Latinism, as a creed, is dead, or dying. There are not many Latinists left, find the pessimistic, melancholy folk who found all the beauty of the world in "youth and death and the old age of roses" have appeared, probably never to return. Latinism was a flavor of the soul, and the modern soul rarely, if ever, assumes that flavor. What Latinism did, however, was to teach the appreciation of the dignity of time, the beauty of the passing years, and their enriching effect on things and men. This quality is now extant as a matter of taste, a mental attribute, and it is widely conceived to be a sign of cultivation to "pooh-pooh whatever's fresh and new" in favor of something which has at least the appearance of age with or without the richness and mellowness thereof. After all, the mellowness is the essence; if the years merely age without mellowing a thing, they have done it no good; the same thing new is the more desirable article. The larger and more important a thing is, the less effect the years have upon it, and the more difficult becomes the task of the enterprising workman who seeks to simulate the wrinkles time would leave. In the case of cities, the task is practically hopeless. There is only one way for a city to attain the beauty and the haunting charm of age, and that is to wait patiently until time has finished his slow work. It is hard to wait, and a new city is a crude and painful thing. One can easily imagine the older cities looking scornfully or pityingly down upon it, themselves secure in the grim or the delicate beauty of their age. Only once in many generations does a city rise which achieves a character, an individuality, without waiting for the lingering years to bestow it. It happens so seldom as to come almost into the realm of the miraculous. Yet to him who for the first time sees New York at night, or as the declining sun sets ten thousand roofs for the moment aflame--a miracle seems not more wonderful than this. There are miles on miles of roofs in many a town, stretching away beyond the reach of sight; there is, especially in the great cities of the old world, an immensity of movement which is at once alien and akin to the great movements of earth and sea; there are cities which seem great because of the multiplicity of things--men and ships and creeds and costumes which jostle one another in every market place. New York has all these things--yet they do not explain New York--they are almost inconsiderable elements in the greater thing that is the city itself. Wherein the essence lies--whether it is the purely superficial aspect of it, the imaginative daring of its architecture, or some deeper and more subtle thing--no man can surely say.