in the past have stained the world with their sanguinary struggles. A beautiful doctrine this, which may lend itself to many objections; but true or false, it proves that the people who have conceived it, far from despising the ideal, have such respect for all ideas and all beliefs, that they have not the courage to repel a single one. Such a people wishes to learn all and understand all. Another proof of this same characteristic is furnished by American universities. Europeans have all heard descriptions of these great American universities, Harvard and Columbia, for example. They are true cities of learning with vast and splendid buildings, gardens, pavilions, laboratories, museums, libraries, athletic fields for physical exercises, pools where students can go to swim. They are enormously rich and, at the same time, always in dire straits. How can that be? Because no speciality or item of perfection is allowed to be lacking. All the languages and the literatures of the world which have reached any degree of importance, all the histories, all the sciences,—judicial, social, moral, physical, natural,—all the divisions of mathematics, and all the philosophies, are taught there by hundreds of professors. Private citizens of the rich classes, bankers, manufacturers, merchants, have in a great degree met from their private purses the steadily growing needs of the universities. There is the same tendency in art. That American cities are ugly, I willingly admit. It would need much courage, no doubt, to brand this affirmation as false, but it would also be unjust to deny that America is making mighty efforts to beautify her cities. All the schools of architecture in Europe, especially that of Paris, are full of Americans hard at work. The sums which cities, states, banks, insurance companies, universities, and railroads, have spent in beautifying their magnificent edifices is fabulous. Not all these buildings, by any means, are masterpieces, but there are many which are very beautiful. America has architects of indisputable worth. In Europe, men like to repeat that Americans buy at extravagant prices objects of ancient art, or things that pass for such, not distinguishing those which are beautiful and ancient from those which are inferior and counterfeit. But those who have seen something of the houses of rich Americans know that, although there are snobs and dupes in America, as everywhere else, there are also people who know the meaning of art, who know how to buy beautiful things, and who search the world over for them. You will find in the streets of New York every variety of architecture, just as you find in its libraries all the literatures of the world, and in its theatres all the music, and in its houses all the decorative arts.