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.

When he died, they set up a monument over him; and little by little he hascome into respect again; but it is respect for the pirate, not the alderman.

To-day the loyal and generous remember only what he was, and charitably forgetwhat he became.

Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised shell road,with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other; and here and there,in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-bearded cypress,top standing out, clear cut against the sky, and as quaint of form as theapple-trees in Japanese pictures--such was our course and the surroundingsof it. There was an occasional alligator swimming comfortably alongin the canal, and an occasional picturesque colored person on the bank,flinging his statue-rigid reflection upon the still water and watchingfor a bite.

And by-and-bye we reached the West End, a collection of hotels ofthe usual light summer-resort pattern, with broad verandas all around,and the waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain lapping the thresholds.

We had dinner on a ground-veranda over the water--the chief dish the renownedfish called the pompano, delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.

Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to West End andto Spanish Fort every evening, and dine, listen to the bands,take strolls in the open air under the electric lights,go sailing on the lake, and entertain themselves in variousand sundry other ways.

We had opportunities on other days and in other places to test the pompano.

Notably, at an editorial dinner at one of the clubs in the city.

He was in his last possible perfection there, and justified his fame.

In his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet cray-fish--large ones; as largeas one's thumb--delicate, palatable, appetizing. Also deviled whitebait;also shrimps of choice quality; and a platter of small soft-shell crabsof a most superior breed. The other dishes were what one might getat Delmonico's, or Buckingham Palace; those I have spoken of can be hadin similar perfection in New Orleans only, I suppose.

In the West and South they have a new institution--the Broom Brigade.

It is composed of young ladies who dress in a uniform costume,and go through the infantry drill, with broom in place of musket.

It is a very pretty sight, on private view. When they performon the stage of a theater, in the blaze of colored fires,it must be a fine and fascinating spectacle. I saw them go throughtheir complex manual with grace, spirit, and admirable precision.

I saw them do everything which a human being can possibly do with a broom,except sweep. I did not see them sweep. But I know they could learn.

What they have already............