Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/694

 680 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

telephone, all finely disposed of underground in a tunnel in such a way as to be easily inspected and repaired ; lamp-posts and electric lighting poles, signs and all announcements made so artistic as to add to, instead of detract from, the harmony and beauty of the streets ; boulevards extended, or at least good, pleasant routes to the country; beautified river banks and lake front, squares, and enlarged street corners ; statuary, artistic seats, flowers, fountains, electric or other; facades in appropriate and telling places, ornamented with historic and other repre- sentations ; arcades, giving light, air, and moving space, through large buildings and blocks ; fine school buildings with play- grounds, plats for landscape gardening, reading-rooms, lecture halls, art galleries, and mural decoration, the people's house indeed ; other public buildings, great architecturally, and deco- rated with mural painting and statuary ; and neither last nor least, for it contains wonderful suggestions, the reaching out beyond the cities' present boundaries, as the courts have decided may be done, and while not yet too late enriching them- selves and posterity ever afterward with country parks and aesthetically planned residence districts. Most of these things have been actualized in some instance or instances, but as yet in far too limited a way.

Is there not for America one truth to which it should cling very closely : that in all art development it should follow its own laws of growth, and thus come to have a truly national style? And may not this best come about through its use of all the inheritance from other ages and lands which rightly belongs to it, classic models, with modifications to suit the spirit of the time and place ? A national style, or a municipal style which should personify "the energy of a municipality," will not con- flict with a truly great cosmopolitan spirit ; for the more true to itself is the life of a nation, as the life of an individual, the more does it reach out toward and touch the life of other persons and peoples. There is some discouragement in finding an exact repro- duction of a Roman triumphal arch as a permanent public work of a land which should belong to freedom and arbitration and uni- versal brotherhood; and particularly when over 2,000 years ago