there yet remains the ill-conditioned
and once filthy quarter, beside which rise the old-time ten-story houses
built into the hillside, while in the modern part of the city in sharp
contrast are broad streets and open squares and fine buildings.

In America the birth of towns is quite different. Here are no
plantings of trembling poverty under lordly walls, but bold pioneering,
forecasting agriculture and commerce; no Babel building, with "Go to,
let us build here a Cleveland or a Cincinnati," but rather, "Here for
the present we will abide." If, however, serfdom and mediaevalism were
absent in New World town-planting, so also were aestheticism or any
appreciation of the beautiful apart from the useful. Old cities require
reconstruction to make them what modern taste and intelligence demand;
settlements in their incipiency are dominated by their sturdy founders,
who usually have other things to think about than beauty and adornment.

In this day of great wealth and wonderful inventions we realize more and
more the value of the city to mankind, and the quality of the city as
a means of culture. Cities are not merely marts of commerce; they stand
for civility; they are civilization itself. No untried naked Adam in
Eden might ever pass for a civilized man. The city street is the
school of philosophy, of art, of letters; city society is the home of
refinement. When the rustic visits the city he puts on his best clothes
and his best manners. In their reciprocal relations the city is as men
make it, while from the citizen one may determine the quality of the
city. The atmosphere of the city is an eternal force. Therefore as we
value the refinement of the human mind, the enlargement of the human
heart, we shall value the city, and strive so to build, and adorn, and
purify, that it may achieve its ultimate endeavor.

Civic betterment has long been in progress among the more civilized
communities through the influence of cultured people capable of
appreciating the commercial as well as the aesthetical value of art.
Vast sums have been spent and great results accomplished, but they
are nothing as compared with the work yet to be done--work which will
continue through the ages and be finished only with the end of time.

And not only will larger wealth be yet more freely poured out on
artistic adornment, but such use of money will be regarded as the best
to which it can be applied. For though gold is not beautiful it can make
b