The city was laid out with an astonishing degree of boldness and originality, and upon an ambitious scale. It was hoped by the builders that its splendour would bring to mind those pictured conceptions of the perfect town. Each edifice was to be so placed as to lend its own proper proportion of dignity. In this model town there was to be no crowding together of palaces, as had heretofore been common in Spanish cities, nor were rows of squalid little one-storied houses to be permitted to jostle with their imposing fronts the walls of stately palaces. No, not in La Plata. To accomplish this result the resplendent palaces were planted at regular intervals about the city, each in its own garden and faced by its own boulevard and plaza, and separated from the next one by a becoming row of private houses. There was to be no confusion or congestion as a result of buildings crowded together, and no vulgar hustling. In justice to the builders it may be said that there never has been anything of the latter quality, for the strenuous life has never yet found lodgment in La Plata. [Illustration: “A SOMNOLENT ATMOSPHERE SEEMS TO PREVAIL”] The first impression upon the visitor is very peculiar, for a somnolent atmosphere seems to prevail. As one emerges from the station two broad thoroughfares open up before him. These broad streets, which are still designated by numbers, with their extensive sweep of carriageway, were designed to resound to the hoofs of horses and the noise of wheels; their broad pavements were intended to ring with the tramp of multitudinous feet—but they do not. The founders of La Plata reckoned without their host. One may gaze down the entire length of a street and not see a single figure; one might stroll through any of the little parks set out with trees and palms and find every bench unoccupied. The vast white palaces are practically empty. Occasionally one will see an electric car sweep leisurely around the corner, or a cabman lazily waiting for a “fare,” but the car does not hurry and the cab driver does not worry over his inactivity. One wonders where the inhabitants are. The fact is that the few who do live here fill so little of the space that they are seldom seen. It has never succeeded in becoming a residential city in spite of the beauty of the parks, the low rentals and other advantages. The grass is abundant everywhere. In fact some people are so unfeeling as to assert that the green grass grows all round, round, round, as the song has it. As it is, the green tufts thrust themselves upward in many places through the pavements and around the rough cobble-stones of the driveways. In some of the suburban streets a little more grass would make a solid lawn. It sprouts from crevices of neglected walls and roofs, and even from the uncompleted walls of the great cathedral, which lies in neglect. This structure, great in plan, is oppressively desolate in its abandonment and the silence that broods over it.