the man told me, “and if we say anything, we are told that if we do not like it we need not use it.”  In railway matters and postal matters time and punctuality are not valued in the States as they are with us, and the public seem to acknowledge that they must put up with defects—­ that they must grin and bear them in America, as the public no doubt do in Austria, where such affairs are managed by a government bureau.

In the beginning of this chapter I spoke of the population of New York, and I cannot end it without remarking that out of that population more than one-eighth is composed of Germans.  It is, I believe, computed that there are about 120,000 Germans in the city, and that only two other German cities in the world, Vienna and Berlin have a larger German population than New York.  The Germans are good citizens and thriving men, and are to be found prospering all over the Northern and Western parts of the Union.  It seems that they are excellently well adapted to colonization, though they have in no instance become the dominant people in a colony, or carried with them their own language or their own laws.  The French have done so in Algeria, in some of the West India islands, and quite as essentially into Lower Canada, where their language and laws still prevail.  And yet it is, I think, beyond doubt that the French are not good colonists, as are the Germans.

Of the ultimate destiny of New York as one of the ruling commercial cities of the world, it is, I think, impossible to doubt.  Whether or no it will ever equal London in population I will not pretend to say; even should it do so, should its numbers so increase as to enable it to say that it had done so, the question could not very well be settled.  When it comes to pass that an assemblage of men in one so-called city have to be counted by millions, there arises the impossibility of defining the limits of that city, and of saying who belong to it and who do not.  An arbitrary line may be drawn, but that arbitrary line, though perhaps false when drawn as including too much, soon becomes more false as including too little.  Ealing, Acton, Fulham, Putney, Norwood, Sydenham, Blackheath, Woolwich, Greenwich, Stratford, Highgate, and Hampstead are, in truth, component parts of London, and very shortly Brighton will be as much so.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

As New York is the most populous State of the Union, having the largest representation in Congress—­on which account it has been called the Empire State—­I propose to state, as shortly as may be, the nature of its separate constitution as a State.  Of course it will be understood that the constitutions of the different States are by no means the same.  They have been arranged according to the judgment of the different people concerned, and have been altered from time to time to suit such altered judgment.