Taj Mahal, Agra on the Jumna, and Delhi, making immortal Jehan the
builder, with his pearl mosque and palace housing the thirty-million-dollar
peacock throne; Benares, on the Ganges, a series of terraces and long stone
steps extending upward from the holy water, while rising yet higher in the
background are temples, towers, mosques, and palaces, all in oriental
splendor. Algiers, likewise, an amphitheatre in form, might give San
Francisco lessons in terrace construction, having hillsides covered with
them, the scene made yet more striking by the dazzling white of the houses.
After the place became French, the streets were widened and arcades
established in the lower part.

In fact, the French believe in the utility of beauty, and in Paris at
least they make it pay. The entire expenses of the municipal government,
including police and public works, are met by the spendings of visitors.
To their dissolute monarchs were due such creations as the Tuileries,
the Louvre, and Versailles. Have we not dissolute millionaires enough to
give us at least one fine city?

London and Paris stand out in bold contrast, the one for utility, the
other for beauty. Both are adepts in their respective arts. The city
proper of London has better buildings and cleaner streets than when St.
Paul was erected; otherwise it is much the same. Elsewhere in London,
however, are spacious parks and imposing palaces, with now and then a
fine bit of something to look out upon, as the bridges of the murky
Thames, the Parliament houses, the Abbey, Somerset house, and
Piccadilly, perhaps. Children may play at the Zoo, while grown-ups sit
in hired chairs under the trees.

Three times London was destroyed by the plague, and five times by fire,
that of 1666 lasting four days, and covering thrice the area of the San