When I say _relatively_, I
mean as comparing the _bolder_ parts of our stream with those of
others--speaking of them as _high lands_--many other portions of
this good globe having a much superior _grandeur_, while very few
have so much lovely river scenery compressed into so small a space as
is to be found in the other parts of the Hudson.
In due time we arrived in New York, and I had the supreme happiness of
pointing out to the girls the State's Prison, the Bear Market, and the
steeples of St. Paul's and Trinity-_old_ Trinity, as it was so
lately the fashion to style a church that was built only a few years
before, and which, in my youth, was considered as magnificent as it
was venerable. That building has already disappeared; and another
edifice, which is now termed splendid, _vast_, and I know not
what, has been reared in its place. By the time this is gone, and one
or two generations of buildings have succeeded, each approaching
nearer to the high standard of church architecture in the old world,
the Manhattanese will get to understand something of the use of the
degrees of comparison on such subjects. When that day shall arrive,
they will cease to be provincial, and--not till then.
What a different thing was Wall street, in 1799, from what it is
to-day? Then, where so many Grecian temples are now reared to Plutus,
were rows of modest provincial dwellings; not a tittle more
provincial, however, than the thousand meretricious houses of bricks
and marble that have since started up in their neighbourhood, but far
less pretending, and insomuch the more creditable.
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