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WE personify cities by ascribing to them the feminine gender, yet this is a poor rule for general use; there are so many cities which we can call women only by a dislocation of the imagination. But there are also many women whom we call women only by grammatical courtesy. Indeed, it must be confessed that, as the world moves, personification, like many other amiable ancestral liberties of speech, is becoming more and more a mere conventionality, significant, only, according to a standard of the sexes no longer ours.
New Orleans,—before attempting to describe it, one pauses again to reflect on the value of impressions. Which is the better guarantee of truth, the eye or the heart? Perhaps, when one speaks of one's native place, neither is trustworthy. Is either ever trustworthy when directed by love? Does not the birthplace, like the mother, or with the mother, implicate both eye and
