New York is the most populous, wealthy, and splendid city on the American continent. Its location, climate, surroundings, and connections have all been favorable to its growth and greatness. It stands on the little island called by the Indians Manhattan, but Brooklyn, Williamsburgh, Greene Point, Jersey City, Hoboken, Yonkers, and Tarrytown, are but its suburbs, containing the residences of its laborers, clerks, and merchant princes. Among the earliest localities to feel the tread of the European stranger, it has through all its history been deservedly popular as a landing depot, and now receives fully five-sevenths of all entering the country. About five thousand vessels annually enter its bay, which is sufficiently broad and deep to anchor the collected navies of the world. Its imports and exports are more than fifty per cent of the whole United States, and amount to five hundred million dollars per annum; while the aggregate trade of the city reaches nearly four thousand millions. Nearly three hundred railroad trains make daily communication with its suburbs. The taxable property of the island reported at less than half its value reaches nearly a thousand millions, and the annual tax about twenty-five millions. New York is the great store-house of the nation''s wealth, the centre of its financial operations, and of its political, industrial, economic, scientific, educational, benevolent, and religious enterprises. New York furnishes most of the newspapers, periodicals, books, pictures, models of statuary, architecture, machinery, and handicraft, for the numerous great States clustered around it, and for the broad Canadas. There is poverty in New York, deep and squalid; but it is offset by wealth, countless and dazzling. There is ignorance here, profound and astonishing; but there is learning also, brilliant and extensive as can be found on the globe. There are sinners in New York, black and guilty, as ever disgraced the world ; but there are saints also, spotless and benevolent, as ever adorned the Church of God. All extremes meet in this great metropolis. Here are the denizens of every land, the babblings of every tongue, the productions of every clime, the inventions of every craft, and the ripened fruit of every desire. At a single glance can be seen, as in a vast mirror, pictures of age and infancy, beauty and deformity, industry and indolence, wealth and beggary, vice and sanctity.

New York, with its immense libraries, art galleries, daily press, literary associations and lectures, its benevolent institutions, and architectural wonders, is one of the richest fields of human culture in the known world. There is on every hand something to interest, please, and profit everybody, of whatever country, talent, or temperament. It is a luxury to tarry in New York, though it be but for a month, a week, or a day, to listen to the rumble of its wheels, the whistle of its engines, the clicking of its telegraphs, the voice of its orators, the chime of its bells, the strains of its music, and the roar of its artillery. Whose mind is not enlarged as he contemplates the progress of its growth, the rush of its improvements, and the majestic sweep of its commerce? Who can stand upon its elevated observatories and closely contemplate its leagues of solid masonry, everywhere thronged with immortals as important and hopeful as himself, without such emotions as he never experienced before? Who can press through the whirl of its daily activities, without thinking of eternity; through its neglected sinks, without thinking of pandemonium; or its cultivated parks, without thinking of paradise? All do not live in New York, nor can they; yet every thoughtful American should visit it, snuff its ocean breezes, contemplate its massive piles, peep into its institutions, and gather inspiration from the rush of its activities. For any who wish to visit it, or who do not, this book has been written. To obtain a correct and adequate knowledge of New York, let us begin at the foundation.