with trade; this be frequented by Eastern, and that by Western travellers; and nationalities may be identified with certain resorts.  But the tendency is towards the eclectic and homogeneous; individuality not less than domesticity is trenched upon and fused in these extravagant caravanseries; and there is no fact more characteristic of the material luxury and gregarious standard of New York life, than that the only temple erected to her patron saint is a marble tavern!

Broadway has always had its eccentric or notable habitues.  The Muse of Halleck, in her palmy days, immortalized not a few; and many persons still recall the “crazy poet Clarke,” the “Lime-Kiln man,” the courteous and venerable Toussaint,—­New York’s best “image of God carved in ebony,”—­tall “gentleman George” Barrett, and a host of “familiar faces” associated with local fame or social traits.  The representative clergy, physicians, lawyers, merchants, editors, politicians, bards, and beauties, “men about town,” and actors, were there identified, saluted, and observed; and of all these, few seemed so appropriately there as the last; for often there was and is a melodramatic aspect and association in the scene, and Burton, Placide, or the elder Wallack walked there with a kind of professional self-complacency.  Thackeray, who had a quick and trained eye for the characteristic in cities, delighted in Broadway, for its cheerful variety, its perpetual “comedy of life”; the significance whereof is only more apparent to the sympathetic observer, because now and then through the eager throng glides the funeral car to the sound of muffled drums, the “Black Maria” with its convict load, or the curtained hospital litter with its dumb and maimed burden.  And then, to the practised frequenter, how, one by one, endeared figures and faces disappear from that diurnal stage!  It seems but yesterday since we met there Dr. Francis’s cheering salutation, or listened to Dr. Bethune’s and Fenno Hoffman’s genial and John Stephens’s truthful talk,—­watched General Scott’s stalwart form, Dr. Kane’s lithe frame, Cooper’s self-reliant step, Peter Parley’s juvenile cheerfulness,—­and grasped Henry Inman’s cordial hand, or listened to Irving’s humorous reminiscence, and met the benign smile of dear old Clement Moore.  As to fairer faces and more delicate shapes,—­to encounter which was the crowning joy of our promenade,—­and “cheeks grown holy with the lapse of years,” memory holds them too sacred for comment.  “Passing away” is the perpetual refrain in the chorus of humanity in this bustling thoroughfare, to the sober eye of maturity.  The never-ending procession, to the sensitive and the observant, has also infinite degrees of language.  Some faces seem to welcome, others to defy, some to lower, and some to brighten, many to ignore, a few to challenge or charm,—­as we pass.  And what lessons of fortune and of character are written thereon,—­the blush of innocence and the hardihood of recklessness, the candid grace of honor and the mean deprecatory glance of knavery, intelligence and stupidity, soulfulness and vanity, the glad smile of friendship, the shrinking eye of fallen fortune, the dubious recognition of disgrace, the effrontery of the adventurer, and the calm, pleasant bearing of rectitude,—­all that is beautiful and base in humanity, gleams, glances, and disappears as the crowd pass on.