However, on the outskirts changes were apparent enough; notably in dwelling-house architecture.  The fine new homes are noble and beautiful and modern.  They stand by themselves, too, with green lawns around them; whereas the dwellings of a former day are packed together in blocks, and are all of one pattern, with windows all alike, set in an arched frame-work of twisted stone; a sort of house which was handsome enough when it was rarer.

There was another change—­the Forest Park.  This was new to me.  It is beautiful and very extensive, and has the excellent merit of having been made mainly by nature.  There are other parks, and fine ones, notably Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens; for St. Louis interested herself in such improvements at an earlier day than did the most of our cities.

The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for six million dollars, and it was the mistake of my life that I did not do it.  It was bitter now to look abroad over this domed and steepled metropolis, this solid expanse of bricks and mortar stretching away on every hand into dim, measure-defying distances, and remember that I had allowed that opportunity to go by.  Why I should have allowed it to go by seems, of course, foolish and inexplicable to-day, at a first glance; yet there were reasons at the time to justify this course.

A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, writing some forty-five or fifty years ago, said—­’The streets are narrow, ill paved and ill lighted.’  Those streets are narrow still, of course; many of them are ill paved yet; but the reproach of ill lighting cannot be repeated, now.  The ‘Catholic New Church’ was the only notable building then, and Mr. Murray was confidently called upon to admire it, with its ’species of Grecian portico, surmounted by a kind of steeple, much too diminutive in its proportions, and surmounted by sundry ornaments’ which the unimaginative Scotchman found himself ‘quite unable to describe;’ and therefore was grateful when a German tourist helped him out with the exclamation—­’By —–­, they look exactly like bed-posts!’ St. Louis is well equipped with stately and noble public buildings now, and the little church, which the people used to be so proud of, lost its importance a long time ago.  Still, this would not surprise Mr. Murray, if he could come back; for he prophesied the coming greatness of St. Louis with strong confidence.

The further we drove in our inspection-tour, the more sensibly I realized how the city had grown since I had seen it last; changes in detail became steadily more apparent and frequent than at first, too:  changes uniformly evidencing progress, energy, prosperity.