Page:Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam.djvu/22

Rh creations as the Tuileries, the Louvre, and Versailles. Have we not dissolute millionaires enough to give us at least one fine city?

London and Paris stand out in bold contrast, the one for utility, the other for beauty. Both are adepts in their respective arts. The city proper of London has better buildings and cleaner streets than when St. Paul was erected; otherwise it is much the same. Elsewhere in London, however, are spacious parks and imposing palaces, with now and then a fine bit of something to look out upon, as the bridges of the murky Thames, the Parliament houses, the Abbey, Somerset house, and Piccadilly, perhaps. Children may play at the Zoo, while grown-ups sit in hired chairs under the trees.

Three times London was destroyed by the plague, and five times by fire, that of 1666 lasting four days, and covering thrice the area of the San Francisco conflagration; yet it was rebuilt better than before in three and 12