But before all other gods or gifts comes Athens, where the men were as
gods and the gods very like the men. Encircling the Acropolis hill-most
ancient cities had their central hill-the city owes its grandeur to the
many temples dedicated to the Olympian deities by the men who made them,
made both deities and temples, that long line of philosophers the
sublimity of whose thoughts civilization fed on and found expression in
the genius of now and then a Pericles or a Phidias.

Twenty times Rome suffered, each time worse than ever befell an American
city, the debris of destruction overspreading her sacred soil some
fathoms deep, yet all the while mistress of the world.

The Moors in Spain reconstructed and embellished many cities, and built
many entire. To them Spain owes her finest specimens of art and
architecture, as Seville, Cordova, and the Alhambra. In Naples the
mediaeval still overshadows the modern. The city needs cleansing, though
she flourishes in her filth and volcanic belchings. Nice, like Paris,
plans to please her guests. Berlin was a little late with her
reconstructive work; the town walls were not removed till 1866.
Though dating from 1190, Glasgow is practically modern, having been
several times renovated by fire. Antwerp, burned in 1871, was quickly
rebuilt. The Hague is charming as the city of peace. Munich, on the
Isar, is every day drifting into the beautiful, not to say aesthetical.

Pekin is a city sui generis, with its Kin-Ching, or prohibited city,
sacred to royalty; its Hwang-Ching, or imperial city, exclusively for
court officials; its Tartar division and Chinese division, all completed
according to the grand khan and Confucius. Happy Celestials! There is
nothing more to be done, nothing to reconstruct, nothing to improve; it