Architecturally, Boston combines in the happiest way all that is beautiful and dignified in the classic models and all that is fresh and original in modern canons of building. A magnificent group of buildings, in the vicinity of Boylston and Huntingdon streets and Copley Square, fairly takes the breath away with its beauty. Trinity Church and the Museum of Fine Arts, the "New Old South Church" and the new Boston Public Library, form such a quartet of splendid edifices as even the travelled eye seldom sees. The Public Library is an embodied Triumph--the symbol of that great heritage of culture which the city pours out on her denizens as lavishly and as freely as water, and which, like "the gentle dew from heaven, blesseth him that gives and him that takes," returning to enrich the community with its diffused presence, like the showers which return to the bosom of the river, the moisture the sun only borrowed for a space. Bostonians have always been proud of their Public Library, from its foundation in 1852. By 1885, the Boylston street building, with accommodations for 250,000 volumes, was too contracted a space to hold the largest public library in the world, and with characteristic promptness the city rose to the occasion and embodied its thought that "nothing can be too good for the people" in the beautiful new library in Copley Square, which cost the royal sum of $2,600,000. [Illustration: BOSTON AND ENVIRONS.] The long chapter of description which this splendid enterprise merits must be reluctantly crowded into a few lines. Nothing, however, save personal observation, can give an adequate perception of its outward loveliness; its exterior of soft cream-gray granite, with a succession of noble arched windows ranged along its fine façades; its arches, pillars and floorings of rare marbles, and its mosaics, panels and carvings. The grand staircase of splendid Sienna marble, opposite the main entrance, is one of the finest in the world; and scholar or philosopher could ask no more attractive spot for thoughtful promenade than the beautiful open court, with its marble basin and MacMonnies fountain in the centre, the soft green of its surrounding turf affording grateful rest to book-wearied eyes, and the pensive beauty of the cloister-like colonnade forming an ideal retreat. The foremost artists of the world are represented in the interior decoration. The famous St. Gaudens seal, designed by Kenyon Cox and executed by Augustus St. Gaudens, ornaments the central arch of the main vestibule; the bronze doors are by Daniel G. French; the splendid marble lions in the staircase hall--erected as memorials to their martyred comrades by two regiments of Massachusetts volunteers--are by Louis St. Gaudens; and Puvis de Chavannes, James McNeil Whistler, Edwin A. Abbey and John S. Sargent are among the celebrated artists who have contributed to the mural decorations, friezes and ceiling frescoes.