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N E W N E TV 405 idea of masked revelry in the open streets, as borrowed from the great Italian cities, the American bent for organization appears to have developed, by a natural growth, the costly fashion of gor geous torch-lighted processions of elaborately equipped masques in tableaux drawn on immense cars by teams of caparisoned mules, and combining to illustrate in a symmetrical whole some theme chosen from the great faiths or literatures of history. This carnival has grown to last two or three days, during which time its extrava gances quite engross public attention with an elaborate mock- restoration of the gaudiest Oriental and feudal European life and times; the daily press shows long lists of names of citizens knighted or invested with imaginary dukedoms (at a fixed price); and many thousands of visitors from all parts of America come, or tarry, yearly to see these laborious pomps. The first settlers of New Orleans were such men as colonies in America were generally made of when planted by royal com mercial enterprise, and such wives as could be gathered hap-hazavd from the ranks of Indian allies, African slave cargoes, and the inmates of French houses of correction. As time passed, gentler and often better blood was infused by the advent of the filles a la cassette, by victims of lettres-de-cachet, by the cadets of noble families, holding land grants or military commissions, by Spanish officials glad to strengthen their influence in the colony through matrimonial alliances, and by royalists fleeing the terrors of the French Revolution. The Creole civilization that grew from these sources acquired two of its strongest characteristics from the facts, first that it developed under the evil reigns of French and Spanish Bourbons, and second that it was founded on the system of African slavery. The influences of the climate and landscape were such as to emphasize rather than counteract the effects of these conditions ; and, when in the year 1809 Napoleon s wars caused an exodus of West Indian Creoles into New Orleans that immediately doubled the town s population, the place naturally and easily became the one stronghold of Latin-American ideas in the United States, a harbour of contrabandists, Guadeloupian pirates, and Spanish -American revolutionists and filibusters. Under the glacier-like pressure of Anglo-American immigration, capital, enterprise, and education, this Creole civilization has slowly and with stubborn reluctance yielded ground, and is at length fairly beginning to amalgamate with the better social system of the American nation. And yet the Creole has stamped his initials upon well-nigh every aspect in the life of the city that has broadened out so widely on every side of his antique town. Some effect, of course, is attributable to those natural surroundings that have so qualified the Creole s own Gallic energies. Between the two influences the whole life of the place shows an apathy of desire, a langour of performance, and an intolerance of all sorts of rigour, that makes it unlike those sister cities from which it is separated both by the entire breadth and by the peculiar sentiment of that great belt of States which still dis tinguishes itself, more proudly than profitably, as the South. Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, are very numerous in New Orleans, though not generally fine or imposing. St Patrick s, however, has a majestic tower; the First Presbyterian church, in Lafayette Square, is a tasteful Gothic structure; and the cathedral of St Louis, the church of the Immaculate Conception, in Baronne Street, and some others have handsome interiors. The number of private charitable institutions is also large, and their management excellent. Those under municipal control are not nearly so good, but are improving. The system of public education is a large and excellent one deserving much praise. It embraces the youth both of the white and of the black and mulatto populations, is carried up through a full high-school grade, and is steadily improving. The police force is small, ill-paid, and inefficient, and the whole police system dilapidated and bad. The coloured population, notwithstanding the presence among it of that noted free quadroon class which has enjoyed a certain legal freedom for many generations, has not greatly improved since the date of emancipation. A conventional system of caste cuts them off from the stimulating hope of attaining social rank, and confines them closely to servile employments. The probability seems _ to be that their decided elevation must wait upon their acquisition of material wealth, an achievement which the con ditions mentioned and some inherent deficiencies of the race tend to make extremely difficult. Besides the large Anglo-American and Creole populations, there are in New Orleans weighty fractions of Irish and Germans and an appreciable number of Italians, Sicilians, and Spaniards. The Babel of tongues in the " French Market " immediately below Jackson Square and at the "Picayune Tier" just adjacent is famed as far as the city of which it is a feature. Another noted feature of New Orleans is its cemeteries. Owing to the undrained condition of the subsoil, burials are made entirely above ground, in tombs of stuccoed brick and of granite and marble. Some of these are very elegant and costly, and many of the burial- grounds, with their long alleys of these tombs of diverse designs deeply shaded by avenues of cedars and the Magnolia grandi flora, possess a severe but emphatic beauty. The climate is not marked by extremes of heat or cold. The wide reackes of water and wet lands that lie about the city on every side temper all airs, and the thermometer rarely passes above 95 or below 27 F. The consequent humidity of the atmosphere, however, gives the climate an enervating quality and an apparent warmth and cold beyond the actual temperature. It is rarely invigorat ing, and during the long summer between June and October is distinctly though not severely debilitating ; but in the absance of epidemic yellow fever, whose visitations are becoming more and more infrequent, there is no "sickly season"; and those who visit the city between the months of November and June, the term in which the commercial movement is at its height, may enjoy from its beginning to its end the delights and beauties of a redundant spring time, and find easy entrance into the social gaieties of a high-spirited pleasure-loving people. (G. W. C. ) NEW PLYMOUTH, a seaport on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand, is situated about 20 miles to the north-eastward of Cape Egmont, in 39 4 S. lat. and 174 5 E. long. It is the capital of the provincial dis trict of Taranaki. The position of the town is picturesque, sloping to the ocean in front, and with a background of forest surmounted by the snow-clad cone of Mount Egmont (8000 feet). The settlement was founded in 1841 by the Plymouth Company under the auspices of the New Zealand Company, and chiefly consisted of emigrants from Devon shire and Cornwall. The railway to Wellington is rapidly approaching completion. The town has a hospital, several places of worship, and manufactories for coach-building and painting, for furniture, for rope and twine, for tan ning, and for making brick, tile, and pottery. On the beach at New Plymouth there are extensive deposits of ironsand. New Plymouth returns one member to the house of repre sentatives, and is a borough with an elective mayor and municipal council. The population in 1883 was about 4000. NEWPORT, a municipal and parliamentary borough of Hampshire, and the county town of the Isle of Wight, is situated near the centre of the island, at the head of the navigation of the Medina river, about 7 miles from the sea at Cowes. Three separate railway lines connect it with Cowes, Ryde, and Ventnor. On account of its central position Newport has since the decay of the more ancient town of Carisbrooke absorbed the principal trade of the island. The church of St Thomas of Canterbury, rebuilt in 1854 in the Decorated style, contains many interesting old monuments; and one by Marochetti to the princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I., has been erected by Queen Victoria. Carisbrooke castle is about a mile from the town, and Parkhurst barracks are in the immediate neighbourhood. The guildhall, erected in 1816 from the designs of Nash, includes the town-hall in the upper story with the market-place below. The grammar school (the scene of the negotiations between Charles I. and the Parliament) was founded in 1612, and there is a blue-coat school for girls founded in 1761. A consider able trade is carried on in timber, malt, wheat, and flour; and Newport is the commercial centre whence the smaller towns of the island are supplied. The boundary of the borough of Newport was defined and extended by the Newport Borough Act, 1876. The population of the municipal borough (area 501 acres) in 1881 was 9357, and of the parliamentary borough (area 410 acres) 9144. When the lordship of the Isle of Wight passed from the lords of Carisbrooke to Edward I., Newport began to supersede Carisbrooke as the chief town of the island. Camden speaks of it as the principal seaport of the island, "in times past Medena and Novus Burgus de Meden," that is, the new borough of Medina. In the 23d of Edward I. it sent two members to parliament, but not again till the 2"th of Elizabeth, from which time it enjoyed the privilege without interruption until 1867, when the number of members was reduced to one. The borough was incorporated by James I. NEWPORT, a seaport, market-town, and municipal and parliamentary borough of Monmouthshire, is situated on the right bank of the Usk, about 4 miles from its confluence with the Bristol Channel, and 12 miles north-east from Cardiff. On the east, north, and west it is finely sheltered