this short interval, the population of the Manhattan towns has
more than trebled, while their wealth and importance have
probably increased in a greatly magnified proportion. Should the
next quarter of a century see this ratio in growth continued,
London would be very closely approached in its leading element of
superiority--numbers. We have little doubt that the present
century will bring about changes that will place the emporium of
the Old World and that of the New nearly on a level. This opinion
is given with a perfect knowledge of the vast increase of the
English capital itself, and with a due allowance for its
continuance. We propose, in the body of this work, to furnish the
reasons justifying these anticipations.

{another work = James Fenimore Cooper, "Notions of the Americans:
Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor" (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and
Carey, 1828)--a detailed description, in the guise of letters
written by a fictitious Belgian traveler, of the geography,
history, economy, government, and culture of the United States}

Seventeen years since, the writer returned home from a long
residence in Europe, during which he had dwelt for years in many
of the largest towns of that quarter of the world. At a convivial
party in one of the most considerable dwellings in Broadway, the
conversation turned on the great improvements that had then been
made in the town, with sundry allusions that were intended to
draw out the opinions of a traveller on a subject that justly
ever has an interest with the Manhattanese. In that conversation
the writer--his memory impressed with the objects with which he
had been familiar in London and Paris, and Rome, Venice, Naples,
etc., and feeling how very provincial was the place where he was,