In the United States the movement has not found a firm foothold because there has been no dominant, enslaving tradition to protest against. Not a few of the ideas, not a little of the spirit of the movement may be recognized in the work of individual architects and decorative artists in the United States, executed years before the movement took recognizable form in Europe: and American decorative design has generally been, at least since 1880 or 1885, sufficiently free, individual and personal, to render unnecessary and impossible any concerted movement of artistic revolt against slavery to precedent. E. +RECENT AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE.+--Architectural activity in the United States continues to share in the general prosperity which has marked the years since 1898, and this activity has by no means been confined to industrial and commercial architecture. Indeed, while the erection of “sky scrapers” or excessively lofty office-buildings has continued to be a feature of this activity in the great commercial centres, the most notable architectural enterprises of recent years have been in the field of educational buildings, both in the East and West. In 1898 a great international competition resulted in the selection of the design of Mr. _E. Bénard_ of Paris for a magnificent group of buildings for the +University of California+ on a scale of unexampled grandeur, and the erection of this colossal project has been begun. An almost equally ambitious project, by a firm of Philadelphia architects, has been adopted for the Washington University at St. Louis; and many other universities and colleges have either added extensively to their existing buildings or planned an entire rebuilding on new designs. Among these the national military and naval academies at +West Point+ and +Annapolis+ take the first rank in the extent and splendor of the projected improvements. Museums and libraries have also been erected or begun in various cities, and the +New York Public Library+, now building, will rank in cost and beauty with those already erected in Boston and Washington. In other departments mention should be made of recent Federal buildings (custom-houses, post-offices, and court-houses) erected under the provisions of the Tarsney act from designs secured by competition among the leading architects of the country; among those the +New York Custom House+ is the most important, but other buildings, at Washington, Indianapolis, and elsewhere, are also conspicuous, and many of them worthy of high praise. The tendency to award the designing of important public buildings, such as State capitols, county court houses, city halls, libraries, and hospitals, by competition instead of by personal and political favor, has resulted in a marked improvement in the quality of American public architecture.