text:  Open the pages of Herodotus or Xenophon or Caesar and how plain how unpretending are the preambles to their immortal works--in what exquisite proportion does the edifice arise without apparent effort without ostentatious struggle without if the allusion may be allowed the sound of the axe or hammer till "the pile stands fixed her stately height" before us--the just admiration of succeeding ages! But our modern _filosofastri_ insist upon stunning us with the noise of their machinery and blinding us with the dust of their operations