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[294] the limit of this accidental growth must soon be reached. Berlin is not, like London and like Philadelphia, a great commercial centre, with a port sufficiently near the sea for purpose of trade. Berlin is land-locked, like Madrid. Few things are more certain than that the future capitals of the world will stand on both elements, accessible, as Constantine said of Byzantium, by sea and land. We hear so rarely of this silently-growing city on the Delaware that four persons in every five will be amazed to hear that, like New York, Philadelphia has left such ancient and historic capitals as Vienna and Constantinople far behind.

And yet her growth seems no less sound in bole than high in branch and rich in foliage. On coming back into the city after some years' absence you are caught by a surprise at every turn. You may not like to say you left the city clay and find it marble, yet the saying would not seem a great perversion of the facts. Eight years ago I left many of my friends in brick houses, who are now dwelling in marble palaces. The thoroughfares are rising into pomp and show. I do not speak just now of public buildings of exceptional character and excellence-such

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