Providence is beautifully situated on the hills at the head of Narragansett Bay, and its centre is a fine new Union Railway Station, completed in 1897. Near by is the massive City Hall, one of the chief public buildings in Rhode Island, a granite structure costing $1,500,000. In high relief upon its front is a medallion bust of the founder of the little State, Roger Williams, wearing the typical sugar-loaf hat. A feature of this impressive building is the magnificent stair-hall, lighted from above; and from the surmounting tower there is a wide view over the city and suburbs, and far down the bay towards the ocean. In front is the public square, with a stately Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument of blue Westerly granite, bearing the names of nearly seventeen hundred men of Rhode Island who fell in the Civil War, and guarded by well-executed bronze statues representing the different arms of the service. Facing it is a statue in heroic bronze of the Rhode Island General Burnside, who died in 1881. These works are artistic, but the priceless art gem in Providence is the exquisite little picture of "The Hours," painted on a sheet of ivory six by seven inches, in London, by the great portrait and miniature painter, Edward Greene Malbone, of Newport--the three Grecian nymphs, Eunomia, Dice and Irene, representing the Past, Present and Future. The President of the Royal Academy said of it, "I have seen a picture, painted by a young man of the name of Malbone, which no man in England could excel." This is his masterpiece, one of the most admired paintings in America, and is kept carefully in the Athenæum (to which it was presented by a public subscription in 1853), a solid little granite house built on the hillside, not far from the Baptist church.