From time to time some mention from me of city improvements observed during my daily walks led to an interesting discussion. The city of Berlin is wonderfully well governed, and exhibits all those triumphs of modern municipal skill and devotion which are so conspicuously absent, as a rule, from our American cities. While his capital preserves its self-governing powers, it is clear that he purposes to have his full say as to everything within his jurisdiction. There were various examples of this, and one of them especially interested me: the renovation of the Thiergarten. This great park, virtually a gift of the Hohenzollern monarchs, which once lay upon the borders of the city, but is now in the very heart of it, had gradually fallen far short of what it should have been. Even during my earlier stays in Berlin it was understood that some of his predecessors, and especially his father, had desired to change its corpse-like and swampy character and give it more of the features of a stately park, but that popular opposition to any such change had always shown itself too bitter and uncompromising. This seemed a great pity, for while there were some fine trees, a great majority of them were so crowded together that there was no chance of broad, free growth either for trees or for shrubbery. There was nothing of that exquisitely beautiful play, upon expanses of green turf, of light and shade through wide-expanded boughs and broad masses of foliage, which gives such delight in any of the finer English or American parks. Down to about half a dozen years since it had apparently been thought best not to interfere, and even when attention was called to the dark, swampy characteristics of much of the Thiergarten, the answer was that it was best to humor the Berliners; but about the beginning of my recent stay the young Emperor intervened with decision and force, his work was thorough, and as my windows looked out over one corner of this field of his operations, their progress interested me, and they were alluded to from time to time in our conversations. Interesting was it to note that his energy was all-sufficient; the Berliners seemed to regard his activity as Arabs regard a sand-storm,--as predestined and irresistible,--and the universal verdict now justifies his course, both on sanitary and artistic grounds. The same thing may be said, on the whole, of the influence he has exerted on the great adornments of his capital city. The position and character of various monuments on which he has impressed his ideas, and the laying out and decoration of sundry streets and parks, do credit not merely to his artistic sense, but to his foresight.