Renaissance doorways, are all jumbled together. Every
canon of architectural taste is violated; but the
parts still cohere; a very solid façade still rears
its head; and, at a certain distance, its appearance
is not inharmonious. At Cologne, in
Germany, they will point out to you an ancient
building, here a bit of Lombard, here a morsel
of florid Gothic, here some unmistakable
Italian, and here ten feet of genuine old Roman
wall. There are many Christian churches in
Italy whose walls are supported by columns
taken from Pagan temples. The entire system,
physical as well as moral, has been the result
of growth upon growth, of gradual intercalation
and emendation, of perpetual cobbling and
piecing and patching; and although at last, like
Sir John Cutler's silk stockings, which his maid
darned so often with worsted that no part of the
original fabric remained, the ancient foundations
may have become all but invisible: they are
still latent, and give solidity to the superstructure.
We look upon the edifice, indeed, as we
would on something that has taken root, that
has something to rest upon. We regard it as
we would that hoary old dome of St. Peter's at
Rome. We know how long it took to build,
and we trust that it will endure for ever. The
bran-new civilisation we are apt to look at more
in the light of a balloon. It is very astonishing.
We wonder, however, it contrived to rise so
high, and how long it will be before it comes
down again; and we earnestly hope that it will
not burst.

It is not necessary to avow any partisan kind
of predilection for one phase of civilisation as
against another. It is sufficient to note the fact:
that Europeans the least prejudiced, and the most
ardent admirers of the political institutions of
the United States, very soon grow fretful and
uneasy there, and are unable to deny, when they
come back, that the country is not an elegant or
a comfortable one to look upon. I attribute
this solely to æsthetic causes. I do not believe
that Englishmen grumble at America because
the people are given to expectoration, or guessing,
or calculating, or trivialities of that kind.
Continental Europeans expectorate quite as
freely as the Americans, and for rude cross
questioning of strangers, I will back a German
against the most inquisitive of New
Englanders. It is in the eye that the mischief
lies. It is the bran-new mathematical outline
of Columbia that drives the Englishman into
Form-sickness, and ultimately to the disparagement
and misrepresentation of a very noble
country. In many little matters of detail,
American manners differ from ours; but in the
aggregate we are still one family. They speak
our language—very frequently with far greater
purity and felicity of expression than we
ourselves do—they read our books, and we are
very often glad and proud to read theirs. They
have a common inheritance with us in the
historic memories we most prize. If they
would only round off their comers a little! If
they would only give us a few crescents and
ovals in lieu of '" blocks!" If they would only
remember that the circle as well as the rectangle
is a figure in mathematics, and that the
curvilinear is, after all, the line of beauty!

CHESTEREIELD JUNIOR.
A SON'S ADVICE TO HIS FATHER.

MR. CHESTERFIELD, sen., begs to forward to
the Editor, certain letters which he has lately
received from his son. Mr. C. does so, because
he thinks it desirable that it should be made
known what a pass things are rapidly coming to
in this country. These letters, let it be distinctly
understood, are from Mr. Chesterfield's son—
his own son—whom Mr. C. dandled in his arms
a score of years ago, when this young gentleman's
costume consisted of a white robe elaborately
worked about the breast, and nearly a yard longer
in the skirts than the exigencies of the infant's
stature demanded. The letters follow.

My dear Father. It has been the custom,
time out of mind, as you are probably aware, for
those who have lived a great many years in the
world—parents, guardians, uncles, and elderly
persons generally—to give the result of their
experience of human life, their advice, in short, to
such young men—be they the sons, wards,
nephews, or even the juniors only of the above
—as came in their way. The advice given by
Polonius to Laertes—not bad in its way—and
the letters of our distinguished namesake to his
son, are both pretty well known, and may be
taken as specimens of what I mean. This
custom, then, is an old one.

Sir, it is an old one, and, like a great many
other old things, it needs to be reformed. It
should be obsolete. It won't do. It was all
very well once, but times are altered. Things
have changed so much during the last few years,
that your experience—of a state of affairs,
remember, altogether different from the present—
is really of no use whatever. All our theories
are based, or should be, upon facts. When
the facts are altered, what becomes of the
theories?

But I will go a step further than this, and
venture to propound something which at first
sight may seem a little startling, but which, on
reflection, will, I believe, appear rational. I
make so bold as to assert that not only are you
—the elders generally—in no position to offer
advice to us the juniors, but that you yourselves
actually require now and then a word of counsel
from us, to guide you through the dangers and
difficulties of modern life.

Why, after all, how should it be otherwise?
Look, as I said before, how everything has
altered within the last few years. We have
iurned all things topsy-turvy. Of what use is
your experience to you? You have to unlearn,
for the most part, what you formerly took great
pains to learn. You have to remodel almost all
four ideas. And then—I speak with the utmost
espect—you learned so little in what you are
pleased to call the good old times.