THE old French part of New Orleans--anciently the Spanish part--bears no resemblance to the American end of the city:

the American end which lies beyond the interveningbrick business-center. The houses are massed in blocks;are austerely plain and dignified; uniform of pattern,with here and there a departure from it with pleasant effect;all are plastered on the outside, and nearly all have long,iron-railed verandas running along the several stories.

Their chief beauty is the deep, warm, varicolored stainwith which time and the weather have enriched the plaster.

It harmonizes with all the surroundings, and has as naturala look of belonging there as has the flush upon sunset clouds.

This charming decoration cannot be successfully imitated;neither is it to be found elsewhere in America.

The iron railings are a specialty, also. The pattern is oftenexceedingly light and dainty, and airy and graceful--with a largecipher or monogram in the center, a delicate cobweb of baffling,intricate forms, wrought in steel. The ancient railings are hand-made,and are now comparatively rare and proportionately valuable.

They are become BRIC-A-BRAC.

The party had the privilege of idling through this ancientquarter of New Orleans with the South's finest literary genius,the author of 'the Grandissimes.' In him the South has founda masterly delineator of its interior life and its history.

In truth, I find by experience, that the untrained eye andvacant mind can inspect it, and learn of it, and judge of it,more clearly and profitably in his books than by personalcontact with it.

With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and illuminate,a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you have a vividsense as of unseen or dimly seen things--vivid, and yet fitful and darkling;you glimpse salient features, but lose the fine shades or catch themimperfectly through the vision of the imagination: a case, as it were,of ignorant near-sighted stranger traversing the rim of wide vague horizonsof Alps with an inspired and enlightened long-sighted native.

We visited the old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied by municipal offices.

There is nothing strikingly remarkable about it; but one can say of itas of the Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or a shovel has everbeen used in it there is no circumstantial evidence to back up the fact.

It is curious that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the Academyof Music; but no doubt it is on account of the interruption of the light bythe benches, and the impossibility of hoeing the crop except in the aisles.

The fact that the ushers grow their buttonhole-bouquets on the premisesshows what might be done if they had the right kind of an agricultural headto the establishment.

We visited also the venerable Cathedral, and the pretty square in front of it;the one dim with religious light, the other brilliant with the worldly sort,and lovely with orange-trees and blossomy shrubs; then we drove in the hot sunthrough the wilderness of houses and out on to the wide dead level beyond,where the villas are, and the water wheels to drain the town, and the commonspopulous with cows and children; passing by an old cemetery where we weretold lie the ashes of an early pirate; but we took him on trust, and didnot visit him. He was a pirate with a tremendous and sanguinary history;and as long as he preserved unspotted, in retirement, the dignity of hisname and the grandeur of his ancient calling, homage and reverence were hisfrom high and low; but when at last he descended into politics and becamea paltry alderman, the public 'shook' him, and turned aside and wept.

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