+THE ARTISTIC AWAKENING.+ Between 1870 and 1880 a remarkable series of events exercised a powerful influence on the artistic life of the United States. Two terrible conflagrations in Chicago (1871) and Boston (1872) gave unexampled opportunities for architectural improvement and greatly stimulated the public interest in the art. The feverish and abnormal industrial activity which followed the war and the rapid growth of the parvenu spirit were checked by the disastrous “panic” of 1873. With the completion of the Pacific railways and the settlement of new communities in the West, industrial prosperity, when it returned, was established on a firmer basis. An extraordinary expansion of travel to Europe began to disseminate the seeds of artistic culture throughout the country. The successful establishment of schools of architecture in Boston (1866) and other cities, and the opening or enlargement of art museums in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee, and elsewhere, stimulated the artistic awakening which now manifested itself. In architecture the personal influence of two men, trained in the Paris École des Beaux-Arts, was especially felt--of _R. M. Hunt_ (1827-95) through his words and deeds quite as much as through his works; and of _H. H. Richardson_ (1828-86) predominantly through his works. These two men, with others of less fame but of high ideals and thorough culture, did much to elevate architecture as an art in the public esteem. To all these influences new force was added by the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia (1876). Here for the first time the American people were brought into contact, in their own land, with the products of European and Oriental art. It was to them an artistic revelation, whose results were prompt and far-reaching. Beginning first in the domain of industrial and decorative art, its stimulating influence rapidly extended to painting and architecture, and with permanent consequences. American students began to throng the centres of Old World art, while the setting of higher standards of artistic excellence at home, and the development of important art-industries, were other fruits of this artistic awakening. The recent Columbian Exhibition at Chicago (1893), its latest and most important manifestation, has added a new impulse to the movement, especially in architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 222.--TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON.] [Illustration: FIG. 223.--LIBRARY AT WOBURN, MASS.]