Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/252

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enduringly beautiful in sculpture, painting, architecture, etc.; while the schools of this museum and of the National Academy of Design and the Society of American Artists, to say nothing of the more utilitarian classes of Cooper Institute and the School of Artist Artisans, afford instruction in art of such a sort as to render foreign study no longer indispensable, albeit no less attractive than of old.

Of music, vocal and instrumental, such feasts are spread before the local amateur as can be matched for quality and abundance in no other city at home or abroad, and while this is not true of the drama also, as the Comédie Française has never come hither in a body, it is yet a fact that nearly all that is best is seen, sooner or later, on the New York stage.

By what rapid strides the city is moving forward in some directions, while halting lamentably in others, needs not to be pointed out. There is expert testimony to the effect that in public morality it has at least held its own during the past half-century; we trust it may some day work out its salvation in things political, and cease to be the mild milch cow of thirsty demagogues. It can never vie in picturesqueness and historic interest with its European peers