eauty, even that beauty which elevates and ennobles, which purifies the
mind and inspires the soul. Progress is rapid in this direction as in
many others. A breach of good taste in public works will ere long
be adjudged a crime. For already mediaeval mud has ceased to be
fashionable, and the picturesque in urban ugliness is picturesque
no longer. All the capitals of Europe have had to be made over,
Haussmannized, once or several times. Our own national capital we should
scarcely be satisfied with as its illustrious founder left it.

It is a hopeful sign amidst some discouraging ones that wealth as a
social factor and measure of merit is losing something of its prestige;
that it is no longer regarded by the average citizen as the supreme
good, or the pursuit of it the supreme aim in life; there are so many
things worth more than money, so many human aspirations and acquirements
worthy of higher considerations than the inordinate cravings of graft
and greed. Hoarded wealth especially is not so worshipful to-day as it
was yesterday, while the beautiful still grows in grace--the beautiful
and the useful, compelling improvement, always engendered by improved
environment.

Some cities are born in the purple--rare exceptions to the rule. San
Francisco is not one of these. St. Petersburg, the city of palaces, of
broad avenues and granite-faced quays, whose greatest afflictions are
the occasional overflow of the Neva and the dynamite habit, was spoken
into being by a monarch. Necessity stands sponsor for Venice, the
beautiful, with her streets of water-ways and airs of heavenly harmony;
while nature herself may claim motherhood of Swedish Stockholm,
brilliant with intermingling lakes islands and canals, rocks hills and
forests, rendering escape from the picturesque impossible.

Penn planted his Quakers about 1682, long before many of the present
large cities in America were begun, yet Philadelphia was one of the few
sketched in such generous proportions that little change was afterwards
necessary to make it one of the most spacious of urban commonwealths.
With this example before him came in 1791, more than a century later,
the father of his country, who permitted his surveyors so injudiciously
to cover the spot on the Potomac which he had chosen for the capital
city of the republic as to require much expensive remodeling later. Yet
what American can drive about Washington now and say it is not worth the
cost? Further, as an e