agencies, and otherwise applied to the base uses of commerce, he
determined to look out for a quieter home. The ideal of quiet and of
genteel retirement, in 1835, was found in Washington Square, where
the Doctor built himself a handsome, modern, wide-fronted house, with
a big balcony before the drawing-room windows, and a flight of marble
steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white marble.
This structure, and many of its neighbours, which it exactly
resembled, were supposed, forty years ago, to embody the last results
of architectural science, and they remain to this day very solid and
honourable dwellings. In front of them was the Square, containing a
considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden
paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and
round the corner was the more august precinct of the Fifth Avenue,
taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air
which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is
owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of
New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind
of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other
quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more
honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great
longitudinal thoroughfare--the look of having had something of a
social history. It was here, as you might have been informed on good
authority, that you had come into a world which appeared to offer a
variety of sources of interest; it was here that your grandmother
lived, in venerable solitude, and dispensed a hospitality which
commended itself alike to the infant imagination and the infant
palate; it was here that you took your first walks abroad, following
the nursery-maid with unequal step and sniffing up the strange odour
of the ailantus-trees which at that time formed the principal umbrage
of the Square, and diffused an aroma that you were not yet critical