370
EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
under other conditions, not be obtained for their erection. The use of mastic has rendered this possible without undue expense. Within four to six weeks from the time of completion of the rough brick walls, this coating is applied ; the cornices and window-cappings are planed out, and the ornamentation put in place,—to last, perhaps, longer than stone itself.
The Viennese are doing their utmost to make their city the most beautiful in the world ; and, though much remains to be accomplished, certainly a wonderful amount has been done within a very short period, and it is already disputing the palm with Paris. The use in the latter city of stone for building purposes, to the almost entire exclusion of brick and terracotta,—w T hose durability is surpassed by no material,—causes indirectly a certain uniformity and plainness in the greater mass of buildings.
Many of the newer streets of Paris, as well as of the other larger cities of France,—as Marseilles and Lyons,—are excessively monotonous and tiresome to the eye. No further attempt seems to have been made in the planning of the fronts than to secure the necessary light for the interior, and the exclusion of the weather. Every window in every house is the same,—and, in general, the interior arrangements are similar; so that the owner of any particular house would find himself equally comfortable in any other in the street. Still more pitiful is the appearance of a larger part of the more respectable portion of London, where proprietors content themselves with plain brick walls, in which rectangular holes are left for windows, and from whose upper portion the roof arises without intervening cornice. The meanness and plainness of these dwellings, miles of which are to be found to-day at the west end of London,—almost invariably the property of men of means,—are, to one who has passed several years upon the continent, most displeasing. In the business portions of the same city a decorative art is widely spread, which, though well represented in America, has, luckily for the Viennese, not made its appearance to an undue extent as yet in their city. I refer to shop and store signs, which cover every available point with their glaring characters, and destroy the little harmony that the architect