a town near Boston, one of the members protested against allowing the town engines to leave the limits of the municipality, for the same reason, that the insurance companies would not pay losses occurring while the engines were absent. As to the contract in the policy, we have often seen clauses requiring the insured to notify the company of any circumstances affecting the risk, of which the absence of the town engines might be considered one, so, in our ignorance, we, and, we imagine, a good many others, would be glad to have an authoritative statement from the companies themselves on the subject.

According to the Wiener Bauindustrie Zeitung, the splendid Brunswick monument at Geneva is on the point of falling down. Every one remembers the history of this structure, which was erected in 1879, at a cost of six hundred thousand dollars, to the memory of Charles the Second of Brunswick, the "Diamond Duke," as he was called by the Germans, who, after his expulsion from his principality by his subjects, on account of his extravagance and general worthlessness, took up his residence in Geneva, and, on his death, in 1873, bequeathed all his property, about four million dollars, to the city. The municipality was grateful enough to carry out in a very sumptuous manner the last wishes of its benefactor, who desired to be commemorated by a monument in the style of the later Scaliger tomb at Verona, and from the designs of Frauel was erected the hexagonal Gothic pavilion, surmounted by an equestrian statue of the Duke, which is so well known to architects. The Veronese prototype of the monument is a tolerably insecure affair, but the modern imitation is still larger and heavier, and two years after its completion the substructure began to come to pieces. It was then clamped with metal, but water got into the joints, and further repairs were soon necessary. In 1883, the Carrara marble of which it was built had so far decayed that the rebuilding of the whole with more durable stone was seriously proposed; and now, examination, having shown that the whole affair is likely to collapse at any moment, the city authorities have asked for authority to raise eight thousand dollars, by loan, to put it in secure condition. To tell the truth, it would not be an irreparable loss to the world to have the structure go to ruin. An imitation of an existing monument is not likely to be a very inspiring work of art, and this was not extremely successful, even as an imitation; while the historical fact which it immortalized, that the last representative of one of the six great German princely families, whose ancestors had been reigning sovereigns for a thousand years, had been obliged to set up the images of his haughty forefathers in a community of Republicans, because his own people despised and hated him so much that they could endure him no longer, was not of a character to arouse noble thoughts in the mind of the beholder.

We have before called attention to the great and rapidly increasing importance of the South American Republics, and, while there seems to be no prospect that our proximity to them will be of any commercial advantage to us, some of our young architects and skilled mechanics, who speak Spanish, might perhaps find profitable employment there. At present, the most prosperous city is Buenos Ayres, which, from one hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants in 1870, increased to four hundred and sixty thousand in 1888, and has gained very rapidly within the last year. We must confess that our own ideas of Buenos Ayres still retain a reminiscence of gauchos and lassoes and buffalo, but this grows fainter as we find illustrations in the foreign papers of the newer buildings going up in the city. The last we have seen is of an enormous dry-goods store, after the model of the "Bon Marché" or the "Printemps" in Paris, which is known as the "Bon Marché Argentin," and covers at present ninety thousand square feet of land, while thirty-five thousand feet adjoining have been secured, and are to be used for the enlargement of the present building which will soon become necessary. There are said to be a good many architects already in Buenos Ayres, but first-rate mechanics are, or were not long ago, so scarce that the municipality imported plumbers under contract from London to do work on public buildings.

CIVIL AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.—I.[1]

The term Civil and Domestic Architecture includes all public and private edifices, that is to say: honorary monuments, such as triumphal arches and tombs; buildings for the instruction of the public, such as museums, libraries and schools; houses for public amusements, as theatres, amphitheatres and circuses; structures for public service, as city-halls, court-houses, prisons, hospitals, thermæ, markets, warehouses, slaughter-houses, railway-stations, light-houses, bridges and aqueducts; finally, private dwellings, as palaces, mansions, city and country residences, châteaux and villas.

Memorial to the Heroes of the Franco Prussian War, Berlin.

The first care of all social organizations, at their inception, must have been to provide shelter against inclement weather. In primitive times society was composed of shepherds, or agriculturists, or hunters, and it is presumable that each of these groups adopted a shelter suited to its nomadic or sedentary tastes. For this reason to shepherds is attributed the invention of the tent, a portable habitation which they could take with them from valley to valley, wherever they led their flocks to pasture; agriculturists fixed to the soil which they tilled, dwelling in the plains and along the river banks, must have found the hut better adapted to their wants, while the hunters, stealing through the forests, ambushed in the mountains, or stationed on the seashore, naturally took safety in caves, or dug holes for themselves in the earth, or hollowed out grottos in the rocks.

An imitation of the tent is found later on in the form of the Chinese and Japanese structures; the principle of the cave appears developed in the subterranean dwellings of the people of India and Nubia; while the hut is the point of departure for all Greek and Roman architecture.

As soon as man had contrived a shelter for himself, before considering improvements that might be made in it, he turned his thoughts toward the divine being of his worship, and the first steps in art were taken in the monuments which he raised to his gods. Then, confounding kings with deities, he reared palaces like unto temples. But civil architecture, properly so called, came into existence only with an already advanced state of civilization, when cities were forming and peoples were organizing. After having satisfied the demands of the moral nature, after having erected temples to their gods and palaces to their kings, the people began to group together and surround themselves with fortifications. Next the material needs of society made themselves felt; aqueducts were constructed to supply water; bridges established communication between the opposite banks of streams; dikes confined the rivers within certain bounds; streets were laid out along which houses were built in orderly fashion, public squares were marked off where the products of industry could be exchanged, where justice was dispensed and where the great affairs of State were treated; then came mental and physical demands, a felt need for the training of body and mind, and out of this want grew theatres, stadia, gymnasia and thermæ. In time we find the history of a single people developing; and with