The most striking product of South American education was the architectural structures which the Spanish-American people erected as ornaments of their towns, memorials of their culture and evidences of their education. The cathedrals in the Spanish towns of South America and Mexico are structures, as a rule, fairly comparable with the ecclesiastical buildings erected by towns of the same size in Europe. As a rule, they were planned at least in the sixteenth century, and most of them were finished in the seventeenth century. Their cathedrals are handsome architectural structures worthy of their faith and enduring evidence of their taste and love of beauty. The ecclesiastical buildings, the houses of their bishops and archbishops and their monasteries were worthy of their cathedrals and churches. Most of them are beautiful, all of them are dignified, all of them had {332} a permanent character that has made them endure down to our day and has made them an unfailing ornament of the towns in which they are. Their municipal buildings partook of this same type. Some of them are very handsome structures. Of their universities we have already heard that they were imposing buildings from without, handsomely decorated within. It must not be forgotten that the Spanish Americans practically invented the new style of architecture. How effective that style is, we had abundant opportunity to see when it was employed for the building of the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo. That style is essentially American. It is the only new thing that America has contributed to construction since its settlement. How thoroughly suitable it was for the climate for which it was invented, those who have had experience of it in the new hotels erected in Florida, in the last decade or so, can judge very well. Many of its effects are an adaptation of classical formulae to buildings for the warm, yet uncertain climate of many parts of South America. Some of the old monasteries constructed after this style are beautiful examples of architecture in every sense of the word. If the Spanish-American monks had done nothing else but leave us this handsome new model in architecture they would not have lived in vain, nor would their influence in American life have been without its enduring effects. This is a typical {333} product of the higher culture of the South Spanish-American people.