myself, or to be held as complaining because I have been compelled to give up my seat to women with babies and bandboxes who have accepted the courtesy with very scanty grace.  I have borne worse things than these, and have roughed it much in my days, from want of means and other reasons.  Nor am I yet so old but what I can rough it still.  Nevertheless I like to see things as well done as is practicable, and railway traveling in the States is not well done.  I feel bound to say as much as this, and now I have said it, once for all.

Few cities, or localities for cities, have fairer natural advantages than Portland and I am bound to say that the people of Portland have done much in turning them to account.  This town is not the capital of the State in a political point of view.  Augusta, which is farther to the north, on the Kennebec River, is the seat of the State government for Maine.  It is very generally the case that the States do not hold their legislatures and carry on their government at their chief towns.  Augusta and not Portland is the capital of Maine.  Of the State of New York, Albany is the capital, and not the city which bears the State’s name.  And of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg and not Philadelphia is the capital.  I think the idea has been that old-fashioned notions were bad in that they were old fashioned; and that a new people, bound by no prejudices, might certainly make improvement by choosing for themselves new ways.  If so, the American politicians have not been the first in the world who have thought that any change must be a change for the better.  The assigned reason is the centrical position of the selected political capitals; but I have generally found the real commercial capital to be easier of access than the smaller town in which the two legislative houses are obliged to collect themselves.

What must be the natural excellence of the harbor of Portland, will be understood when it is borne in mind that the Great Eastern can enter it at all times, and that it can lay along the wharves at any hour of the tide.  The wharves which have been prepared for her—­ and of which I will say a word further by-and-by—­are joined to, and in fact, are a portion of, the station of the Grand Trunk Railway, which runs from Portland up to Canada.  So that passengers landing at Portland out of a vessel so large even as the Great Eastern can walk at once on shore, and goods can be passed on to the railway without any of the cost of removal.  I will not say that there is no other harbor in the world that would allow of this, but I do not know any other that would do so.