as well as the material structure, but if we could see London and New
York as lawless in the one way as in the other, we should perhaps see
how ugly they collectively are.

The sum of such involuntary reflection with me has been the perception
that London was and is and shall be, and New York is and shall be, but
has hardly yet been. New York is therefore one-third less morally, as
she is one-third less numerically, than London. In her future she has no
past, but only a present to retrieve; though perhaps a present like hers
is enough. She is also one less architecturally than London; she is two-
thirds as splendid, as grand, as impressive. In fact, if I more closely
examine my pocket vision, I am afraid that I must hedge from this modest
claim, for we have as yet nothing to compare with at least a half of
London magnificence, whatever we may have in the seventeen or eighteen
hundred years that shall bring us of her actual age. As we go fast in
all things, we may then surpass her; but this is not certain, for in her
more deliberate way she goes fast, too. In the mean time the materials
of comparison, as they lie dispersed in the pocket vision, seem few. The
sky-scrapers, Brooklyn Bridge, Madison Square Garden, and some vast
rocketing hotels offer themselves rather shrinkingly for the contrast
with those miles of imperial and municipal architecture which in London
make you forget the leagues of mean little houses, and remember the
palaces, the law-courts, the great private mansions, the dignified and
shapely flats, the large department stores, the immense hotels, the
bridges, the monuments of every kind.

One reason, I think, why London is so much more striking is in the
unbroken line which the irregularly divided streets often present to the
passer. Here is a chance for architecture to extend, while with us it
has only a chance to tower, on the short up-town block which is the