above the river. Indeed, there are very few streets in the United States that give in as high a degree as Summit Avenue the sense of an expenditure liberal without ostentation, directed by skill, and restrained by taste. What mainly strikes a pilgrim from the East is not so much the merit of the best of these houses, as the fact that there are no bad ones; none, at least, so bad as to disturb the general impression of richness and refinement, and none that make the crude display of “new money” that is to be seen in the fashionable quarters of cities even richer and far older. The houses rise, to borrow one of Ruskin’s eloquent phrases, “in fair fulfilment of domestic service and modesty of home seclusion.” The air of completeness, of finish, of “keeping,” so rare in American towns, is here as marked as at Newport. In the architecture there is a wide variety, which does not, however, suffice to destroy the homogeneousness of the total effect. Suggestions from the Romanesque perhaps prevail, and testify anew to the [Illustration: PORTE-COCHÈRE, ST. PAUL. Wilcox & Johnson, Architects.] influence of Richardson, though there are suggestions from the Renaissance and from pointed architecture that show scholarship as well as invention. The cleverness and ingenuity of a porte-cochère of two pointed arches are not diminished by the likelihood that it was suggested by a canopied tomb in a cathedral. But, indeed, from whatever source the inspiration of the architects may have come, it is everywhere plain that they have had no intention of presenting “examples” of historical architecture, and highly unlikely that they would be disturbed by the detection in their work of solecisms that were such merely from the academic point of view. It is scarcely worth while to go into specific criticism of their domestic work. To illustrate it is to show that the designers of the best of it are quite abreast of the architects of the older parts of the country, and that they are able to command an equal skill of craftsmanship in the execution of their designs. [Illustration: PORCH IN ST. PAUL. Mould & McNichol, Architects.] This does not answer our question whether there is any such thing as Western architecture, or whether these papers should not rather have been entitled “Glimpses of Architecture in the West.” The interest in this art throughout the West is at least as general as the interest in it throughout the East, and it is attested in the twin cities by the existence of a flourishing and enterprising periodical, the “Northwestern Architect,” to which I am glad to confess my obligations. It is natural that this interest, when joined to an intense local patriotism, should lead to a magnifying of the Westernness of such structures as are the subjects of local pride. It is common enough to hear the same local patriot who declaims to you in praise of Western architecture explain also [Illustration: FROM A DWELLING IN ST. PAUL. Gilbert & Taylor, Architects.]