NEW YORK.

IN New York a curious and disquieting Exhibition has been opened at the Natural History Museum. It illustrates the congestion in the tenement-buildings of the city, and the Times correspondent has described some of the exhibits. There is a windowless room, he tells us, which looks like a Chinaman's opium-den, and is labelled : "300,000 rooms like this still left and occupied in various parts of New York." There are models of tenement-blocks, containing 2,781 persons, in which there is not a single bath ; and out of 1,588 rooms, 441 are dark and without ventilation, while 635 get their light and air from a narrow shaft. There are also models of "sweat-houses" which are notoriously as bad as any in the world. The Exhibition proves incidentally what people are inclined to forget,—that a "slum" is not necessarily created by dwellings bad-in themselves. To Englishmen a slum means generally a collection of ancient, neglected, and insanitary houses, and it is assumed that if they were destroyed a better life would rise from the ruins. But, unfortunately, although a slum may be in a certain sense the result of bad building, it is far more often the result of overcrowding in circumstances which are not architecturally objectionable. Buckingham Palace could be turned into a slum in a week if a few more families than it would properly hold—families of a low order of social discipline—were introduced into it. And again—a fact which has brought many grey hairs to social reformers— the destruction of a slum (an architectural slum) and the pro- vision of new houses on the site usually have the effect, not of rehousing the displaced tenants, but of giving room to other, and perhaps slightly less poor, persons. The displaced tenants simply move on,—they disappear, and generally create a fresh slum somewhere else, because too often they cannot afford the higher rent. The slum-life of New York is not to be found in tumble-down alleys, but in buildings great, strong, and massive, most of which are not so deplorably insanitary as those we have just described. Observant travellers soon learn to disregard the façades of houses as an index to their interior. The formal fronts of tall and prim houses in German towns may conceal overcrowding and poverty which the English eye would not expect to find behind those imposing exteriors. The tenement-buildings of New York are for- bidding to look at, no doubt; but there is no reason why an internal rearrangement should not make most of them habitable by decent and healthy people, if only there were enough room.

But the inherent, the geographical, the inevitable dis- advantage of New York is just this want of room. One has only got to cast an eye on the map to see the reason. The original settlement " down town," as New Yorkers say, grew backwards along Manhattan Island. The point of original settlement became the business quarter, and the expanding population sought residences more and more " up town " ; "down town" continually making raids on the territory of "up town" and converting living-houses into offices as the needs of business increased. New York proper could grow only along the narrow strip of Manhattan Island, which is scarcely two miles broad and about thirteen miles long. In other directions the city was hemmed in by water. Brooklyn and Jersey City were founded ; but these chapels-of-ease were not the real New York, nor are they in easy contact with it. Since 1897 they have been reckoned officially as boroughs of the City of New York (the grander name of what was once New York City); but the bridges, ferries, and tunnels are not a substitute for the easy passage of innumerable streets. The pressure on the triangle at the " down-town " end of Man- hattan Island has become terrific. The dwellers in a city which has dry land surrounding it can escape whither they will, checked or encouraged alone by economic exigencies. But the only escape from the crushed part of New York City is into the water. Some writers are fond of representing England as an inverted pyramid, all the weight being borne by the unhappy point, and Republican America as a pyramid resting solid and comfortable on its proper base, and bear- ing a light weight above it. The image of the inverted pyramid might stand for the stress in Manhattan Island, where the weight bears down upon the poorest people, who have to live on the spot where they earn their bread. In every great city there is an appreciable percentage of the population which cannot escape from the centre, cannot profit by all the centrifugal forces brought into motion by civilisation. These are the servants of servants, the lower order of waiters, the cleaners of offices and theatres, the small laundresses, who never leave the scenes of their livelihood. Bursting London flows into Essex, into Kent, and into Surrey; it is checked to some extent on the north and west by hills, and by respect- ability which has to be paid for; but generally economic conditions determine its irregular expansion. New York is constrained geographically as well as economically. How to escape from the decree of geography P—that is the ever-present problem. Schemes are presented one after the other for bridging over and tunnelling under the rivers. That wonder of the world, Brooklyn Suspension Bridge, looks upon a younger and still more wonderful fellow which also crosses the East River and is over a mile and a quarter long. Over both, and now also under the water, the human stream, like a spring tide, flows and ebbs every day. But still the dangerous pressure continues at one end of Manhattan Island.

Land—so precious is it—has been studiously reclaimed from the rivers on the long frontages on both sides; and the houses which cannot spread laterally, yet must somehow contain all that is forced into them, rise higher and higher into the sky.

Such is the housing problem of New York, which now invites a more sympathetic attention in the Exhibition. But the very

disadvantages of New York are also its supreme beauties. What other city is there of like size which matches it in position ? It is a seaside city ; the salt water laves its feet. As the traveller approaches it he thinks of Venice rising from

the sea, or is perhaps reminded of ancient Tyre, which " stood out in the sea as a hand from a wrist," and of which the houses were impressively tall. " Impressive " is not too indul- gent a word for the skyscrapers of New York,—clean-faced, simple, original, and audacious, they are characteristic of the land and of the people ; they are not ugly concessions to utility, but a rather grand adaptation of architecture to circumstance. The ancients, harassed with dread of piracy, would not have dared to build a city like New York on the edge of a great harbour open to the sea. It is something which the modern world alone could have given us. It is free to the world, yet unafraid ; its roads lead everywhere because they lead to the sea; it is "million-footed Manhattan, unpent "; and the mark of the early colony is still set upon the place where Broadway corkscrews quaintly through the rectangular formality of the ordered avenues. Walt Whitman was a passionately faithful son of Manhattan, and he said :—

"City of ships!

(0 the black ships ! 0 the fierce ships !

0 the beautiful, sharp-bowed steam-ships and sail-ships !) City of the world! (for all races are here ; All the lands of the earth make contributions here ;) City of the sea! City of hurried and glittering tides !

City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out with eddies of foam !

City of wharves and stores ! City of tall façades of marble and iron.

Proud and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extravagant city !

Spring up, 0 city ! not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike !

Fear not ! Submit to no models but your own, 0 city !

Behold me! incarnate me, as I have incarnated you!

I have rejected nothing you offered me—whom you have adopted, I have adopted ; Good or bad, I never question you—I love all."