Morton's place of study and work; a drawingroom, which has a more private salon at its angle, a billiard room at the corner, and two offices for clerks or visitors.

The stairway is recessed from the hall, and is very easy of ascent and correspondingly roundabout; and opposite the stairway is a fireplace, to make the hall sprightly in dark or coolish weather.

Wood is liberally used throughout this house for wainscotings, and the dining-room is wains coted to the height of perhaps twelve feet, in oak panels.

The second and third floors are built quite open, with a large area at the centre of the house, on which open doors to each room; the general finish of the walls is in hard, white plaster. The external woodwork and verandas are painted of a dark, brownish red,

Close by is a laundry in a separate building, and the stables.

Work is being done upon the roads and grounds constantly. By the aid of a lake or pond, water is forced into a tank in a bit of woods, and thence carried into the buildings.

As I was riding to the station, after spending a night at Ellerslie, I remarked to the coachman that Mr. Morton seemed to be an equal tempered man.

"Yes," said he; "I have been with him for nine

years, and I have never seen him out of temper, or complaining, or sick yet."

Mr. Kelly aforesaid did a great deal of work on Ellerslie Park, and showed good taste in preserving the clumps of trees, and sowing wheat between them, so that as one looks out from the southern windows of the mansion, where the best breeze enters, he can see roundish spots of forest arborage and the wheat and corn, with their yellow contrasts; the line of the river is strongly indented in capes and headlands, and in the distant middle ground is an island and a lighthouse, whilst the rift of the Highlands, which separates the West from the East, gives access to the great city and the ocean.

Twenty years ago Hudson river property was rather out of fashion, from the tendency of families of means to come to the city and to spend their summers at hotels. Under the good influence of more recent times-the Americans having visited foreign countries and concluded that their own was the best-this river property has come into not merely fashion, but affection.

The woodwork throughout Mr. Morton's house is representative of the American forest-from the California red wood and black walnut to antique oak, white pine, ash and cherry.

DIGRESSION.

Hitherto the nominating Conventions of botn

parties have confined their choice to either military men, lawyers or politicians. The merchant, as such, has never been recognized for either place upon the electoral ticket.

Yet the merchant, and especially the merchant banker, is the 'quantity first held in recognition after a ticket is chosen, to give his influence and contribution.

In the early portion of the Republican century the slave-holding interest, which had the incentive of defensive organization against the progress of days, took possession of the executive government, giving the Vice-Presidency at times to some Eastern or Western man as a makeshift.

Dewitt Clinton, who established the water communications of New York, and therefore the commonwealth, never was able to run for as much as the Vice-Presidency. Mr. Van Buren was the first President who took into account the utility of literary men like Irving and Paulding. for executive and foreign places. Both Fillmore and Arthur became Presidents by the accident of the death of the President.

It was Arthur who began to see that the very uncertain political bias of the State of New York required its commercial element to be brought into public life.

He had been the collector of the port for a long term, and as the son of a minister, with a wife well qualified for social leadership, he began