"When I heard in conversation this criticism, which I had never seen in print, about the absence of anything 'distinguished' in our cities, I asked myself what was the last American city I had visited in my winter travels. As it happened, it was one of the smallest of American cities

I

may be told that there was nothing distinguished there. Perhaps not; but I know that, as we entered the town, as I looked back on the Green Mountains, which had been white with snow all day, but were now rosy red in the glory of

the setting sun, I thought it was one of the noblest visions I had ever looked upon. I turned to look upon the clouds of sunset-to see, far away, the sun as he went down between the broken range of the Adirondack Mountains. Between was the white ice of Lake Champlain. So far as Nature has anything to offer to the eye, I had certainly never seen in the travels of forty years any position chosen for a city more likely to impress a traveller as remarkable, and to live always in his memory. I had been summoned to Burlington on an errand connected with the public administration of charity. It was supposed that, as I came from Boston, I knew how cities ought to be governed. Anyway, I was up there as an expert. Now, what was the chief thing I found? Those of you who have ever been in Burlington will know that I was in a city of palaces. I mean by that, that there are private homes there, which, while they have the comforts of a log cabin, display the elegances of a palace. But I shall be told that this is not distinguished now that this may

be seen everywhere in a country as rich as America. Let it be so. Then they took me to visit a new hospital, arranged with everything which modern science knows for the treatment of disease, with a staff of surgeons and physicians who might stand unawed before the great leaders in their profession; and they told me that here any person in Vermont who was in need could be treated by the best science of the nineteenth century, and with the tenderest care which the Christian religion inspires. They told me that this institution was maintained by a fund of nearly half a million dollars, given by one lady, for this purpose of blessing her brothers and sisters of mankind. If this be a commonplace monument, let us thank God that we live in a commonplace land. They took me then to the public library. They They showed me the Canadian immigrants from the other side of the border thronging the passages that each might have his French book to read, the German immigrant pressing for his book; they showed a perfect administration for the supply of these needs.

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And they showed me that they had not only provided for the rank and file in this way providing, observe, thousands of books in German and thousands of books in French — but they showed the 'last sweet thing' in the criticism of Dante, the last publications of the archæological societies of Italy, books and prints which had been issued, well, let us say it among ourselves, for as dainty people as you and I are, for the elegant students of Browning or of mediæval times. They had taken as good care of us in our daintiness as they had taken of the Canadian wood-chopper or of the German mechanic. This seemed to me rather a distinguished bit of administration. And so I might go on to tell you about other arrangements for charities, of their forelook in regard to sanitary arrangements. And when I asked them on the particular matter where I was sent for to give counsel - how many people they had in their Blackwell's Island establishments, in their public institutions for the poor-I found there was a momentary question whether

there were three of these people at that moment in these public institutions, or possibly four!

"That is so distinguished a condition of affairs that I should not dare tell the story in any social science congress in Europe. It would be set down as a Yankee exaggeration. People would say it was impossible. It is not impossible,

because the men and women of Burlington have known how to give themselves to the administration of 'the wealth in common.' Among other things, I may say, in passing, that they have known how to suppress the open bar."

To the reader at a distance, who knows nothing of New England life, it will be as well to say that such homage as I am thus paying to Vermont is a homage to Local Government. What in Vermont we call republican democracy, or democratic republicanism, results in such a picture as I have here printed of Burlington. It is what Kropotkin and his friends would call "anarchy," by which they mean strongly accented local government with no central power. Given a region of intelligent men, and men who