And here, à propos of Brooklyn, let me tell a
story not the least appropriate, but still giving
an amusing characteristic of that hateful pest of
American cities—the rowdy. A quiet old naval
officer, newly arrived at New York from the
Southern States, was walking past that curious
striped church in New York, generally known
as "the Holy Zebra" when he saw a rowdy in
his shirt sleeves, rocking and smoking ruminatingly
at the door of an oyster cellar. He
looked civil, so the commodore thought he would
ask him the way to Brooklyn, whither he was
bound on government and naval business.

"I want to go to Brooklyn——" began slowly
and civilly the grave old officer. The rowdy
stared hard, yet with eyes far too cunning for
surprise, and chewing his cigar, which he did not
remove from his filthy brown mouth, growled,
"Then why the devil don't you go to Brooklyn? "

Could one of the "Blood Tubs" or "Plug-Uglies"
of Baltimore have given an answer
more worthy of rowdy Chesterfield, if there is
such a book?

Now the bright and all but ever blue sky over
New York sea grows fainter and dreamier to me,
and so do the netting masses of rigging and the
miles of leafless trees. Now masts and acres of
canvas, white, yellow, umber, and smoked-salmon
colour, and black funnels vomiting clouds white
and pure as heaven's, fade, as I spur my memory
on to the Navy Yard at Washington, now seething
with preparations for the ghastly war that has
just broken forth.

This navy yard on the banks of the beautiful
Potomac—on the fair river where the great
Washington once unstrung the mental bow and
daunted for a time to forget the world he guarded,
while he shot canvas-back ducks with his rifle,
or snared that famous delicacy, the sheep's-head
fish, with his coloured and treacherous flies. It
is in sight of the bran-new and glaring city,
with the fine public buildings, the hot and dusty
sketches of streets, and the vast Capitol radiant
in its marble suit of mail. This station is not
employed as a rendezvous for ships, and although,
says an American authority, large and well-furnished
with materials and facilities for building
and equipping ships in cases of emergency, "is
chiefly used as an arsenal for the storing of
munitions and implements of naval warfare."
There arc the sails that are to shine as
dragon-wings in the eyes of the South, and there the
shot that are to fly horribly, borne on swift fire,
to the hearts of the rebellious slaveholders.

The naval station at Philadelphia is worthy
of that dignified city—half-German, half Quaker.
It is there the Pennsylvania—at the time it was
launched, the largest ship in the world was
built. Now that the staunch people of this
fine state have, with one voice, offered to march
down at any moment one hundred thousand
armed men to protect Washington, we may
expect this station to be soon ringing with the
notes  of preparation, more especially if the
Southerners make the war a piratical one, and
burn and murder all Union men their vessels fall
in with. May Heaven avert from this beautiful
city, whose marble-faced houses seem so lustrous
and magnificent to the stranger, the miseries of
this dreadful and unholy war.

Why Baltimore is not a station I do not
know, but the next depôt, I have to mention is
the largest of all—that of Gosport, in Virginia.
Virginia is famous for training up her sons as
naval officers, and this station of hers possesses
the advantage of having one of the finest
harbours in the world, Norfolk harbour, where, in
all seasons and all weathers, the largest ships
can be repaired, housed, and docked. This is
the great naval rendezvous of America, and its
spacious granite dock gives it a magnificence
that new countries are not always able to give
to their national works.

The southernmost station and nearest to the
Gulf of Mexico, is Pensacola, an outpost depot,
not large, yet of incalculable importance. Spain,
France, and England have each cast a longing
eye on this magazine from its advantages for
attack and defence. It is a tower of vantage, that
is available for all the commerce of the Gulf;
it might be turned into a wasp-nest of
privateers; it is healthy; it might become a second
Carthage. On looking over this summary, it
will be at once evident that even allowing for
San Francisco, that in this war the North has
the advantage of two-thirds of the naval
dockyards, arsenals, stations, depots. I shall show
presently that the North has also the chief military
schools, the bulk of the army, the climate,
and, above all, the moral and physical stamina.
When the Prince of Wales visited New York,
there were drawn up on the battery five brigades
of the New York militia, mustering in all some
seven thousand men, who astonished the officers
of the suite by their steady military bearing
and the perfection of their discipline. The
Seventh Regiment is the special pride of New
York, and of this fine body of men Mr. Woods,
the Times correspondent, said, " It is
undoubtedly a most perfect body of soldiers, equal
in all the minute technicalities of discipline to
our very best line regiments." Nor is the Boston
militia inferior. Some of them, wear the quaint
old George III. dress, and they execute their
movements with steady solid precision equal to
the English regiments of the line.

Addiscombe and Woolwich find quite their
match in West Point, that beautiful hill-fort on
the Hudson, which figured so importantly in
the War of Independence. A few hours up
that beautiful river, that the Dutchmen first
navigated, and the traveller from New York arrives
at this military academy, which has been
established now some sixty years. It has this great
advantage over Woolwich and Addiscombe,
that there is no large town or city near with its
thousand temptations and all its honeyed
allurements to vice and misery. Here, too, is scenery
of great beauty, and spots of historical
interest, for it is here that Arnold would have
surrendered his trust to the English had not
Washington have caught André at Tarrytown
and put the traitor to death.
Every American officer serves, in youth, his