Some Cities San Fran. Resurgam | Page 6

hundred
acres. The fashion now is to build upward rather than outward. Besides
this alabaster acreage there are to be taken into account the pyramids,
artificial mountains, and endless towertowns, supposed to be an
improvement on whatever existed before their time. Around the
Mediterranean and over India way were once hundreds of charming
places like the Megara suburb of Carthage and the amphitheatre of
Rhodes, prolific in classic art and architecture, precious gifts of the
gods.
But before all other gods or gifts comes Athens, where the men were as
gods and the gods very like the men. Encircling the Acropolis hill-most
ancient cities had their central hill-the city owes its grandeur to the
many temples dedicated to the Olympian deities by the men who made
them, made both deities and temples, that long line of philosophers the
sublimity of whose thoughts civilization fed on and found expression in
the genius of now and then a Pericles or a Phidias.
Twenty times Rome suffered, each time worse than ever befell an
American city, the debris of destruction overspreading her sacred soil
some fathoms deep, yet all the while mistress of the world.
The Moors in Spain reconstructed and embellished many cities, and
built many entire. To them Spain owes her finest specimens of art and
architecture, as Seville, Cordova, and the Alhambra. In Naples the
mediaeval still overshadows the modern. The city needs cleansing,
though she flourishes in her filth and volcanic belchings. Nice, like
Paris, plans to please her guests. Berlin was a little late with her
reconstructive work; the town walls were not removed till 1866.
Though dating from 1190, Glasgow is practically modern, having been
several times renovated by fire. Antwerp, burned in 1871, was quickly
rebuilt. The Hague is charming as the city of peace. Munich, on the Isar,
is every day drifting into the beautiful, not to say aesthetical.
Pekin is a city sui generis, with its Kin-Ching, or prohibited city, sacred
to royalty; its Hwang-Ching, or imperial city, exclusively for court

officials; its Tartar division and Chinese division, all completed
according to the grand khan and Confucius. Happy Celestials! There is
nothing more to be done, nothing to reconstruct, nothing to improve; it
stands alone, the only city in all the world that is absolutely finished
and perfect. But of a truth our public works sink into insignificance
beside those of the ancient barbarians, the great wall and canal of China,
the pyramids of Egypt, and the brilliant cities of Assyria and Palmyra.
The cities of Australia-Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide-in common with
all those of the British colonies, are laid out along liberal lines, with
broad streets, parks, public squares, and beautiful modern buildings,
requiring little change for many years to come. The English part of
Calcutta is a city of palaces, built from the spoils of subjugation.
Yokohama was a small fishing station when Commodore Perry called
there in 1854.
In the New World as in the Old, from John Cotton to Joseph Smith,
religion with cupidity inspires. One William Blaxton in 1630 lived
where Boston now is, and invited thither Winthrop and his colonists.
When banished from Massachusetts, Roger Williams stepped ashore on
the bank of the Seekonk, on a rock where is now Providence. The
French built a fort where Marquette camped in 1673, and there is now
Chicago. Buffalo was a military post in 1812. St. Paul was an Indian
trading station prior to 1838. The building of Fort Washington was
followed by settlers and Cincinnati was begun. Henry Hudson touched
at Manhattan island in 1609, and the Dutch following, New York was
the result. Brigham Young, journeying westward, came to the Great
Salt Lake, where, as he told his followers, he was instructed by divine
revelation to plant the City of the Saints. It proved more permanent
than might have been expected, as zion-cities usually are quite
ephemeral affairs.
Boston, the beneficial, swept by fires, smallpox, witchcraft, quakerism,
snowstorms, earthquakes, and proslavery riots, still lives to meditate
upon her own superiority and to instruct mankind. Much attention has
been given of late in Boston and suburban towns to artistic effect in
street architecture. Until recently New York has given but little thought
to pleasing effects. Broadway was not broad, and Fifth Avenue was not
striking. Of late, however, the city has become imperial, houses parks
and driveways being among the finest in the world. New Orleans has

survived at least a dozen great yellow-fever crises since 1812,
population meanwhile increasing twentyfold. After the enforced
construction of the levee, the idea came to some one that the top of it
would make a fine driveway, which in due time was extended from the
river and bayous to the lake, thus becoming the most attractive feature
of the place. Though not without natural attractions,