The mutations and ameliorations of Broadway are singularly rapid.  It is but a few years since the eye of the passenger therein often caught sight of pleasant domestic nooks,—­bulbs in bloom, a canary, gold-fish, or a graceful head bent over a book or crochet-work, at the cheerful window,—­where now iron fronts and plate-glass of enormous size proclaim the prosperous warehouse.  One of those sudden and sweeping conflagrations, which so frequently make a breach in the long line of edifices, destroyed within a few months the tall white walls of the American Museum, with its flaring effigies of giants, dwarfs, and monsters, and its band of musicians in the balcony, so alluring to the rustic visitor.  The picturesque church of St. Thomas and the heavy granite facade of the Stuyvesant Institute, the “Tabernacle,” the Art-Academy, and the Society Library buildings have given way to palaces of trade, and been transferred to the indefinitely extensive region of “up town.”  Stewart’s lofty marble stores redeemed the character of the east side, long neglected in favor of the more crowded and showy opposite walk; and his example has been followed by so many other enterprising capitalists, that the original difference, both of aspect and prestige, has all but vanished.

Among the most noticeable of the later features are the prevalence of flower-venders, and the increase of beggars; as well as the luxurious attractiveness of the leading confectioners’ establishments, which, in true American eclectic style, combine the Parisian cafe with the London pastry-cooks and the Continental restaurant,—­delectable rendezvous of women who lunch extravagantly.  Another and more refined feature is the increase of elegant Art stores, where Gerome’s latest miracle of Oriental delineation, a fresh landscape of Auchenbach, or a naive gem by Frere, is freely exposed to the public eye, beside new and elaborate engravings, and graphic war-groups of Rogers, or the latest crayon of Darley, sunset of Church, or rock-study by Haseltine.  These free glimpses of modern Art are indicative of the growing taste for and interest therein among us.  Pictures were never such profitable and precious merchandise here, and the fortunes of artists are different from what they were in the days when Cole used to bring his new landscape to town, deposit it in the house of a friend, and personally call the attention thereto of the few who cared for such things, and when the fashionable portrait-painter was the exclusive representative of the guild in Gotham.

The Astor House was the first of the large hotels on Broadway; and its erection marks a new era in that favorite kind of enterprise and entertainment of which Bunker’s Mansion House was so long the comfortable, respectable, and home-like ideal.  Yet it is noteworthy that inns rarely have or keep a representative character with us, but blend popularity with fashion, as nowhere else.  One may be associated with Rebeldom, another