Grand Place

“ Abides for ever! Evermore the wind
Is thy august companion; and thy peers
Are cloud, and thunder, and the face sublime
Of blue mid-heaven! On thy awful brow
Is Deity; and in that voice of thine
There is the great imperial utterance
Of God for ever; and thy feet are set
Where evermore, through all the days and years,
There rolls the grand hymn of the deathless wave.
Araluen
Take this rose, and very gently place it on the tender, deep
Mosses where our little darling, Araluen, lies asleep. ”

“ A great city, finding itself cramped for breathing space, has reached out a mighty hand to snatch land from the bottom of the lake. Thirty blocks in length, as large as an ordinary farm, this space promises to become, in the near future, a place of joy forever. ”

“ The Place Royale is one of the most singular quarters of the town, and although often visited before, we have again examined it, for we are beginning to regard objects with the interest that one is apt to feel on leaving a favourite spot, perhaps for ever. ”

“ For which relief, Heaven bless the town and the memory of the immortal Bilkins likewise!
There is a charming walk, arched and shaded by trees, on the old walls that form the four sides of this High Town, whence you get glimpses of the streets below, and changing views of the other town and of the river, and of the hills and of the sea. It is made more agreeable and peculiar by some of the solemn houses that are rooted in the deep streets below, bursting into a fresher existence a-top, and having doors and windows, and even gardens, on these ramparts. ”

“ As you go nearer, the vastness of the building impresses you more and more. The puny dwelling-place of the citizens creep at its feet, the pinnacles are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when down below among the streets and lanes the twilight is darkening. ”

“ We have stood in the west end of the town, three miles distant from the Place d'Armes, and heard the rich, sweet tones of his deep throat come booming over the crowded city—a warning to a half a million folk to turn from worldier things to the thought of mighty God. ”

“ Any lover of the city could live as far out as this. I have no quarrel with the city as a place to work in. Cities are as necessary as wheat-fields and as lovely, too—from twenty miles away, or from Westminster Bridge at daybreak. The city is as a head to the body, the nervous centre where the multitudinous sensations are organized and directed, where the multitudinous and interrelated interests of the round world are directed. The city is necessary; city work is necessary; but less and less is city living necessary. ”

“ Four miles away, in the heart of the great city, a throng of men and women and children surrounded the massive stone walls, and peered up at the narrow windows of a formidable-looking building, from whose lofty flag-staff the Stars and Stripes were fluttering in the fresh lake breeze—a crowd even denser than that we saw in the distant dusty yards. ”

“ Almost surrounded by hills or rather mountains, clothed with forest trees, one does not expect to find at the bottom of such a valley an immense solitary building, which in size and magnificence not only corresponds with the bold features of the country, but seems worthy of a place in any of the largest capitals of Europe. ”

“ So then, whether standing in the shadow of the great edifice—typical of the soaring twentieth century—or setting foot on its roof high in air, many fathoms higher in the deeps of space than where once we sat or stood, and thence gazing upon the sea of humanity beneath, or over the great city set between the two silver streams, and ever fascinating and beautiful with boyhood's memories, let us stop to recall the past. ”

“ The thirty-one-story block is the masterpiece of mass, of immensity, of numbers; with its 2427 windows and its 779 offices, and its crowds of lives piled upon lives, it is expressing the one supreme and characteristic thing that is taking place in the era in which we live. ”

“ Miles upon miles of these cosy little houses, of five or six rooms each, may be found, the inmates of which are a good and useful class of citizens, adding strength to the city's discipline and government.
The grand park of three thousand acres, one of, if not the largest in the world, is near at hand, where the poor as well as the rich can resort at pleasure. ”

“ The great big world, and this great big city that is its capital, are very small things to me, compared to that little circle that could be swept by a compass, with a centre at the Burnside, and a leg of ten miles long, that would take in the Abbey and the salmon-weir, the rabbit-warren and the boat-jetty! If I was very rich, I 'd just add three rooms to our cottage, and put up one for myself, with my own traps; and another for you, with all the books that ever were written; and another for Skeff, or any other good fellow we 'd like to have with us. ”

“ Above him towers the lofty peak, beyond which shine the everlasting stars; a short distance below him are the glaring lights of the city which he has left, and from it there come up to him the noises of its inhabitants—a confused mingling of shouts, screams, laughter, rumblings of traffic, and the strains of music. He thinks of his friends, all of whom are in the city, pursuing their own particular pleasures, and he is alone upon the mountain. ”

“ Down-town—"'way down-town," in the vernacular—in latitude far south of homes and peace and contemplation, where everything is business and dollars and hardness, and the streets might well be economically straight, and rigorously business-like, they are incongruously crooked, running hither and thither in a dreamy, unpractical manner, beginning where they please and ending where it suits them best, in a narrow, Old-World way, despite their astonishing, New-World architecture. ”

“ Had the men of this city been "stand-patters" touching the city, Grand Forks would not be to-day what it is—the surprise and the admiration of every intelligent visitor. Were you men here to-night, in your civic relationship, "stand-patters," the promise of the future would be less bright than it is. ”

“ I said to myself. "It is an enormous place." I received the impression that I might walk on for ever through that tedious ravel of streets. Yet I knew that I could not be walking in a circle, for I was always descending. ”

“ But what most elicited our admiration were the private dwellings, which in number and beauty are seldom equalled in our cities. They are spacious, built of marble or stone, in gothic or grecian form surrounded by wings and piazzas, and out-buildings and grounds handsomely laid out, adorned with shade trees, shrubbery and flowers. They are delightful retreats from the city’s dust and noise; make fine playgrounds for the children, and altogether evince much taste and wealth. ”

“ Wandering through the narrow, quaint streets of the old city, with their steep gabled and timbered houses, through whose grilled or half-opened gates we catch glimpses of tiled courtyards and irregular bits of stone carving, over which flowers throw a veil of rich bloom, we feel that we are living in an old world. ”

“ And o'er the towers and steeples of the town
Came the gray daylight; then the sun, who took
The empire of the world with sovereign look,
Suffusing with a soft and golden glow
All the dead landscape in its shroud of snow,
Touching with flame the tapering chapel spires,
Windows and roofs, and smoke of household fires,
And kindling park and palace as he came ”

“ If the city is on the sea, we should choose ground close to the harbour as the place where the forum is to be built; but if inland, in the middle of the town. ”

“ Swallow Street is grown into a line of palaces; the Strand is a broad magnificent avenue, where all the wealth of the world seems gathered together; and Lord ——, the "observed of all observers," is become a red-faced fat old man. ”

“ Here we find houses that are really homes, old enough to be mellow, lived in enough to have character, and architecturally unconscious enough to have charm. "This is the part of town I love the best of all." ”

“ Fair Mount is a beautiful spot; and standing, as it does, just on the skirt of the town, it serves the additional use of a place of pleasant and healthful public resort. The buildings containing the pump-rooms have considerable pretensions to architecture ”

“ You stumble upon them in a drive or a walk. You catch a glimpse of an ivied front at some midmost point of wide acres, and, taking your way, by leave of a serious old woman at a lodge-gate, along an overarching avenue, you find yourself introduced to an edifice so human-looking in its beauty that it seems for the occasion fairly to reconcile art and morality. ”

“ It leads us towards the older town, far from the noisy port hotels, into a winding labyrinth of steep, ill-paved streets, through rows of old houses, every one of which seems to have a history of its own, and whose old-fashioned windows, and wide portals opening into silent court-yards, remind one of time-worn parchment bindings round poems for ever new. ”

“ A great space surrounded by tall ugly houses, with an ugly church at the corner and a nondescript ugly cupolaed building at my back; the roadway thronged with a sweltering and excited crowd, dominated by omnibuses crowded with spectators. ”

“ We find the whole place, hall, corridors and offices, crowded with busy people, some soliciting, others solicited, all hurrying hither and thither. With the exception of some few buildings of several storeys grouped round the palace and in the main street--the post-office, the clubs, the banks, the hotels and the large shops--all the houses are little one-storey cottages surrounded by gardens. ”

“ These were the moving streets, the beautiful residential apartments, following the modern neo-functional patterns and participational design which had completely altered the pattern of city living. The Old City still remained, of course—the slums, the tenements, the skid-rows of the metropolis—but this was the teeming heart of the city, a new home for men to live in. ”

“ Such a Hill, so close to a great City, yet undisturbed by it, and imbued at all times with a feeling of sweeter peace, because of the immediate neighbourhood of the din and stir of which its green recess high up in the blue air never partook, seems now, in the mingled dream of imagination and memory, to have been a super-urban Paradise! ”

“ Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of
the kings,—
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated
things.
So it's home again, and home again, America for
me I
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to
be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean
bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full
of stars.
Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in
the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in
her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great
to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like ”

“ A few steps, and below us in the hollow we see the city, all its commonplaceness charmed away, the vulgar noises of the streets blended in a soft murmur. Not one human life moves in those streets, commonplace and vulgar though it may seem, but has its own charm and beauty, if we could find the right view-point, or if our sight went deep enough. ”

“ What place, office, resort?"
"I can't remember particular places. Sometimes—in the City."
"In the City. Where in the City? Mansion House, or Lombard Street, or St. Paul's Churchyard, or the Old Bailey, or where?" ”

“ The country all around is picturesque in the extreme, with exquisite bits of landscape taking in vineyards and country houses, villages and church spires, gently sloping hill-sides, and distant mountain peaks assuming many strange hues in the sunlight. But the streets of the city itself are generally narrow, and with but little architectural display. The great palaces look like fortresses, and built, as perhaps they were, for the strongholds of royalty. ”

“ The house of the mayor was upon a hill, extremely picturesque, looking down upon a deep valley, where also people lived and were building. That is one of the dangers of building a house upon a hill. You have, for instance, bought a piece of land upon a hill, a piece large enough for a house and a little garden; and you have built a beautiful house, and planted trees and flowers around it, rejoiced in your house and in your magnificent view which extends over the whole lake and great part of the country. ”

“ A plaza, or market-place, stood in the midst, one side of which is occupied by what is called a palace, a clumsy quadrangular building of two stories, belonging to some noble family, the lords of the neighbouring soil. ”

“ A fine old city, truly, is that, view it from whatever side you will; but it shows best from the east, where the ground, bold and elevated, overlooks the fair and fertile valley in which it stands. Gazing from those heights, the eye beholds a scene which cannot fail to awaken, even in the least sensitive bosom, feelings of pleasure and admiration. ”

“ The antique city, so superbly encased with lofty mountains, is as proud as it is singular, depending on its own resources, and not putting on a smile to attract the stranger. Were a magician to sweep away these humming wheels, hammering mill-stones, gloomy warehouses, and put smiling pleasure-grounds and coquettish villas in their place, St. ”

“ The scenery in the neighbourhood is naturally as beautiful and varied as woods, rocks, and rivers, in all their most charming features, can combinedly render it. One of the finest of many noble prospects is, in my mind, that from the heights just over George Town. From this [Pg 213] point the vast amphitheatre of city, valley, and river may be embraced at a glance, or followed out in detail, as time or inclination prompts. ”