Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/667

, Philadelphian,—especially Philadelphian. No daughter is more like her mother than St. Louis is like Philadelphia. From 1775 to 1800, Philadelphia was the chief city of the country, to which all eyes were directed, and to which the leaders of the nation annually repaired. So dazzling was this plain and staid metropolis to the eyes of Western members and merchants, that, in laying out the cities of the West, they could not but copy Philadelphia, even in the minutest particulars. The streets of Philadelphia running parallel to the river are numbered; so are those of St. Louis, Cincinnati, and other Western towns. The cross-streets of Philadelphia were named after the trees, plants, and bushes that grew upon its site, such as Sycamore, Vine, Cherry, Walnut, Chestnut, Pine, and Spruce. Accident changed some of these appellations in the course of years, so that we find such names as "Race" and "Arch" mingled with those of the trees. So infatuated were the Western men of the early day with the charms of Philadelphia, a visit to which must have been the great event of their lives, that they not only named their streets at home Sycamore and Chestnut, but used also the accidental ones, such as Race and Arch. Nearly every street in Nashville has a Philadelphia name. Half the streets of Cincinnati have Philadelphia names. In St. Louis, too, we are reminded of the Quaker City at every turn, both in the names and the aspect of the streets. Those old - fashioned, square, roomy brick mansions,—the habit of tipping and pointing everything with marble,—the brick pavements,—the chastened splendor of the newer residences,—the absence of any principal thoroughfare, such as Broadway,—the prodigious extent of the city for its population,—the general quiet and neatness,—all call to mind comfortable Philadelphia. They have even adopted, of late, the mode of numbering the houses practised in the Quaker City,—the system which makes a person live at 1418 Washington Street, merely because his house is the eighteenth above the corner of Fourteenth Street.

St. Louis enjoys the tranquillity which strikes every stranger with so much surprise, because nature has placed no obstacle in the way of its growth in any direction, and therefore there is no crowded thoroughfare, no intense business centre, no crammed square mile. New York is cramped in a long, narrow island, between two wide and rapid rivers, as yet unbridged. Cincinnati a mile and a half from the Ohio encounters an almost precipitous hill, four hundred and sixty feet high. Chicago had to be raised bodily in the air, while twelve feet of earth was thrown under it to keep it there. Boston cannot grow without making ground to grow upon. But fair St Louis, the future capital of the United States, and of the civilization of the Western Continent, can extend itself in every direction back from the Mississippi, without meeting any formidable obstacle. The ground is high enough to lift the city above the highest floods of the river, but nowhere so high as to require expensive grading. The prairie behind the city is neither level nor inconveniently undulating. North of the city there are some bluffs of slight elevation, which have been turned to excellent account as the sites of the two chief cemeteries. The highest hill, however, which we remember about the city, is that lofty Mound on the bank of the river, supposed to have been thrown up for a look-out station by the Indians, ages ago, from which St Louis derives its name of the "Mound City." It was with a cutting pang of regret that we observed the partial destruction of this most curious monument of the past, and heard of the supposed necessity for its removal. We could not see the necessity. Though St. Louis should grow to be a greater and more imperial city than Rome (which it will), the time will never come when that Mound, if perfectly preserved, would not be one of its most interesting objects. It was originally, and could easily be again, a well-shaped mound, about as high and