The contrasts between the poverty and wealth of New York are so extreme as sometimes to suggest even London, where misery and prosperity rub shoulders in a more heartrending way than, perhaps, anywhere else in the wide world.  But the contrasts that strike even the most unobservant visitor to the so-called American “metropolis” are of a different nature.  When I was asked by American friends what had most struck me in America, I sometimes answered, if in malicious mood, “The fact that the principal street of the largest and richest city in the Union is so miserably paved;” and, indeed, my recollections of the holes in Broadway, and of the fact that in wintry weather I had sometimes to diverge into University Place in order to avoid a mid-shin crossing of liquid mud in Broadway, seem as strange as if they related to a dream.[24] New York, again, possesses some of the most sumptuous private residences in the world, often adorned in particular with exquisite carvings in stone, such as Europeans have sometimes furnished for a cathedral or minster, but which it has been reserved for republican simplicity to apply to the residence of a private citizen.[25] Yet it is by no means ausgeschlossen, as the Germans say, that the pavement in front of this abode of luxury may not be seamed by huge cracks and rents that make walking after nightfall positively dangerous.

Fifth Avenue is not, to my mind, one of the most attractive city streets in the United States, but it is, perhaps, the one that makes the greatest impression of prosperity.  It is eminently solid and substantial; it reeks with respectability and possibly dulness.  It is a very alderman among streets.  The shops at its lower end, and gradually creeping up higher like the modest guest of the parable, make no appeal to the lightly pursed, but are as aristocratic-looking as those of Hanover Square.  Its hotels and clubs are equally suggestive of well-lined pockets.  Its churches more than hint at golden offertories; and the visitor is not surprised to be assured (as he infallibly will be) that the pastor of one of them preaches every Sunday to “two hundred and fifty million dollars.”  Even the beautiful Roman Catholic cathedral lends its aid to this impression, and encourages the faithful by a charge of fifteen to twenty-five cents for a seat.  The “stoops” of the lugubrious brown sandstone houses seem to retain something more of their Dutch origin than the mere name.  The Sunday Parade here is better dressed than that of Hyde Park, but candour compels me to admit, at the expense of my present point, considerably less stiff and non-committal.  Indeed, were it not for the miserable horses of the “stage lines” Fifth Avenue might present a clean bill of unimpeachable affluence.

Madison Avenue, hitherto uninvaded by shops, rivals Fifth Avenue in its suggestions of extreme well-to-do-ness, and should be visited, if for no other reason, to see the Tiffany house, one of the most daring and withal most captivating experiments known to me in city residences.