architect’s originality, provided the precedent he chooses be really applicable to his problem, and provided he analyze it instead of reproducing it without analysis. In what else does progress consist than in availing one’s self of the labor of one’s predecessors? If the Grecian builders had felt the pressure of the modern demand for novelty, and had endeavored to comply with it by making dispositions radically new, instead of refining upon the details of an accepted type, or if the mediæval builders had done the same thing, it is manifest that the typical temple or the typical cathedral would never have come to be built, that we should have had no Parthenon and no Cologne. The requirements of the Minneapolis building, a court-house and town-hall, are nearly enough alike to those of the county building at Pittsburgh to make it credible that the general scheme of the earlier work may, by force of merit, have imposed itself upon the architect of the later. The general difference of treatment is the greater richness and elaboration of the newer structure, and this is a legitimate consequence of the substitution of freestone for granite; while the differences of detail and the introduction at Minneapolis of features that have no counterpart at Pittsburgh suffice to vindicate the designer from the reproach of having followed his model thoughtlessly or with servility. So far as can be judged from the drawings, the municipal building of Minneapolis, when it comes to be finished, will be a monument of which the Minneapolitans will have a right to be proud, for better reasons than mere magnitude and costliness. [Illustration: PUBLIC LIBRARY, MINNEAPOLIS. Long & Kees, Architects.] Another work, this time completely executed, by the designers of the City Hall, the Public Library of Minneapolis, betrays also the influence of Richardson. The motive of the principal front, an arcade bounded by round towers and surmounted by a story of blank wall, was pretty evidently suggested by his unexecuted [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO PUBLIC LIBRARY, MINNEAPOLIS.] design for a similar building at Buffalo. The precedent here is perhaps not so directly in point, seeing that the effectiveness of an arcade increases with its length, and in a much greater ratio, and that the arcade here is not only much shorter than in the projected building, but is still further shortened to the eye by being heightened and carried through two stories. The towers, too, would have been more effective had it been practicable to give greater solidity to their lower stages. Nevertheless, the building is distinctly successful, and its most successful feature, the gabled centre that includes the entrance, is one which illustrates the inventiveness of the designers, as well as their power of judicious selection and modification. [Illustration: THE PEOPLE’S CHURCH, ST. PAUL. J. W. Stevens, Architect.]