snowstorms, earthquakes, and proslavery riots, still lives to meditate
upon her own superiority and to instruct mankind. Much attention has
been given of late in Boston and suburban towns to artistic effect in
street architecture. Until recently New York has given but little
thought to pleasing effects. Broadway was not broad, and Fifth Avenue
was not striking. Of late, however, the city has become imperial, houses
parks and driveways being among the finest in the world. New Orleans has
survived at least a dozen great yellow-fever crises since 1812,
population meanwhile increasing twentyfold. After the enforced
construction of the levee, the idea came to some one that the top of it
would make a fine driveway, which in due time was extended from the
river and bayous to the lake, thus becoming the most attractive feature
of the place. Though not without natural attractions, Chicago was not
made by or for her things of beauty. Beginning with low wooden houses
along dirty streets, transformations were continued until systems of
parks and boulevards with elegant edifices came into view,-which shows
that, however material the beginning of American towns may be, if
prosperity comes the aesthetical is sure to come with it. A contrast
to Chicago may be found in St. Louis, for a long time trading-post town
and city, which would be of more importance now were her people of a
different quality. Even her chronic calamities, tornadoes, floods, and
epidemics, fail to rouse her energies, so that Chicago, starting later
and under more adverse circumstances, outstripped her in every particular.
Cleveland was laid out for a fine city, so that as she grew little
alteration was found necessary. The streets are wide, 80 to 120
feet-Superior Street 132 feet-and so abundant is the foliage, largely
maple, that it is called the Forest city.

As an instance of modern aesthetic town construction one might cite
Denver, a western Yankee metropolis of ultrarefined men and women from