Lath and plaster circuses or theatres are erected by the Mausoleum of Hadrian, and the miserable caged monkeys of a menagerie pull each other's tails where Raffaele's pavillion stood amidst the nightingale-filled ilex groves. Frederic Harrison, in his admirable studies of Paris, cannot hide from himself or his readers the loss to art and history which the Haussmannising of the city began, the insanity of the Commune continued, and the barbarism of the present Republic confirms. The ruin of Rome since the Italian occupation is ten times worse and more offensive than even such ruin as would have been entailed by a siege, for it is more vulgar; shell and shot would have destroyed indeed, but they would not have imbecilely and impudently reconstructed. The same sad change awaits, if it has not already overtaken, every city of Europe, and alas! even of Asia. The smoke fiend has entered Jerusalem, and the shriek of the engines has scared the wild dove from her nest in the palm and pomegranate. The Mount of Olives is 'a thing to be done,' and the 'scorcher,' sweating and grinning, drives his wheel through the rose-thickets of Damascus. Factory chimneys stand as thick in Bombay as in Birmingham, and black trails of foul vapour float over Indus and Ganges; soon their curse will reach the Euphrates. I believe I am correct in saying that the smoke from the funnel of a great steamer or a large factory can be traced for forty-five miles in its passage through the air. Imagine the effect on atmosphere of the continual crossing and re-crossing on ocean routes of tens of thousands of such steamships yearly, of the perpetual belching of such fumes from the innumerable factory shafts annually increased in every part of what is called the civilised world. To India, from England alone, the export of machines and other material for factory erection has been at the enormous rate of £70,000 monthly! Only let us consider what this means, what destruction of pure light and of fine atmosphere this involves for Hindostan. The snow-white marbles of the temples, the ivory doors, the silver gates, the rosy clouds, the lotus-laden waters, the golden dawns, the magnolia woods, the camellia groves, the feathered flocks in the bamboo aisles, will all vanish that the smoke fiend may reign alone and the traders who live by him grow rich. The 'light of Asia' is forced to grow foul and dark and sickly, and its radiant suns to be shrouded in pestilent fog in order that the British Gradgrind may put by his 200 per cent. and fold his hands complacently on his rotund belly. Is the end worth the means? Is modern trade in truth such a godhead descended on earth that all the loveliness of earth and air, of sky and water should be sacrificed to its demands?