enlarged, with some improvement, perhaps, in the suburban parts, still
retained this patch of mediaevalism, until obliterated by war, or fire,
or later by modern progress. Look at Edinburgh, for example. With all
its Scotch thrift and neatness, there yet remains the ill-conditioned
and once filthy quarter, beside which rise the old-time ten-story
houses built into the hillside, while in the modern part of the city in
sharp contrast are broad streets and open squares and fine buildings.

In America the birth of towns is quite different. Here are no plantings
of trembling poverty under lordly walls, but bold pioneering,
forecasting agriculture and commerce; no Babel building, with "Go to,
let us build here a Cleveland or a Cincinnati," but rather, "Here for
the present we will abide." If, however, serfdom and mediaevalism were
absent in New World town-planting, so also were aestheticism or any
appreciation of the beautiful apart from the useful. Old cities require
reconstruction to make them what modern taste and intelligence demand;
settlements in their incipiency are dominated by their sturdy founders,
who usually have other things to think about than beauty and adornment.

In this day of great wealth and wonderful inventions we realize more and
more the value of the city to mankind, and the quality of the city as a
means of culture. Cities are not merely marts of commerce; they stand
for civility; they are civilization itself. No untried naked Adam in
Eden might ever pass for a civilized man. The city street is the school
of philosophy, of art, of letters; city society is the home of
refinement. When the rustic visits the city he puts on his best clothes
and his best manners. In their reciprocal relations the city is as men
make it, while from the citizen one may determine the quality of the
city. The atmosphere of the city is an eternal force. Therefore as we
value the refinement of the human mind, the enlargement of the human