The wonder of this and of every other cathedral like it that I saw, to me, was never their religious but their artistic significance. Some one with a splendid imagination must always have been behind each one--and I can never understand the character or the temper of an age or a people that will let anything happen to them. But if I found little of thrilling artistic significance after Rome and the south I was strangely impressed with the modernity of Milan. Europe, to me, is not so old in its texture anywhere as one would suppose. Most European cities of large size are of recent growth, just as American cities are. So many of the great buildings that we think of as time-worn, such as the Ducal Palace at Venice, and elsewhere, are in an excellent state of preservation--quite new looking. Venice has many new buildings in the old style. Rome is largely composed of modern tenements and apartment houses. There are elevators in Perugia, and when you reach Milan you find it newer than St. Louis or Cleveland. If there is any medieval spirit anywhere remaining in Milan I could not find it. The shops are bright and attractive. There are large department stores, and the honk-honk of the automobile is quite as common here as anywhere. It has only five hundred thousand population, but, even so, it evidences great commercial force. If you ride out in the suburbs, as I did, you see new houses, new factories, new streets, new everything. Unlike the inhabitants of southern Italy, the people are large physically and I did not understand this until I learned that they are freely mingled with the Germans. The Germans are here in force, in control of the silk mills, the leather manufactories, the restaurants, the hotels, the book stores and printing establishments. It is a wonder to me that they are not in control of the Opera House and the musical activities, and I have no doubt that they influence it greatly. The director of La Scala ought to be a German, if he is not. I got a first suggestion of Paris in the tables set before the cafés in the Arcade of Vittorio Emanuele and had my first taste of Germany in the purely German beer-halls with their orchestras of men or women, where for a few cents expended for beer you can sit by the hour and listen to the music. In the hotel where I stopped the German precision of regulation was as marked as anywhere in Germany. It caused me to wonder whether the Germans would eventually sweep down and possess Italy and, if they did, what they would make of it or what Italy would make of them. CHAPTER XLII LUCERNE