AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 97 



soon expect, like the French politician, to withdraw your balloon 

 from the action of gravitation as to evade those laws. 



Manhattan Island was intended by nature as the site of a great 

 commercial city. The channel of the Hudson, directed from the 

 New- Jersey shore and towards that of New- York, makes the great 

 city front. Turn it to the New Jersey shore, and commerce will 

 be turned with it. Aid nature by multiplying facilities here, and 

 commerce will take a long lease of your piers, and basins, and 

 warehouses. 



While these subjects interest the whole community, they have 

 formed the special study of but a few. It is our characteristic to 

 let an evil grow until it becomes intolerable, and then to act. 

 The present Board of Commissioners on Harbor Encroachments 

 have found difficulties at every step, growing out of the late day 

 at which the movement resulting in their appointment was made. 

 Thirty years ago it would have been easy to have fixed a proper 

 pier line for New- York, but public opinion was not alive to its 

 necessity. Let us at least be wise for the future, and insist that 

 there shall be special persons to keep these things in view, and 

 to enlighten the public mind; to suggest public action in regard 

 to them, and to restrain individual cupidity when it would inter- 

 fere with th3 general welfare. There is no other safety for the 

 future of the metropolis. Private interest surely cannot prevail 

 in shaking off the wholesome restraint of a commission whose 

 only interest is the public good. 



JSTew-York Harbor. 



What a scene of beauty New- York harbor presents on a sunny 

 morning of the Indian summer, when the purple colored haze 

 hangs over the water and land, lending to the landscape those 

 beautiful tints for which the bay of Naples is so famous. There 

 is hardly a breath of wind, and the sluggish sail scarce gives 

 impulse to the vessel. What forms of beauty those innumerable 

 floating objects present, the dark hulls and white sails contrasting 

 strongly, through the gorgeous air tint which covers both. They 

 seem less the instruments of commerce than the creations of fairy 

 land. In the midst covering the water with purple foam are those 

 [Am. Inst.] 7 



