Satan's Invisible World Displayed or, Despairing Democracy

s not unworthy its position as the gatewa

e threshold of the gateway is no inapt emblem of the sentiments w

the myrmidons of the Customs, is nevertheless an appropriate antechamber of the Repu

he broad Atlantic. Here and there, flecking with colour the sunlit scene, flutter the Stars and Stripes. Far away in the West, faintly audible in the distance, come the multitudinous sounds of the awakening seaport. The great Liner, which shuddered and throbbed for three thousand miles as it forged five hundred miles a day across the sea, is gliding smoothly and softly as a gondola towards the Venice of the Western

ork holds the keys, has ever been arrayed in the rainbow garment of Hope. New York, merely as the portal of the continent, had long been to them as a kind of New Jerusalem, let down from Heaven in mercy to hard-driven, hopeless men. From their earliest childhood they had heard of the grea

dom at thy g

downtrodden

for the hu

ed labourer t

at thy

lls back his

New York glimmering through the haze, felt the magic charm with which

siastic devotion to the American Commonwealth has been somewhat dashed in Great Britain. It still exists in full force across the Irish Channel. To the Irishman the United States is much more of a fatherland than the British Empire. We are, indeed, but a step-motherland to the Irishman, whereas in the United States he is not merely at home, but in most of the cities he is at the head of the household. But forty, thirty, and even twenty years ago it was practically the accepted creed of the English Radical that America led the van, and whenever he was downcast and dispirited by the temporary triumph of th

t of the Glories, and o

d of the fruits of Society

k Harbour than that even to those nurtured on such pabulum it i

ss worthy of its r?le as the throne of the great city. It is impossible to exaggerate the impression which the Hudson at night must produce on the peasant from the Carpathians or the labourer

ing unveiled by cloud. But it was neither the lapping of the rippling water nor the silver sheen of the moonlight on the wave that gave the scene its fascination of wonder. These things are the universal poetry of Nature-the music of the waves and the magic o

chanted tower

ke a rock u

ke portals op

that met t

e eyes looked out over the water. Sometimes they winked, and now and then one or another would close. It was as if each b

GATE OF TH

orning in

the whole. One was a crown-like dome, poised in mid-air, shining resplendent with jewels of electric light; the other a lofty tower girdled with a blazing zone of fire. Stars of flame shone on its summit, while ever and anon a beam of white light, quick and piercing as a two-edged sword, flashed like the brand of an archangel over the shadowy city. And

f lights, had I ever seen anything to compare to the Hudson at midnight. In Paris on the night of the fête of the Republic in Exhibition year, when the Seine was crowded with steamers, all illuminated and decorated from stem to stern, there was something like

strenuous rapidity that the waters foamed beneath their keel, and the anchored vessels seemed to fly past as we left them behind. No great galleon of Spain illuminated in honour of her patron saint ever shone more resplendent, and none ever moved wi

val in Armida's garden. Two starry lights overhead, as at the masthead-though masts there were none-dimly revealed the contour below, where the light streaming from serried windows produced a curious effect,

ba

e lily mai

ike a star on

ilver rays of the electric lights there shone everywhere lamps of ruby and of amethyst an

ur, increasing in intensity to a wail, which would continue a minute and then die away as it arose. It was like the plaintive

the Apocalypse, "as if it were a sea

lgar prose of a work-a-day world? The light-crowned dome was the office of the World newspaper, the flashing beam from the tower the advertisement of a dry goods store from Chicago. Yet, nevertheless

ghty has fallen, and the city which was once a name at the sound of which men renewed their hope and faith in the progress of the world, has become a byword, a hissing and reproach, it will be the object of this volume to explain. It is a subject in which we of the Old World have weighty reason to be interested. For

OF NATH

l Park,

STREETS OF TH

ost Office