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
Francisco conflagration; yet it was rebuilt better than before in three
and a half years. Always the city is improved in the rebuilding; how
much, depends upon the intelligence and enterprise of the people.

Paris is brilliant with everything that takes the eye--palaces, arches,
Bon Marche shops, arcades, colonnades, great open spaces adorned with
statues, forest parks, elysian driveways, and broad boulevards cut
through mediaeval quarters in every direction, as well for air as
for protection from the canaille blockaded in the narrow streets. San
Francisco may have some canaille of her own to boast of one of these
days; canaille engendered from the scum of Europe and Asia, and educated
at our expense for our destruction. Over and over, these two cities,
each a