make their own worldly importance and personal consequence complete is the division of this confederacy, the disruption of the national ligaments which bind it together, and the elevation of a Rhett, a Jeff. Davis, a Yancey, or some other of the one thousand or more political bidders for high place, whose importunate cravings for distinction have so recently culminated disastrously for them at Charleston and Baltimore. Of course we think very little of the intelligence , good sense or patriotism of any man who can so persuade himself; nevertheless, as we only speak for ourselves, our opinions may not, in this particular, be universally or generally admitted, and there may by, contrary to all of our impressions and convictions upon the subject, perhaps & thousand or two in Louisiana who conscientiously believe that a dissolution of the Union or a nullification of the laws of the republic, is all that is required to make them prosperous, contented and happy. But while we shall not assert that no such persons are to be met with that the insanity of disunion has no existence in any portion of the State so uncontaminated by pestiferous heresy; we cannot deny that a very considerable number –say, perhaps, a tithe or more of the entire voting population- are so carried away by politicians and traders in public office, as to lend a countenance and support to schemes which can only result in the utter ruin and prostration of every interest in the country. It is true that when hard pressed neither the orators nor presses generally of such people are willing to admit that, directly or indirectly, a dissolution of this Union is aimed at, or desired by them, or indeed, unless very remotely , enters into their contemplation; yet, in refutation of such assurances, we have the recorded opinions of these very authorities, clandestinely sent abroad, proclaiming their purpose to be to prepare the Southern heart for hatred of and alienation from our Northern and Western brothers, and at the opportune moment to precipitate the Cotton States into revolution . We candidly admit that the pure unadulterated plotters of the scheme are neither formidable in numbers nor dangerous in influence; still when they attempt a political organization, using weak or foolishly ambitious men to cloak their designs, in the hope of combining federal political power to take heed and defeat them in their new guise as, since the days of Jackson and Jefferson, they have over thrown them on several occasions in older habiliments.
The main reliance of the disunion or Yancey men is upon the Cotton States. Their organs, more or less timid, are incessantly assailing the popular ear in them with bundles of fanciful statistics, all tending to prove the utter abasement of this people, through what they consider the iniquitous operation of the Federal Union, and imploring them to cut loose from the connection and put themselves under the special direction of the brainless brawlers of the South Carolina school, who will lead them speedily, they are confidently assured, to eternal political beatitude. For the present, it will suffice if their believers only vote for Breckinridge and Lane, the former as a decoy to the latter, their real candidate, in whom, in the event of success, they have guarantees they will find another Miss Judy Buchanan for their purposes. This, with patriotic perversity, perfectly inexplicable to the Cotton States conspirators, the people of North Carolina, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas and Missouri have recently emphatically and indignantly refused to do; Kentucky alone, by an easy effort of condemnation and repudiation, declining by a majority of fifty thousand votes to countenance any and all such hideous propositions. Of course, precisely the same results will in good time be witnessed everywhere else, yet extraordinary as it is, at many points, indeed even here in ever-loyal Union –loving Louisiana, they fancy-these disorganizers-they can delude our enlightened population into the support of their make-believe candidates. So little capable are they of appreciating the intelligence of our people, they are heard to talk of their influence and strength in the sugar parishes, where above all other portions of our glorious Union, is the population dependent upon the permanency of our federal institutions and connections for their prosperity. If Yancey and his disunion brigade , and Slidell, Buchanan, Bright, Green, Gwinn, and their trafficking associates in the same boat, had a particle of chance of success here, how long would it be before every sugar estate in lower Louisiana would be abandoned, and its labor transferred to the cotton fields of neighboring commonwealths? The dis-unionist will perhaps reply to this that sugar is a small interest compared to cotton, and it is so; but small or large those identified with it are not such fools as to sacrifice it at the bidding of Yancey & Co., free traders for the cotton growers exclusively. As it is, the Louisiana sugar planter is quite content to have the home market preserved to him, a market to which thirty millions of people have to resort; and when he consents to renounce this it will be, we are of opinion, for some better guaranteed promise of prosperity, than Yancey’s predictions of Southern success, or Slidell & Co.’s assurances of good government , when they have a new lease of administration and a second Buchanan in old Lane, to operate for their purposes. It is deemed strange that, entertaining these ideas of nullification and the nullifiers, we should have most earnestly advocated at all times the breaking up of the Democratic Conventions of Baltimore and Charleston, and deprecated the withdrawal of Breckinridge, which we live in hourly dread of being done. But there is nothing strange in this. We were unchangeably adverse to acting with men whose connection with the great conservative party of the Union was admittedly with a steadily entertained intention, to use the organization for the overthrow of the government, and the destruction of the Union, and therefore we used all our influence to segregate the so that their numerical force, their personal importance and their real weight should be accurately ascertained and determined. Even now we conscientiously declare no news of a political character would be so afflicting to us as the confirmation of the very probable retirement of Mr. J. C. Breckinridge from the Presidential contest and the only mitigations of the suffering such an announcement would cause us would be found in our personal respect for the man and our heartfelt regrets at his weakness in having ever allowed himself to be so unworthily used by men whom we know he esteemed his enemies. No, let this election and the candidates entered for the contest stand just as they are, and if the result does not satisfy every one that neither Abolition nor Disunion fanaticism is fitted to prosper on the soil of these United States, then we shall be ready to hail Jas. Buchanan as an honest public servant and John Slidell as the legitimate owner of the Houmas Lands.
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David Upton