The picture gallery and school of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts occupies the third floor of the Library Building. The city owns a number of good paintings, which it purchased at the sale of the gallery that formerly belonged to the Exposition Company. Several fine paintings have been presented to the municipality by Mr. J.J. Hill of St. Paul, whose wealth has also been used to advance and cultivate the taste for artistic work in the city of St. Paul. When the collection of casts selected by General Cesnola for the Metropolitan Museum of Art arrived in New York before the building was ready, it was promptly purchased by citizens of Minneapolis, and donated to the Exposition Company, which was then holding annual exhibits. It is now the property of Mr. T.B. Janney, by whom it has been placed in the Public Library, and thus for all practical purposes dedicated to the art education of the people. Mr. Hill in St. Paul and Mr. T.B. Walker in Minneapolis have private collections which include many famous and valuable pictures. A start has been made in the work of beautifying the city and honoring illustrious citizens by the placing of Fjelde's statue of Ole Bull in Loring Park and Daniel C. French's statue of ex-Governor John S. Pillsbury in the grounds of the State University. A law has recently been passed which provides for the creation of permanent art commissions in St. Paul and Minneapolis. It is hoped that these bodies will prevent the purchase or acceptance of unworthy pictures or statues by the municipalities. In proportion to the population the parks in Minneapolis exceed in acreage those of any other city in America and of all but three foreign cities. There are twenty-two parks and parkways, not counting numerous parklets formed by the intersection of streets. At the present time the park board controls 1552.81 acres. In the centre of the city lies Loring Park, with its beautiful lake and well-kept verdure. Starting from this point, Kenwood Boulevard carries us along a wooded bluffy region from whose heights are obtained changing views of the Lake of the Isles, which is now entirely enclosed by a boulevard. A short half-mile south is Lake Calhoun, along the eastern terrace of which we pass to the borders of Lakewood Cemetery and thence through Interlaken, rich in the beauty of its wild woods, to the shores of Lake Harriet and its pavilion. At the south angle of the lake the boulevard leads off to Minnehaha Creek, which is the outlet of Lake Minnetonka and flows easterly through a romantic valley until, falling over the Trenton limestone within a half-mile of the Mississippi, it forms the romantic Falls of Minnehaha. Around the Falls of Minnehaha there is a park of one hundred and twenty-five acres, containing a zoological garden and bordered by the grounds of the Soldiers' Home, which for all æsthetic purposes is a part of it. [Illustration LORING PARK--MINNEAPOLIS.]