The broad straight streets of the new town of Piraeus must have formed a striking contrast to the narrow and crooked streets, lined with mean houses, which Athens itself seems always to have retained. Aristotle perhaps had this contrast in his mind when he recommended for his ideal city a mixture of the two modes of building, remarking that the new straight streets in the style of Hippodamus were handsomer and more convenient, but that the old crooked streets could be better defended against an enemy. Another advantage of the older style of architecture, at least in southern cities, is the shade and coolness of narrow lanes from which, as from the bottom of a well, we look up at a narrow strip of blue sky high overhead, instead of being exposed to the pitiless glare of the sun as we pace, with blue spectacles on our eyes and a white umbrella over our head, the broad open streets which, on the model of the Parisian boulevards, are rapidly springing up in the towns of southern Europe. Still, in spite of the ravages of municipal authorities and the jerry-builder, we can even yet remark in modern Europe a contrast between the towns that have grown up irregularly in the course of ages, and those which have been created at once on a regular plan by the will of a despot. The two most regularly built towns in Europe are probably Turin and Mannheim. Turin still stands on the lines laid down by Augustus, when he founded a Roman colony on the site; Mannheim was built by the Elector Palatine, Frederick the Fourth, in 1606. Something of the same difference may also be observed between Madrid, the new capital of Spain, with its thoroughfares radiating like the spokes of a wheel from the Puerta del Sol, and the old Spanish capital Toledo, with its narrow lanes straggling up and down the rocky hill whence the white, silent, seemingly half-deserted city looks down on the gorge of the Tagus. But Madrid, a creation of Philip the Second, does not equal Turin or Mannheim in mathematical regularity of construction. There can be no doubt that the fortification of Piraeus and the transference to it of the port of Athens from the open roadstead of Phalerum constituted one of the most momentous steps in the history of Athens. Coupled with the construction of a large permanent war-fleet it made Athens the first naval power in Greece, and so determined her subsequent history. All three measures originated in the far-seeing mind of Themistocles, who thus in a sense created Athens, and proved himself thereby one of the greatest of statesmen. He saw that Piraeus was more important to the Athenians than Athens itself, and he often advised them, if ever they were hard put to it by land, to evacuate Athens and settle at Piraeus, where with their fleet they could defy the world. If they had taken his advice, Athens might perhaps have played a still greater part in history.