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City-building by plan and foresight is
as old as the time of Alexander the
Great, and as late as the uprearing of
St Petersburg, or Berlin, and has
rarely been a failure in the old world,
when competitions are not rife.

True, those cities have not always
come to honor, of which most was
expected, and the scepter has departed
from some that were repentant once.
Nor is it always easy to see why power
should change its seat, and favor go
flitting about. Why Paris should be
what it is, at the Expense of Lyons [Lyon]
or Marseilles [Marseille], one can only guess;
and why London should increase
more rapidly with every passing decade
is a mystery; neither of them having
any special advantages for Com-
-merce, or trade, or manufacture.