The hasty and inconsiderate modernization of an ancient and historic town such as Algiers suggests serious considerations. The process of destroying what is noteworthy for age or beauty in the name of improvement would seem to be generally accepted as one of the conditions of progress. Cities and towns, it is not unnaturally held, are not museums or curiosity shops; men are massed in them to gain their livelihood, or to pursue their pleasures. The antiquaries, those who admire and study the works of the past, because they are the works of the past; the nature-lovers, who “cultivate the beautiful without extravagance”; these are an insignificant section drawn for the most part from that hard-working class which is known to politicians as the idle rich. Their protests are of no great avail. Governments, if well-meaning, are lukewarm; local authorities, eager to be in the municipal movement, are commonly apathetic as regards the claims of mere ancientry or natural comeliness. Of what the modern Italians are doing to desecrate Rome and despoil Florence it is difficult to speak with patience. And it is the work of their own fathers that they are pulling down or vulgarizing. The conditions here are quite different, and the reforming zeal of the French so far less flagrant. They have replaced by their own civilization what they regard as the barbarism of a conquered race; they wanted the city of that race to live in, and they found it in every way repugnant to their tastes and unsuited to their needs. The soldiers began the work of destruction; soldiers destroy ruthlessly in the day of battle; but the persistent waste of the horde that follows after—the engineers, the architects, the speculative builders, the railway constructors, and the great industrial companies—is infinitely more damaging in the long run. And what are we that we should cast a stone at the French? How much have we spared of old London and its suburbs? How much of the urban beauty and rural charm of England did our rude forefathers of the nineteenth century wantonly and light-heartedly destroy? When have railway projects or proposed public works been stayed on æsthetic grounds? Do the station and bridge at Charing Cross lend dignity to our great river? And, to look further afield, to what fate have we, masters of the Nile, condemned Philae?