Fancy yourself, patient reader, at one end of this street, so as to command its vista. What do you see? Architecture? Very little, we imagine. Save the buildings immediately at your right and left, all the others are seen in profile, a contingency never reckoned on by their builders. The decoration is all piled on the front, as elaborate a design, often, as Palladio ever dreamt of, but at the side, every cornice and stringpiece stops as short as if it had been sawn off, and the whole side is a flat blank piece of brickwork. This is greatly aggravated by the disparity in height, and the ponderous cornices. As to construction, the prevailing type is a flimsy pile of brick and timber, 'put up,' apparently, by mutual connivance of the contractor and the coroner, and screened off from the street by a thin veneer of 'architecture.' Now there is a certain merit, sui generis, in a clever deception, but those in vogue here are too utterly transparent to claim even this. The telltale wall of brick cheats you out of the pleasure of cheating yourself, no matter how charitably disposed.

Were it necessary to represent this street upon the stage, the decorator would simply have to paint his scenes upon the edges, and leave the side toward the audience bare. As you walk along you see a given building sideways for five minutes or more, but you cannot see it as it was meant to be seen—full in front—for as many seconds. We even know of churches in the cross streets, though near Broadway, whose square towers are stone-fronted after the usual fashion, but present nothing to the crowded thoroughfare but undressed walls of brick! Yes, a Christian church, in flagrante delictu.

It will be objected to this that there is no use in finishing the sides of city buildings, as they may afterward be hidden by others. This would do well enough if they were all of the same height; but they are not, and never can be. Indeed, a house is by many considered 'handsomer' than its neighbors, just so far forth as it overtops them. The builder would hardly think it a fair beat if the cornices corresponded. The successive erections on a row of vacant lots, usually illustrate this popular ambition. Some one secures the corner and builds his house. So far, so good. Presently number two comes along, and, to secure himself from invidious comparison, piles his house half a story higher than number one. But his triumph is short, for the third aspirant soon arrives, who, true to principle, takes another step in the ascending series. So it goes till the block is finished, the whole thing looking as if architecture was a sort of auction, in which the prize of success was awarded to the highest builder.

It being one of our social necessities that our houses differ in size, we must pay some attention to their sides. Not giving them as decided a treatment as the front, but something compatible with a plain surface. And, above all, the principal cornice and roof lines should be carried round on the sides, at least as far as they can be seen. In some rare instances, where this has been done, it is astonishing to note the improved appearance and finish, that it gives.

Did you ever consider the superior elegance of a corner house? Yet it is not so much the position as the fact that the position is taken advantage of. Being finished on both sides, it gives to the mind the idea of thickness as well as length and breadth. It is, in short, a solid, while the affair next door, overtopping it perhaps a story or two, is merely a superficies.

But this is only a side thrust. Our 'commercial palaces' challenge the same criticism face to face. For the front, considered by itself even, is generally incomplete. A supposititious formula determines that the house must be in the Italian palace style, but the narrow lot forbidding an entire design, the builder, as he cannot put in all, puts in all he can, so that, instead of the house being a house, it is only a specimen slice of a palace. It has no particular beginning or middle or ending, and, with the long viscera of brickwork trailing off behind, it looks as if just wrenched out of the side of some Florentine or Genoese mansion. And, in very truth, is it not?

The common cause of these errors and incongruities is our self-abasement to a style which depends for its effect upon continuous uniformity of design, while, from the very nature of our society, our houses must be diverse in size and pretension. We are a social people, it is true, but our individualities are strongly marked, and our dwellings, while designed with reference to each other, should never be too uniform. How frightful those white-shuttered brick piles which monotonize the streets of Philadelphia! But to assert its individuality the house need not shoot up like a vein of trap rock through a stratum of conglomerate: an American rises, not through the mass, but out of it.

Have you ever seen a street view of Bruges or Nuremberg, those fantastic old cities of mediaeval Germany? You remember them, the tall gabled houses with projecting stories, the picturesque grouping of porch and gallery and oriel, the curious old bridges and the Gothic fountains, the grotesque carvings over the doorways, and the perfect population of dormer windows and turrets and lanterns. And did you not, entre nous, like it better than those stiff, formal views of the French and Italian cities? Was not the poetry more pleasing than the prose?

'Oh well,' you say, 'these turrets and gables and things look all very well in pictures, but they would never do for our streets: we must build in some regular style, you know.' The same old error again, the same servile imitation of a vague something or other, which we call classic. Do you think the old German burghers built in any regular style? Not a bit of it. They built just what they wanted, in the most natural and plain-spoken manner. If they wanted a porch over the door, or a bay window at a certain corner, or a turret to enjoy some favorite view—they made them, put them just where they were needed. Convenience was everything, and precedent nothing.

Is there not something about this individual originality, this perfect freedom of thought and expression, that might be adapted to express the American character? And if more pleasing, why cling to the effete and cumbrous tyrannies of a soulless classicism? Why crush out all symptoms of natural growth to make room for the unsightly exotic?

Nature herself has made the law that beauty is variety. Monotony, though magnificent, will become irksome, but variety is an unceasing delight. Versailles, with its formal avenues of shorn foliage, and its geometrical lawns and terraces, may please you more at first sight than an English park, because the mind feels a sort of pride in being able to grasp such vast ideas at a glance. But you will find, upon a second or third visit, that the unnatural arrangement of the French pleasure grounds has something of staleness about it. Nature disdains such bondage. Louis XIV, it is said, grew weary of his splendid plaything, almost before it was finished. How different the English landscape garden, where graceful sweeps and irregular masses of foliage meet the eye with unlooked-for beauties at every turn! Well do we remember how, after a few days spent in viewing the grand dullness of the Bavarian capital, we looked wearily back to the delightful visit we made at Nuremberg, with its curious old streets and fountains:

'Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song; Memories haunt thy pointed gables like the rooks that round them throng.'

To claim the merit of variety for our streets is wrong, for they are not varied, but only incongruous. Their variety is rather that of an architectural museum than the result of any combination. We have styles enough, in all conscience, but none that will tolerate any other.

Against this may be urged the very argument with which we set out, that a nation's architecture should be the exponent of its national character, and as we are made up of every people and every class, that this heterogeneous melange is our normal style. But mark the distinction: Although we are made up of so many diverse elements, yet the component parts are severally and mutually held in solution. Each so affects the mass as to give rise to a new element—not a mere union, but a result—not an addition, but a multiplication. But with the representative art, the materials have merely come in contact—nothing more. Our houses lack that social element which characterizes our people. Each is itself, and itself alone, ruining the appearance of its neighbors, and ruined by them in turn. Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo, is the only law; while we are a chemical solution, our architecture is only a mechanical one.

How proceed, then, to develop our national style, that unborn something which a future age might refer to as American, just as we speak of Byzantine or Gothic? Are we waiting for somebody to invent it? We think, maybe, that it is to spring forth, ready made, like Minerva from the brain of Zeus. If this is our idea, we might as well give up at once and confess to the world our imbecility. Never, from Adam's day to this, did anybody ever invent a new architecture. It is purely a matter of genealogy. For just as we trace back a family line, can we trace the generations of art. Spite of its complications, many an offshoot can be followed up directly to the parent stock. Taking, for example, the mediaeval architecture of Spain, the brilliant 'Moresco,' we find it to be a combination of the vigorous Gothic of the North with the beautiful though effeminate Saracenic—the exotic of the South. And of these latter, each is traceable, though by different lines, to the same great prototype, the Roman. For when Rome was divided, the Dome fell to the inheritance of the Eastern Empire, and the Basilica (which was only a Greek temple turned inside out) to the Western. The former, joined to the Arabian, and the latter to the Gothic, formed two great families, from the union of whose descendants sprang the Moresco. But even the Roman was a derivative style, leading us back successively through Greece, Assyria, and Egypt. Each step is visibly allied to the preceding, and yet how unlike the pyramid and the Spanish cathedral! Did history permit, all the styles that have ever existed could be traced in the same way; it is quite as easy to account for their diversities, as for those of the nations that produced them. Ham and Japheth were of the same household, yet how different their descendants of to-day! As from one man sprang all people, so was there an original germ of architecture from which all successive styles have been derived.

The composite forms that have arisen since commerce and civilization have brought the ends of the world together, increase the complication. There have been marriages and intermarriages, some good matches and some bad ones, some with vigorous and some with sickly offspring, and some hybrids of such monstrous malformation as almost to make us fear that a new style can be invented. But the effect is impossible without the cause. Save the mysterious Pyramids, every structure extant acknowledges its ancestry. If physiologists are fond of claiming the history of the race as one of their own chapters, architecture has at least an equal claim.

But all this does not mean that we are mere passive agents in the matter. We are, in a great measure, the 'external influences' that modify art. The motion exists, but it devolves upon us to give direction.

We have already alluded to Venetian architecture as being parallel in origin and tendency to our own, and much can be gained, we believe, by a careful examination of what it accomplished. Not that we ought to copy, line for line, the doge's palace or the Casa d'Oro—the arabesque arcade, or the Gothic balcony—that would only be following the well-worn rut of imitation. We are not to study the result, but the cause. For the causes that produced the style in question were not unlike what we find at home to-day. A commercial republic, there was the same liberty of expression—the same preponderance of the individual over the national; and there, as here, are we attracted rather by the elegance of independent units than by any general unity of design.

But the growth of art in Venice (we ask special attention) was due to her central situation, and the simultaneous influx of foreign elements. It was her commerce that made Venice great: her glory came and departed with it. Witnessing, as she did, the development of all the mediaeval styles, she became—geographically and historically—the metropolis of architecture. 'The Greeks,' says Ruskin, 'gave the shaft, Rome gave the arch, the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch.... Opposite in their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the North and from the South—the glacier torrent and the lava stream, they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman Empire; and the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck, is Venice.

'The ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal proportions, the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of the world.'

Truly, it was a glorious success that art achieved in the Italian republic, Whether the old precedents were violated or not, the result is unquestionably pleasing, and the pleasure-seeking tourist lingers there as long as the critic.

At this transition state, through which Venice passed so nobly, have we now arrived. We have collected our materials, and piled them up together, but just as all seems most propitious, le mouvement s'arrete, the materials will not coalesce. The brass and the silver, the iron and the gold, are all in the crucible, but there is no fusion, only a discordant clash.

Alas! there is no heat. We are not warmed, as yet, with any love for art. We are too much absorbed in the rapid accumulation of wealth, or the passing excitement of the hour, to attend to anything that is noble or honest or beautiful. And now that devastating war is sweeping through the land and clogging the wheels of progress, we are learning terrible lessons; but, with experience for our teacher, learning them well. Where war prevails, civilization for the time must stand still. Inter arma silent—artes. And so long as we consider art a marketable commodity, and consign it, like merchandise, to soulless builders, so long will it remain in hopeless embryo. Only by taking a personal interest in it can we hope to make it our own.

So much for what we have done. There is little to be proud of, and little, we hope, that will influence our future art. To which we now turn our attention.

To begin with, great public buildings will never form a distinguishing feature of American architecture. It is to be preeminently a domestic style. Herein shall we differ from the European nations, for in art, as in politics, the people are the rulers. It is discouraging, at first thought, to reflect that no such magnificent architectural combinations as those of the French capital can ever find place in an American city. They are grand, they are superb, these endless successions of palaces and gardens and triumphal arches, with groves and fountains all in perfect symmetry, and well-balanced vistas radiating in all directions; but they are the result of centuries of despotism—of the impoverishment of the many and the aggrandizement of the few. This, we hope, is not to be the fashion in America. It is true that the ground plan for the city of Washington exhibits a design analogous to the above, but we think it will be a long time before it exists elsewhere than on the map. The Greeks and Romans, we know, confined their efforts to public buildings, but that was their business. They served their Governments, but our Government serves us: the spirit of the age points in an opposite direction. Since we are so fond of the classic, why not have chariots for carriages, and triremes instead of gunboats and steamers?

Our real style will first appear in our residences and warehouses, in our banks and hotels and railroad depots. It sounds odd, but it is manifestly so to be. We are a commercial republic. Old European palaces and cathedrals are doubtless very grand, and—for those who need such things—most excellent models. But with us the private element already predominates; we only need to begin honestly, and the thing is half done.

Our national dread of Gothic, except it be for church purposes, should be done away with. The Gothic principle, we mean; the style we may follow or may not. But to be sincere and constructive, to build with a purpose, we must do as did the mediaeval builders. In their hands, our daguerrean sky-lights and shot towers, our factory chimneys and signboards, would have become glorious objects, become useful objects. Their art did not confine itself to one day in seven; it permeated the commonest details of every-day life, because they were common. Hence they ennobled everything.

But the Romans, unfortunately, never had any shot towers, or hotels, or railroad depots, and so we think such things exceptions to the ordinary rules of architecture. But after all, perhaps, this is all the better for their future, as it leaves them comparatively untrammelled. In the matter of railroad depots, England has certainly stolen a march upon us, the large city stations in that rail-bound country being perfect Crystal Palaces in size and elegance, while those for the more rural places are often the most exquisite little villas, unapproachable in neatness and taste. In some parts of the Continent, the Swiss style has been pressed into this service with notable success.

In regard to fire-alarm towers, we rejoice to be able to make an exceptional remark. New York city has actually produced two or three of these of new and elegant shape, perfectly adapted to their purpose; and yet, so far as we know, not copied from anything else. Those in Sixth and Third avenues have a grace of outline that is really elegant, and show what we can accomplish if we only build what we want in a natural and appropriate way.

Nothing, however, is to exert a vaster influence on our style than the hotel. This 'institution,' as we have it, is comparatively unknown in Europe; beyond all nations are we a travelling and hotel-building people. Our hotels have not grown up with the scant traffic of the post chaise or diligence; they overleaped that feeble infancy, and started at once with the railroad and steamboat. Large, luxurious, and well appointed, they are usually the prominent buildings in all our large cities.

But as yet it is only their size and social importance that distinguishes them, not their architecture. The recipe for a first-class city house is simple: a vast square front of white, with ninety-six or a hundred and forty-four windows, as the case may be, all alike, and all equidistant. The variety afforded by this arrangement is much the same as that of an uncut sheet of postage stamps. In such large masses, a single color—white especially—is always disagreeable, unless treated with some variety of form. Brick, with stone dressings, will almost invariably produce a finer front than stone alone. But, after all, the most desirable kind of variety is that which seeks to express exteriorly the inner arrangement of the building, by giving some degree of prominence to the principal rooms. As to interior, our hotels neglect a grand opportunity in making no capital of the central space they generally enclose. This, instead of being abandoned to cats and ash barrels, might be made the feature of the establishment. Fancy such a court roofed over with glass,[23] and surrounded with light arcades of ironwork forming a continuous balcony at each story, arrange a garden in the centre with a fountain, and give the whole a sort of oriental treatment, and what a really elegant effect could be produced! The main entrance in this case would be, not on the street, but on one of the sides of this inner court, while an arched carriage way, to connect with the street, would render vehicles accessible under cover. The arcades, connecting all parts of the house, would take the place of halls and corridors, besides forming delightful promenades. Some few hotels could be named, in our large cities, which seem to have the germ of this idea, but we know no instance of its complete development.

Still we have great hopes of the hotel, because it is the place of all others which it is to our interest to make look well. People go to the post office all the same, be it a barn or a parthenon, but they will go, other things being equal, to the best hotel. Here comes in the American principle of Competition, the keynote of all our enterprise. Competition is to do for us what the hope of earthly immortality did for the builders of the Pyramids, what the desire to glorify God did for the builders of the cathedrals. It is to be the soul of our art: what sort of a body it is to put on, we shall presently see. Even now it is safe to assume that no more such granite prisons as the 'Revere' or the 'Astor' will be built for hotels. Lightness, variety, and vivacity will more probably characterize this style.

The shop front is something that we must have in some shape or other, and, if fairly treated, it would become as decidedly American as business is. It is susceptible of great variety, but care must be taken that it harmonizes with the superstructure. How often we see massive structures of marble, five stories or more, supported on basements of plate glass, apparently; while the real supports are carefully concealed! The best method, so far tried, seems to be that in which the columns are made sufficiently prominent to show their object, and are surmounted by arches, which give a good basis for what comes next above, while affording sufficient window space to the store front.

But we must make up our mind to part with those hideous signboards, which trail their loathsome length across our best buildings, regardless of console or capital or cornice. For the importance of the sign renders it constructive, and it has as much right to take part in the design as a door or a window. Instead of being pinned on like an afterthought, it should be built into the wall, panel fashion, and by a little taste in the selection of the style of letter, it might become one of the most striking features of the whole front. Color would be better for the letters than relief, being more economical and more easily altered.

Our warehouses and even our factories might become imposing objects if appropriately conceived, for is not labor ennobling? Anything that is worth doing, is worth doing well; and if any of our manufacturing towns are hideous, they are not necessarily so.[24] There is a certain grandeur about many such places, with their myriad chimneys and ponderous wheels and whirling engines, that deserves a corresponding grandeur of expression, and some of our Pennsylvania ironworks already afford splendid examples of this. We have seldom been more impressed by the grandeur of mechanical operations than on a recent night visit to one of the large rolling mills of Scranton. The whole interior, vast as a cathedral, was brilliantly lighted by the numerous operations in molten and red-hot iron that were everywhere in progress, and, with its gleaming furnaces, ranged on either hand down the long vista, and glowing here and there from the galleries, really made us feel prouder of our race than did many a dim, dilapidated temple of the Old World.

As to churches, we cannot expect much, except that they will be tasteful and commodious audience rooms, commensurate with the importance of their congregations. The religion of to-day appeals to soul, and not to soul and sense. The world is older and better educated than in the cathedral era, and the apostles and prophets are read, not from sculptured doors or painted windows, but from the printed page and the winged word. Childhood, that cannot read, requires gaudily painted primers for its instruction and amusement, but the world is a grown man now; the press has superseded the cathedral, and if we imitate those structures in our churches, we should bear in mind that it was their size that gave them grandeur, and that they would be caricatures without it. We have heard our American church interiors spoken of somewhere as divisible into two classes—the charlotte-russe style and the molasses-candy style. This is not true, we hope; but there is too much truth in it, for it shows the influence of a too close imitation of European palaces and churches, and the hard shamming that has to be done to make this imitation apparent.

If our rural architecture has been more successful, it is because our better class of country houses are planned with reference to the landscapes they occupy. A rich level meadow with here and there a waving elm requires a different style of house from a fir-clad bluff on a river bank or a wild gorge in a mountain. No intelligent architect, we take it, would design a country house without an intimate acquaintance with the surroundings, and yet the same man, likely as not, would make you a sketch for the elevation of your house in town, without even looking to see what it was to adjoin on either side. Now this method may be correct, but it seems to us that, by first putting on paper the existing houses, say one or two, on each side of the space to be built upon, the new front could be much better planned, and much of that unnecessary discord avoided which destroys so many of our best streets. This is what is done in painting and other arts, and why not in architecture? Particular situations require particular treatments. A front that would appear well on a narrow street, would be inappropriate on a broad avenue or a square. A corner, or the head of a street, are most responsible situations. A tall marble front, placed in a modest row of freestone, is hideous, and yet the unrelieved monotony of many such rows is quite as bad. A dome, unless at the top of a street or on some open space, is next to worthless. Who would ever notice Boston State House or the Baltimore Cathedral, but for their elevated and central positions?

We often find among the old masters elegant architectural paintings, street views, taken from the picturesque cities they lived in. We should like to find some one bold enough to paint a street view of Broadway or Washington street or Chestnut street.

It is a pity that our architects are unwilling to acknowledge the importance of the buttress. Concerning this feature, it is not easy to say whether beauty or utility is most apparent. It is the very idealization of strength, and hence its inherent elegance. Suppose Notre Dame or Milan Cathedral stripped of their double tiers of flying buttresses. Would you not say that their glory was gone—their beauty departed? And yet the old builders did not pile them up against their naves for mere beauty's sake. By no means. But they knew the immense weight of their vaulted roofs, and anticipated the outward thrust of the walls. That was the problem, and most fairly was it met. They counteracted the outward pressure from within by an inward pressure from without, and there was the buttress. But what if they had said, We are not going to spoil our fine churches by sticking props all around them, and had resorted to concealed bedplates and invisible rods of iron, would their structures have been better or nobler or more enduring? Fortunately, they gave themselves no concern, as to how they would look—for architecture was honest in those days—they simply built them, allowing decoration to come in afterward in its proper order; and thereupon the buttress became the distinguishing feature of Gothic art.

Perhaps this is the very reason why we so neglect it; but symptoms are already appearing which lead us to hope that gothophobia is on the decline, and not the least of them is the outcropping of something that would be a buttress if it dared to, but hides its real intention under a classic mask, and passes off as a pilaster or a panel border. But it has a guilty look, and the sooner it puts off its borrowed garments the better. Certainly the demand for it is immense. So long as we are a commercial people, vast warehouses, piled from cellar to roof with heavy merchandise, must abound in all our cities. And yet how utterly incompetent would many such buildings be to stand alone! So long, too, as we are a manufacturing people, must we have huge mills crowded full with heavy apparatus, vibrating machinery, and human lives. Have we forgotten Lawrence? Let us not wait for another such holocaust ere we learn wisdom. We can do without ornament, but we must have safety. A mere increase of dead weight is no remedy; there should be a well-studied mechanical disposition of material. If buttresses are applied to warehouses and factories with sole reference to their utility, elegance will grow upon them afterward as naturally as leaves grow upon trees.

Material must depend much upon locality, but iron is undoubtedly to hold an important place in our architecture. Already it is extensively used, but does not seem to command general favor. The reason is that nearly everything that has been done with it so far is not iron architecture, but stone architecture done in iron. We do not let it speak its own language; the truss, the tie rod, and the girder are kept out of sight, while every possible display is made of consoles and cornices and Corinthian columns and balustrades, and all sorts of foreign expressions. No wonder that it is unable to give an account of itself with all these false witnesses. Stone houses should be made of stone, and if made of wood or iron or plaster, they are nothing but shams, unenduring and unsatisfactory.

Now architecture requires the least amount of material that is compatible with the greatest amount of strength. The forms of different materials must be varied to suit their texture, according as it is fibrous or crystalline, tough or brittle. Iron, of course, requires a peculiar treatment. At the risk of being charged with pedantry, we say that there have never been but two iron buildings, of any pretension, in this country—the Niagara Suspension Bridge and the Crystal Palace at New York. The first still speaks for itself; and of the latter, no one who saw it can forget what an exquisite structure it was, so light and airy and elegant, and yet so strong. It was but a bird cage, though, compared with its enormous prototype at Sydenham. That is unquestionably one of the wonders of the world; its internal coup d'oeil is without a parallel. Fancy a broad level vista, a third of a mile long, flanked on either side by graceful groves of ironwork, and covered with a continuous crystal arch, a hundred feet above your head; line it with a profusion of tropical foliage and clambering vines, that grow as luxuriantly as in their native woods, and interspersed with statuary and vases gleaming everywhere through the rich masses of verdure, while here and there fountains of rare and exquisite design, rising from broad marble basins, relieve without lessening the immense length—and you may have some faint idea of this peerless structure. 'No material is used in it,' says Fergusson, 'which is not the best for its purpose, no constructive expedient employed which was not absolutely necessary, and it depends wholly for its effect on the arrangement of its parts and the display of its construction.' It is in iron what Gothic is in stone.

Details, if fairly studied, would do much to nationalize our architecture. Why should we, in designing a capital or cornice, still cling to the classic acanthus or honeysuckle ornament, or even the English ivy, when we have such a fund of our own? The maize and the sugarcane, the potato blossom and the cotton boll afford so many mines of treasure, that it is surprising that they have not already been worked. In the architecture of the Central Park, however, a decided impetus has been given in this direction. The details of the grand terrace at the end of the Mall are as elaborate as those of a European cathedral, but they are all American—all our own.

Another excellent feature of our city houses is that little strip of garden in front, just within the sidewalk. For this, too, we think we have some claim of originality. At least it is not European, for in Berlin, Vienna, etc., some of the most palatial quarters are without so much as a sidewalk—the paving stones reaching from wall to wall. Such barrenness of arrangement cannot be relieved by any architecture, nor was there ever a building so good that it could not be improved by a setting of foliage. The power of mutual relief between art and nature is wonderful. To this is owing much of the effect of the celebrated 'Place Napoleon,' the court of the New Louvre at Paris. The contrast between the richly wrought facades of Caen stone and the foliage in the centre, is most grateful to the eye. Even the grand quadrangle of the Tuileries seems dismal after it, grand as are its ogre-roofed 'pavilions' and triumphal arch, for it lacks the refreshing verdure. The eye wearies of the everlasting buff color.

Not to overstep the subject, we will say just one word about the street plans of our cities. It is really shameful that these are not more studied. No one seems to think of adapting them to the surface of the ground, but everything must needs be graded flat, and rectangular blocks laid out thereon. Our Western cities, particularly, appear to crystallize in cubes—their monotony is painful. An occasional introduction of the curved street, so common in Britain, would be a delightful relief. The London 'Quadrant' is a superb example—the way in which the houses come into view, one by one, as you follow the curve, is not to be surpassed. But the chief secret of success in plotting a town is to seize upon the natural irregularities of the ground, and make them part and parcel of the design. The beauty of Edinburgh—the 'Scottish Athens,' as Dugald Stewart called it—is entirely owing to this. The new town is a 'wilderness of granite, magnificently dull,' and the old has barely enough of the picturesque to save it from being hideous. But there is a broad, natural ravine, dividing the two, which has been retained in its original shape, and being tastefully arranged with shrubbery and terraced walks, forms a fine park. Near one end of this the Castle Hill rises abruptly against the old town, while at the other end the view is closed by Calton Hill, with its classic monuments, and Arthur's Seat rising grandly beyond. Two or three bridges afford a level communication between the old town and the new, and Prince's street, the thoroughfare of the latter, forms a fine terrace along the northern edge of the ravine, passing midway the Scott monument, a superb spire of Gothic. This latter is perhaps the only commendable feature per se in the city—for the details of Edinburgh are notably poor, its pictorial effect arising solely from the very happy manner in which they are grouped, amphitheatre-like, around the 'Gardens.'

Did such a vale lie in the track of one of our cities, we would consider it an unlucky blemish, to be filled up at once to the general level. It would be named in the contract as such-and-such 'sunken lots,' and as the Castle Rock was digged down and dumped in, tax-payers would rejoice over the saved cartage. Having thus killed off Nature, we would put up squares of houses upon the dead level, while the local papers would comment upon the 'improvement of property.'

If we only had a Napoleon here, some think, his master mind might arrest this Vandalism, infuse some system into our rag-bag cities, and make each a Paris. But have we not Public Opinion, stronger than any despot? Let a little of this current, guided by taste, be turned into the channels of art, and the results will soon be forthcoming. We seem to be hampered, as yet, with a kind of feudal system of architecture; this will presently be done away with, for the American character is eclectic, and naturally selects and combines the best in art, as in politics and commerce. To combine English good sense without its heaviness, French vivacity without its hollowness, and the exuberance of German fancy without its inertia—to combine and reflect all these should be the mission of our architecture.

Neither is it too much to say that a genuine love for art may have its bearing on that part of us which is immortal. Not that any of these things will exist after this life, but as children are drilled by their teachers in many studies which have no practical bearing on their after life, so may we consider ourselves as only at boarding school with Nature while in this present temporary state; and if she has set us some lessons which do not appertain directly to our more exalted future, we should remember that this is her method of discipline. But she has done more; she has made the very tasks delightful. Are not such studies more beneficial and satisfactory than the idleness and play which fill up so much of our lives?

No student can succeed, however, who tamely copies his neighbor's work. Let us hope, then, that our art will soon drop its clumsy costume, and take to itself something natural and national; that it will become, as it should, the type of our Western civilization—a civilization that spreads itself, not by sword or sceptre or crozier, but by life and liberty and light.



JEFFERSON DAVIS AND REPUDIATION OF ARKANSAS BONDS

LETTER NO. III OF HON. ROBERT J. WALKER.

London, 10 Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, January 28th, 1864

In two pamphlets, published by me last summer, Mr. Jefferson Davis was clearly convicted of sustaining the repudiation of the Union Bank bonds, and the Planters' Bank bonds of the State of Mississippi. These pamphlets were most extensively circulated throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and upon the continent of Europe, and several confederate writers have since referred to them; but no attempt ever has been made, either by Mr. Davis himself, or by any of his agents or friends, to refute any one of the facts or deductions contained in those pamphlets. Indeed, the facts were founded upon authentic documents, official papers, and Mr. Davis's own two letters over signature, plainly and unequivocally sustaining the repudiation of Mississippi. It is true, in the case of the Union Bank bonds of Mississippi, that Mr. Davis justified their repudiation on the ground that the bonds of the State were unconstitutional. But the utter fallacy of this position was shown by two unanimous decisions of the highest judicial tribunal of the State of Mississippi, before whom this very question was brought directly for adjudication, affirming the constitutionality and validity of these bonds. When it is recollected, also, that this was the Court designated by the Constitution and laws of Mississippi, as the tribunal to which the ultimate decision of this question was referred, the wretched character of this pretext must be at once perceived. Mr. Davis's two repudiating letters were published by him in the spring and summer of 1849, yet one of these decisions by the highest judicial tribunal of Mississippi, quoted by me, affirming the validity and constitutionality of these very bonds, was made in 1842, and again unanimously reaffirmed in 1853. But still, Mr. Davis adhered to the same position. As to the Planters' Bank bonds, however, the repudiation of which was shown to have been justified by Mr. Davis, there never was even a pretext that they were illegal or unconstitutional. Nor is there any force in the suggestion, that these questions were decided before Mr. Davis came into public life. They were continuous questions, constantly discussed in the press and before legislative and judicial tribunals. And, we have seen, even as late as 1853, four years succeeding Mr. Davis's repudiating letters, the second decision was made by the highest judicial tribunal of Mississippi, reaffirming the validity and constitutionality of these bonds.

But I will now cite another instance of the advocacy of repudiation by Mr. Jefferson Davis, still more flagitious than that of Mississippi. It was that of the State bonds of Arkansas, the validity and constitutionality of which never has been disputed. A brief history of this transaction is as follows: In 1830, James Smithson, an eminent and wealthy citizen of London, in the kingdom of Great Britain, died, bequeathing, by his last will and testament, the whole of his property to the United States of America, in trust, to found at Washington, under the name of 'The Smithsonian Institution,' an establishment 'for the increase of diffusion of knowledge among men.' After some delay, the Congress of the United States, in 1836, passed an act, accepting the trust, and pledging the faith of the Government for the faithful application of the money to the noble purpose designated by the illustrious donor. Under this act, Richard Rush, one of our most distinguished citizens, who had been minister to England and to France, and had held the position of Secretary of State and of the Treasury, at Washington, was sent by the Government to London, to obtain from the Court of Chancery the fund, amounting to over $500,000. It is usual in the proceedings of the English Court of Chancery, when funds, under circumstances like these, are bequeathed to trustees for scientific or charitable purposes, not to part with the money to the trustee, except upon his filing in court absolute security for the faithful fulfilment of the trust. In this case, however, the High Court of Chancery in England, considering that to imply any laches or neglect of a trust so sacred, on the part of the Government of the United States, was an idea not to be entertained, did, by their decree, without any security, hand over all the money to the Government of the United States, to be appropriated to the purpose designated by the donor, receiving only the pledge given by the Congress of the United States, for the faithful appropriation of the money. Now, if there ever was any obligation, that would be considered sacred by the whole civilized world, it was this, and most faithfully has the Government of the United States executed this trust. Nay, it has done much more; it has granted forty acres of ground, belonging to the Government, in the city of Washington, gratuitously, for the erection of the buildings upon them, erected by the Government, are worth largely more than the whole bequest. Not only has the Government done this, but, upon the whole fund received from Mr. Smithson, it has always punctually paid an interest of six per cent. in gold upon the whole sum, and pledged its faith for a similar perpetual payment. It has also largely aided the institution by contributions to its museum, collections, and library, and by the gratuitous services of public officers in its behalf. Such was the bill passed by Congress in 1846, and which has always been most faithfully executed. So that the institution is now established upon a permanent basis, and is fulfilling all the great and noble purposes proposed by the illustrious donor. Now, in 1837, this fund was received by the Government of the United States, and invested by the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Woodbury, in the six per cent. bonds of the State of Arkansas at par, to the extent of over half a million of dollars. During the same year Arkansas invested this money in a bank, entitled 'The Real Estate Bank of Arkansas;' and of which the State was the great stockholder. In 1839, this Bank, having loaned out these funds to the citizens of Arkansas, became absolutely and totally insolvent, and has never been able to pay one cent on the dollar to any of its creditors. In 1839, the State of Arkansas failed to pay the interest on its bonds, and from that day to this has never paid one dollar either of interest or principal on any of these most sacred obligations.

On the 4th of March, 1845, I became Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, and having taken the deepest interest in this Smithsonian fund, and in its faithful application to the noble purpose of the donor, and inasmuch as one of my predecessors had invested these funds in these bonds, and the Government had made itself directly responsible for the faithful execution of this trust, I endeavored to reclaim, as far as possible, this money from the State of Arkansas, and to induce Congress to appropriate its own moneys to redeem the pledge of the Government, and fulfil this trust. My first official action on this subject was as follows: By act of Congress, five per cent. of the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands of the United States in Arkansas was payable to that State, for certain purposes designated in the act. There was, also, an act of Congress in force, authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury, where there were mutual debts and credits between the Government and any other person, to offset any debt due by any creditor of the United States, against any debt, so far as it would go, due by the United States to such creditor. I interpreted this act as authorizing me to withhold this five per cent. fund from the State of Arkansas and appropriate it, as far as it would go, in payment of the interest which had accumulated on the bonds of the State of Arkansas, in which my predecessor, Mr. Woodbury, on behalf of the Government, had invested the Smithsonian Fund; thus saving a small portion of the interest which had accrued on these bonds. For this act I was violently denounced by the Senators and Representatives of Arkansas in Congress, as also by the Legislature and Governor of the State, and strenuous efforts were made, unsuccessfully, first to induce me to revoke my action, and, secondly, to have it overruled by the Government. But I adhered to it, and declared openly, that if such a breach of trust were consummated, and my action overruled in the premises, I would resign my seat in the cabinet. My official action, however, was sustained by an almost unanimous public sentiment of Congress, and of the country. Indeed, beyond the limits of the State of Arkansas, and the circle of the repudiators of Mississippi, my course was sustained and approved.

Now, then, let us see what was the action of Mr. Jefferson Davis on the question of these Arkansas bonds. On reference to the journals of the House of Representatives, of the Congress of the United States, it appears that Mr. Jefferson Davis took his seat in that body, as one of the members elect from the State of Mississippi, on the 8th of December, 1845. (P. 56.) When the bill was pending for organizing the Smithsonian Institution, and making good for both principal and interest, the sum bequeathed by Mr. Smithson that had been invested by the Government of the United States in these Arkansas State bonds, Mr. Jefferson Davis, on the 29th April, 1846, as appears by the official proceedings of the House, page 749, moved an amendment: 'To add at the end of the section the following'—'Provided, however, That if the Governor of the State of Arkansas shall make it appear to the satisfaction of the Attorney-General of the United States, that he has used suitable means to obtain from the Real Estate Bank of the State of Arkansas, payment of the debt due by said Bank to the State of Arkansas, but without success, then, in that case, and until the arrears due by the said Real Estate Bank shall have been received into the Treasury of the State of Arkansas, the said State shall be and is hereby declared to be absolved from the promises on the face of her bonds by which the said State heretofore pledged her faith for the due payment of the principal and interest of said bonds.' Now, then, it will be remembered, that the legality and constitutionality of these Arkansas State bonds never has been disputed. These bonds were issued by the State, under direct authority of law, signed by the Governor, with the broad seal of the State attached, and recognized by the Government of the United States, by the investment of this sacred fund in these obligations. Nay, more, this fund thus received by the State from the Government on these bonds, had been invested, under the law of the State of Arkansas, in a Real Estate Bank, created by that State, and the money loaned to the citizens of the State. That State Bank, however, in 1839, became utterly and notoriously insolvent, and never did or could pay one cent in the dollar on its obligations. And, more especially, never did it pay, after 1839, one single cent of the principal or interest upon these State obligations. Now, then, this institution, in 1846, being absolutely and totally insolvent, its funds having been wasted and squandered without the possibility of recovery, either in whole or in part, Mr. Davis offers this resolution to authorize the State to repudiate its bonds, and that the Government should look only to this insolvent Bank for the payment of the principal and interest on these bonds, amounting then to over $700,000. It was not alleged by Mr. Davis, or by any other person, that these bonds were unconstitutional. No such pretext was ever made even by the State of Arkansas. It was a most atrocious case of open repudiation. And here, it matters not, so far as this question is concerned, what may have been the obligation of the Government of the United States to make good these funds. That is a totally distinct and independent question. The true and real issue in this case is this: Was not the State of Arkansas bound to pay these bonds, both interest and principal, as it fell due, in, which bonds, by the request and authority of the State, the Government of the United States had invested this Smithsonian fund? This obligation of the State of Arkansas, both moral and legal, is undisputed and indisputable; and yet Mr. Davis moved the resolution before quoted, absolving the State from the payment of the principal and interest of these bonds, except so far as the assets of her own Bank, then notoriously bankrupt, should avail to make good these obligations. That is, the Congress of the United States, by solemn act, was to authorize the State of Arkansas to repudiate her solemn obligations. Recollect, this was not a case of Mississippi bonds, of which State Mr. Davis was then a Representative in Congress, but it was the case of Arkansas, another State, having on the floor of Congress its own Senators and Representatives. But it is a very remarkable fact, that Mississippi, for many years, had then repudiated her own bonds, that Mr. Davis justified and sustained that repudiation, and that now he appears on behalf of Arkansas to induce Congress, by solemn act, to authorize that State to repudiate her obligations also. Thus was it that Mr. Davis travelled out of his own State into another, to make the Government of the United States a party to the repudiation of her bonds by the State of Arkansas. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean to say, that Mr. Davis proposed or intended that the Government of the United States should repudiate its faith, plighted to the British Court of Chancery, to make good this fund. That is not the question. It is entirely collateral. But, what he did do was this, and there stands his own resolution, offered by himself in the Congress of the United States, which, if carried into effect, would have released the State of Arkansas from these bonds, or, in Mr. Davis's own words, 'The said State shall be and is hereby declared to be absolved from the promises on the face of her bonds, by which the said State heretofore pledged her faith for the due payment of the principal and interest of said bonds.'

Why should Congress release Arkansas from the payment of her State obligations? Why thus justify the repudiation of her bonds? Can any other reason be assigned than this, that Mr. Jefferson Davis was looking to the repudiated bonds of Mississippi, and was endeavoring to establish a precedent, by solemn act of the Congress, by which, if adopted as a principle, Mississippi, and every other defaulting State, could be justified in the repudiation of their bonds also. It is to the credit of the Congress of the United States, that Mr. Davis's resolution was rejected without a division, and without a count. When it is recollected, that at this very time, I, as Secretary of the Treasury, was appropriating the five per cent. found payable by the Government to the State of Arkansas toward the liquidation of these bonds against the protest of that State, the further meaning of these movements will be clearly perceived. Had this resolution of Mr. Davis passed the two Houses of Congress, absolving the State of Arkansas from the payment of these bonds, I could, of course, as Secretary of the Treasury, no longer have withheld that fund from the State, and appropriated it, so far as it went, toward the liquidation of the interest accrued and accruing on these bonds. It appears, then, by conclusive and official evidence, that Mr. Jefferson Davis's repudiation of State obligations, was not confined to his own State, nor even to the State of Arkansas; but that he desired to make the Government of the United States, by solemn act of Congress, a party directly sanctioning such atrocious violations of State faith and State obligations.

R. J. WALKER.



APHORISMS.

NO. III.

TWO RULES.-To get safely and comfortably through the world, one must observe two rules: first, keep your eyes open; second, keep them shut.

Not to see the actual realities of our daily existence, is the part of a fool.

Not to notice the thousand and one petty faults of others, and the ever-recurring petty annoyances of our circumstances, is the part of a wise man.

Even injuries intentionally done to us, are often best disposed of by resolutely ignoring them.

So of evils that cannot be remedied—the less we know of them the better. Not to see an ill sight, is often just as good as to remove it from existence.

We need only to add: This seeing and not seeing, depends very much upon the will. The wolf that wills it can easily see the lamb disturbing the water that he drinks, even while the lamb is below him on the bank of the stream; and the lamb, by a stern resolve, can refuse to see the injustice which it has no power to remedy. The will of man is little less than omnipotent in the wide sphere of its appropriate power; and that sphere is much wider than feeble-minded people may suppose.



LITERARY NOTICES.

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THEODORE PARKER, Minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, Boston. By JOHN WEISS. In 2 volumes. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 443 & 445 Broadway.

A work of two large octavo volumes, containing 1,020 pages, with two portraits of Mr. Parker, and some vignettes on wood. The author is John Weiss, and the biography is exceedingly well written, a great deal of it being given directly from Mr. Parker's own letters and journals. He was born in Massachusetts in 1810, and died in Italy before he had completed his fiftieth year. He was brought up on his father's farm, taught school while in his teens to provide money for further progress, prepared himself for the university, taught a higher school during his college course, studied the classics, acquired German, French, and Spanish, became a divinity student in Cambridge, added Danish, Swedish, Arabic and Syriac, Anglo-Saxon and Modern Greek, was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1837, and settled at West Roxbury. His labors were great: he preached, lectured, translated, edited, and wrote. His health sank under his arduous mental toil. He went abroad to regain it, and died in Florence in 1860. Whatever we may think of his creed, as a preacher he was able and earnest. He was a man of varied gifts, of wide and detailed culture. He was opposed to slavery, and stood in bold antagonism to the Fugitive Slave Law. He was blamed, perhaps maligned, during his lifetime, but posterity will acknowledge him as a man of large brain and generous heart. His letters are exceedingly interesting, touching upon almost every subject now under discussion.

'Would you be good, and fill each human duty? One art's enough for that—the finest art— See but the good in every human heart.'

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL? A Novel. By RICHARD B. KIMBALL, Author of 'St. Leger,' 'Undercurrents,' 'Romance of Student Life,' etc. New York; Carleton, publisher, 413 Broadway. Leipsic: Tauchnitz. 1864.

The readers of THE CONTINENTAL have been favored with the first perusal of this monitory novel. It is an accurate delineation of men and manners found too frequently in our midst, and the moral should be deeply graven on every heart. We feel the more at liberty to recommend this work, as it was commenced in our columns before the present corps of editors had entered upon their labors, and we cordially wish every species of success to Mr. Kimball.

MUSICAL SKETCHES. By ELIZA POLKO. Translated from the sixth German edition, by FANNY FULLER. Philadelphia: Frederick Leypoldt. New York: F. W. Christern.

We think this book will become a favorite with our people. It contains sketches, legends, and traditions of many of the great musicians. Bach, Gluck, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Pergolesi, Schubert, Scarlatti, Weber, Paganini, Gretry, Catalani, Malibran, Handel, Anderle, Haydn, Boieldieu, Cimarosa, Beethoven, Lully, Berger, etc., float pleasantly through its fanciful pages. Romance and reality mingle genially together, the reality half persuading us that the romance is true. It is appreciative and tender in the original, and the translation is well executed. The vignette of the music-making cherubs is really beautiful.

HUSKS. COLONEL FLOYD'S WARDS. By MARION HARLAND. New York: Sheldon & Co., 335 Broadway.

Few young writers have attained so sudden a popularity as Marion Harland. We believe it well deserved. Her plots are interesting, her characters well drawn, her style natural, her morals unexceptionable. Of the two tales composing the present volume, we prefer 'Colonel Floyd's Wards.' The interest is well sustained, and Virginian society and manners truthfully depicted.

DIARY, from November 18, 1862, to October 18, 1863. By ADAM GUROWSKI. Volume Second. New York: Carleton, publisher, 413 Broadway.

Has Count Gurowski's course toward his own unfortunate country, heroic Poland, been sufficiently loyal and faithful to induce us to put much confidence in his portraitures of the men and events of the land of his adoption?

THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. THE MILLENNIAL REST; or, The World as it Will Be. By REV. JOHN CUMMING, D. D., F. R. S. E., Minister of the Scottish National Church, Crown Court, Covent Garden; Author of 'The Great Tribulation,' and 'The Great Preparation.' Second Series. New York: Carleton, publisher, 413 Broadway.

The writings of the Rev. Dr. Cumming are too well known to the public to need any characterization at our hands. His style is clear and simple, and we believe it is his desire to awaken and win souls. Although frequently miscomprehending the dogmas of the Mother Church, he is neither narrow nor bigoted in his religious views. In the volume under consideration, he takes passages found principally in Isaiah and Revelations as texts to describe the Millennium which he believes at hand. He strives to inculcate the lesson, 'Be ye therefore ready.'

CUDJO'S CAVE. By J. T. TROWBRIDGE, Author of 'Neighbor Jackwood,' 'The Drummer Boy,' etc. Boston: Tilton & Co.

We believe Mr. Trowbridge has achieved a real success in his Cudjo. The plot is well conceived and sustained, and the interest never flags from the first page to the last. There is no dull reading in the book, no interminable preludes or introductions. We are presented in the very first chapter to the hero, the young schoolmaster, about to be tarred and feathered by a brutal mob. And a real hero he proves himself in his gentleness, conscientiousness, and manly moral and physical courage. Carl, the German boy, is an inimitable picture of young German life and character. Toby, the house negro, is, in his mingled stupidity, cunning, and faithfulness, drawn to the life. Nor are the negroes of the cave less excellent. Events hurry forward, different characters are strangely grouped, new elements and capacities constantly developed, while truth to the original conception is constantly adhered to. Graphic descriptions and picturesque situations abound. If scenes of violence occur, it is because they are true to the history of the hour. We close by extracting the closing sentence of this loyal and natural novel: 'For peaceful days, a peaceful and sunny literature: and may Heaven hasten the time when there shall be no more strife, and no more human bondage; when, under the folds of the starry flag, from the lake chain to the gulf, and from sea to sea, freedom, peace, and righteousness shall reign; when all men shall love each other, and the nations shall know God!'

UNITED STATES WALL ATLAS. Constructed and drawn under the direction of A. GUYOT, by ERNEST SANDOZ. New York: Published by Charles Scribner, 124 Grand street.

This is a physical map of the United States, giving the altitudes (within certain limits) of the surface of the land, the height of the principal mountains, the courses of the ranges and also of the rivers, together with many other interesting particulars. The principal political divisions and the chief towns are also indicated. The names of that profound and earnest savant, Prof. A. Guyot, and of his talented nephew, E. Sandoz, are a sufficient guarantee of the accuracy and excellence of this useful work.

A BUDGET OF FUN FOR LITTLE FOLKS. By AUNT MAGGIE. Boston: Loring, publisher, 319 Washington street.

JEAN BELIN; or, The Adventures of a Little French Boy. By ALFRED DE BREHAT. Translated from the French. Boston: Loring, publisher, 319 Washington street. For sale by O. S. Felt, 36 Walker street, New York.

Two very pleasant books for children. The first contains the adventures of a knitting society, interspersed with sundry novel fairy tales, and the second is intended to supply the need felt by all the little ones when 'Robinson Crusoe' and the 'Swiss Family Robinson' have been exhausted. The tale is lively and well told, and the characters natural and ably sustained. We notice in both works an occasional inaccuracy of expression. Such slight blemishes do not materially impair the excellence of these sprightly volumes, but a little more attention would have sufficed to render them entirely free from error. The examples of language placed before youth cannot be too carefully revised. With this minute exception, we heartily recommend the 'Budget of Fun' and 'Jean Belin,' especially the latter, to all young people.

CARROT-POMADE, with twenty-six Illustrations by AUGUSTUS HOPPIN. 'Hair ten carats fine.' New York: James G. Gregory, publisher, 46 Walker street.

A ludicrous satire, and well deserved, on the general style of advertisements. Hoppin is too well known to need laudation. His illustrations are irresistibly comic. What could be happier than the cupids of the brush and comb on the frontispiece? The poor 'krittur which furnished the grease' is well conceived and executed.

POEMS. By HENRY PETERSON. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.

A volume of graceful verses. We quote its dedication: 'To the members of that hard-working, poorly rewarded editorial profession, who make so many reputations for others, and so few for themselves, this book is respectfully dedicated by one of the fraternity.' 'Abra's Vision' is a happy rendering of Leigh Hunt's 'Abou Ben Adhem.'

APPLETON'S UNITED STATES POSTAL GUIDE; containing the Chief Regulations of the Post Office; and a complete List of Post Offices throughout the United States, with other information for the People. Published Quarterly. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 443 & 445 Broadway. One dollar per annum. Price, 25 cents.

This volume has been prepared with the sanction of Mr. Blair, Postmaster General, and is an authorized medium of information between the Post Office Department and the public. It meets a want very generally felt, and will be welcomed by the community at large. Its table of contents is a full one; we have space but for a few items: 'Officers, and recent Orders of the Department; Rates of Postage to Foreign Countries; Rates of Domestic Postage; Date of Sailing of Foreign Steamers; Establishment of Post Offices; Mail Contracts; Penalties in certain cases; Suggestions to the Public; Time occupied in the transmission of Letters; Local Post Office Regulations; List of Post Offices in the United States, etc. We regard the condensation of important and indeed almost necessary information as of great value to our people.

LEGENDS OF THE BIRDS. By CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. Illustrated by F. Moras. Philadelphia: Frederick Leypoldt, publisher. New York: for sale by F. W. Christern, 763 Broadway.

An exquisite volume, containing illuminated pictures of the Birds of the Legends. Very beautiful are the legends, tenderly and simply told in the golden words of a poet. They are calculated to teach us humanity toward the winged creatures of the air, so often the victims of our cruel sports. We have The Swallow, The Eagle, The Robin, The Cock, The Swan, The Falcon, The Wood Dove, The Humming Bird, The Scarlet Tannager, The Peacock, and The Owl, each bird occupying his own illuminated page; each with his own simple and touching legend. Mr. Leland's little poems will speak to many a heart, and many a mother will read them aloud to the wild boys begging for guns to devastate our forests, to inspire them with mercy for these flying flowers, these musicians of the air. Paper, print, type, arabesques, and designs, are excellent. We heartily congratulate Mr. Leypoldt on the beauty of the publication.

HAND BOOK OF CALISTHENICS AND GYMNASTICS: A Complete Drill Book for Schools, Families, and Gymnasiums. With Music to accompany the Exercises. Illustrated from original designs. By J. MADISON WATSON. New York and Philadelphia: Schermerhorn, Bancroft & Co. Chicago: George Sherwood. 1864.

The American people are waking up to the importance of physical culture, struggling to develop muscle, to strengthen weak nerves, and to build up national bodily vigor. The purpose of the volume before us is to solve this problem. The author "has aimed to make it a complete gymnastic drill book, with words of command and classes of movements systematically arranged, embracing all necessary exercises for the lungs, the voice, the organs of speech, the joints, and the muscles."

Part 1st, under the head of Vocal Gymnastics, treats of Respiration, Phonetics, and Elocution; concise and clear principles and rules are given, accompanied by examples and exercises sufficiently numerous to enable the student to bring them completely within his comprehension and under his control. We regard this part of the work before us as exceedingly important. To read aloud well is one of the rarest of accomplishments, though one of the most desirable, and the training of the voice is absolutely necessary to attain this end. When properly pursued, such exercises are exceedingly invigorating. 'In forming and undulating the voice,' says Dr. Combe, 'not only the chest, but also the diaphragm and abdominal muscles are in constant action, and communicate to the stomach and bowels a healthy and agreeable stimulus.' The poetic selections are made with great taste, and are admirably fitted to achieve the end for which they are designed.

Part 2d, under the head of Calisthenics, exhibits a varied course of exercises without the aid of apparatus. Pupils are taught to beat time, and use is thus made of the magic power of rhythmical movement. Nineteen pieces of piano music are given, which are well chosen, and appropriately introduced.

Part 3d, under the head of Gymnastics, presents a wider collection of exercises for wands, dumb bells, Indian clubs, and hand rings, than any of the books we have yet seen. All the exercises are arranged in accordance with well-known principles of Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene. 'In presenting a new system of Calisthenics and Gymnastics, a series of illustrations from original designs is indispensable.' These are remarkably well drawn and executed. Accent, quantity, with Iambic, Trochaic, Anapestic, and Dactylic Rhythms, are practically given in the work, which, should the student have poetic talent, would be of great use to him in making his own verses, while to the reader of poetry a knowledge of them is indispensable.

We heartily commend this book to the notice of our readers—to all who prize physical culture, health, and symmetrical education. We hope it may find its way into our schools and families.

Print, paper, and the mechanical execution of this valuable Hand Book are really excellent.

LIGHT ON SHADOWED PATHS. By T. S. ARTHUR, Author of 'Ten Nights in a Bar Room,' 'Steps toward Heaven,' 'Golden Grain,' etc. New York: Carleton, publisher, 413 Broadway.

The books of T. S. Arthur have had a very wide circulation both in this country and in England. This volume is composed of thirty-three short tales, well calculated to touch and soothe the popular heart. They are tender, moral, and simple.

* * * * *

JANUARY PERIODICALS RECEIVED.

THE UNIVERSALIST QUARTERLY. Boston: Published by T. Tompkins & Co. New York: H. Lyon, 119 Nassau street.

CONTENTS: The Logic and the End of the Rebellion. The Eastern Church and Council of Nice. Salvation in Christ not Limited to this Life. Contributions of Science to Religion. History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. Atheism and its Exponents. Formula of Baptism. The Universalists as a Christian Sect. General Review. Recent Publications. American and English Quarterlies.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, January 1st, 1864. Editors: Prof. James Russell Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton, Esqs. Boston: Crosby & Nichols, 117 Washington street. New York: H. Dexter, Hamilton & Co., Sinclair Tousey, and D. G. Francis.

CONTENTS: Ticknor's Life of Prescott. The Bible and Slavery. The Ambulance System. The Bibliotheca Sacra. Immorality in Politics. The Early Life of Governor Winthrop. The Sanitary Commission. Renan's Life of Jesus. The President's Policy. Critical Notices.

THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.—Contents: Weiss's Life of Theodore Parker. Uhland. The Patience of Hope. Arthur Schopenhauer. The System and Order of Christ's Ministry. Ticknor's Life of Prescott. Our Ambulance System. The Two Messages. Review of Current Literature. New Publications Received. Boston: By the Proprietors, at Walker, Wise & Co.'s, 245 Washington street.



EDITOR'S TABLE.

ARTISTS' RECEPTION.

The evening of February 4th, 1864, will long be remembered as the occasion of one of the most delightful receptions ever given in the Tenth-street Studio Building. The Committee deserve great praise for the successful manner in which they filled without crowding the pleasant exhibition-room and the many interesting studios. Their task was certainly not an easy one, and merits imitation by all managers of social entertainments.

Want of space must for the present prevent any description of the fine works exhibited; suffice it to say that the Committee—Whittredge, McEntee, Thompson, as well as Gifford, Eastman Johnson, Bierstadt, Beard, the Weirs, Hazeltine, William Hart, Dana, Leutze, Gignoux, Shattuck, Brown, Suydam, etc., were all worthily represented. New York has reason to be proud of her artists.

Amusing incidents were not wanting. As we stood before Beard's 'Watchers' (an impressive representation of a company of crows watching the last struggles of a dying deer), we heard a lady ask her attendant the meaning of the picture and of its name. The reply was, 'Why—do you not see? Those birds are owls, and they are asleep, and the deer is asleep too, and so they are all watchers!' 'Ah!' returned the lady, as if this lucid explanation had flooded the subject with light. We were accompanied by a very bright young girl, who, desirous of visiting the studio of Mr. Church, and disappointed at learning that it had not been opened to the guests of the building, exclaimed, 'Heart of the Andes, indeed! Where is his own?' No lover of the true and the beautiful could have resisted the pleading of those earnest blue eyes. We also overheard that 'the Tenth-street boys hold their heads mighty high!' Long may they continue to do so, and long may success of every kind crown their efforts, whether as artists or as conscientious, patriotic men!

GOUNOD'S 'FAUST.'

This opera has attracted large audiences wherever it has been represented, and has elicited much attention and criticism from the musical public. Dwight's Journal of Music, Boston, January 23d, contains the best review of its merits and defects which we have thus far chanced to meet. Mr. Dwight gives M. Gounod ample credit for the good judgment, common sense, science, taste, poetic feeling, rich and highly dramatic orchestration, ingenious musical characterization of individuals and situations, and the many passages of beautiful music found in this elaborate work, but denies to him the highest inspiration, the spontaneity of genius, and the attainment of any very lofty ideal in the production of continuous, elevated, and soul-entrancing melodies. We think this a pretty fair statement of the facts in the case. Mr. Dwight, however, says: 'Not even Mozart in 'Don Juan' had so great a subject;' and in this connection we feel compelled to offer a few remarks. We think every great composer owes it to his own God-gift, and to the human beings whom he is to influence, not to select intrinsically repulsive subjects, and such have we found both 'Don Juan' and 'Faust.' Now we are not morbidly fastidious, and we well know the freedom that must be accorded to art, that it may have ample scope and range in the delineation of human feeling and romantic situation; but when we see a representation of 'Don Juan,' we instinctively strive to ignore the plot, with its odious characters (the sensual Don, the coarse-minded servant, the unwomanly, man-seeking Elvira, the vengeful Anna, the insignificant Ottavio, the light-headed and shallow-hearted Zerlina), and live only in the beautiful music which the prodigality of genius has wasted upon so poor a theme. Not even that libretto could degrade the pure, serious, and essentially innocent character of Mozart's conceptions; but, in turn, his refined musical conception has been unable to lift the subject from the mire of Da Ponte's delineation. We know that page after page has been written to unfold the mystic meanings and profound philosophy contained in the story, but our observation has been, that the effect of the whole upon pure minds is simply—disgust. The musical grandeur of the finale rarely saves its becoming ludicrous in the representation, and the good joke of a life of unblushing immorality is in no way lessened by the appearance of demons, in whose existence half the world (at least of of opera goers) has ceased to believe.

The 'Faust' is nearly, if not quite, as bad. The undisguised sensuality of Faust, both in Goethe's drama and in the operatic rendering, is such that it nearly destroys our sympathy with Margaret, and scenes that should be pathetic are either merely repulsive, or excite our indignation to such a degree that we 'turn all our tears to sparks of fire.'

Nothing but loathing can attend the open, deliberate, and utterly gross destruction of virtue as planned and executed by that miserable libertine. Mephistopheles himself is scarcely more corrupt, and the representation of these two great poisonous spiders, weaving their meshes round their unfortunate and but too easy prey, can never in any sense impress us as lofty specimens of high art.

How different is the plot of 'Fidelio,' where one can yield oneself to the beauty of the music and the pathos of the story without a single jarring sensation!

Let the masters then beware! Music is essentially pure, and should never by great minds be wedded to coarse ideas. The subject must have an influence upon the immortality of the work. The really noble and truly art-loving men and women of all countries will, as they advance in mental cultivation and comprehension of the higher aims of art, banish such gross delineations and festering moral sores from the stage, and fine musical works thus sullied will continue to live solely as represented by such instrument or instruments as may best be calculated to express their real value and meaning.

We go to the opera for relaxation, improvement, and enjoyment, and none of these can be found in the spectacle of noble means perverted to corrupt ends. May the day soon come when such important channels of public amusement and instruction may be guided by a refined taste and correct views of the intimate connection between the Beautiful and the Absolute Good!

Ballads of the War.

THE DEATH OF COLONEL SHAW.

By ISABELLA McFARLANE.

Loud rang the voice of the chieftain, As the Fifty-fourth rushed on: 'Charge on the guns of Wagner, Charge—and the fort is won!'

On—like a wave of the ocean, Dashing against a rock!— Back—ah! back—all broken, Like a wave from the fruitless shock.

Thus from the guns of Wagner The Fifty-fourth surged back: But the voice of their brave young chieftain Checked not their backward track

For there, on the sands by Wagner, The gallant Shaw lay low, 'Midst a heap of his brave black soldiers, Left in the hands of the foe.

Not a flag was lowered in his honor, Not a gun its deep voice gave, When, on the sands by Wagner, Shaw was laid in the grave.

Not a friend stood over his coffin, Shedding tears on his gory breast; But instead, was curse and insult, Cruel laughter, ribald jest.

Wide and deep was the trench they hollowed, Where the gallant Shaw was laid, With forty negro soldiers Piled over his noble head.

Yes, forty negro soldiers, Whose hearts were hearts of steel, Who had fought in the cause of freedom, Who had died for their country's weal.

Was it then so great dishonor For that chief so young and brave— Who had led them on to the battle— To be with them in the grave?

Nay—most just was the mandate That in death they should not part, For he loved his poor black brothers, With a true and steadfast heart.

Move not his honored ashes— Let him slumber where he lies, Till the voice of the great Archangel Sounds the trumpet-call to the skies![25]



FOOTNOTES:

[1] THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN, with Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation. By Sir CHARLES LYELL, F. R. S. Author of 'Principles of Geology,' Elements of Geology,' etc., etc. Illustrated by woodcuts. Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 628 and 630 Chestnut street. 1863

[2] If any one is disposed to doubt that the doctrine that fossil forms are direct creations, and were never living animals at all, is held by any respectable person, we refer them to a book entitled 'Cosmogony, or the Mysteries of Creation,' by Thomas A. Davies, and published by Rudd & Carleton, of New York, of no longer ago than 1857.

[3] Principles of Geology, 9th ed., p. 740.

[4] Professor Louis Agassiz, the most patient, learned, and acute investigator of embryology now living, finds in that science (upon which, in truth, rests the final settlement of the so-called development theory) 'no single fact to justify the assumption that the laws of development, now known to be so precise and definite for every animal, have ever been less so, or have ever been allowed to run into each other. The philosopher's stone is no more to be found in the organic than the inorganic world; and we shall seek as vainly to transform the lower animal types into the higher ones by any of our theories, as did the alchemists of old to change the baser metals into gold.' He also says: 'To me the fact that the embryonic form of the highest vertebrate recalls in its earlier stages the first representatives of its type in geological times and its lowest representatives at the present day, speaks only of an ideal relation, existing, not in the things themselves, but in the mind that made them. It is true that the naturalist is sometimes startled at these transient resemblances of the young among the higher animals in one type to the adult condition of the lower animals in the same type; but it is also true that he finds each one of the primary divisions of the animal kingdom bound to its own norm of development, which is absolutely distinct from that of all others; it is also true that, while he perceives correspondences between the early phases of the higher animals and the mature state of the lower ones he never sees any one of them diverge in the slightest degree from its own structural character—never sees the lower rise by a shade beyond the level which is permanent for the group to which it belongs—never sees the higher ones stop short of their final aim, either in the mode or the extent of their transformation.' He likewise ('Methods of Study in Natural History,' page 140) discusses the matter of breeds as bearing upon diversities of species in a manner to justify his conclusion, that: 'The influence of man upon animals is, in other words, the influence of mind upon them; and yet the ordinary mode of argument upon this subject is, that, because the intelligence of man has been able to produce certain varieties in domesticated animals, therefore physical causes have produced all the diversity existing among wild ones. Surely, the sounder logic would be to infer that, because our finite intelligence may cause the original pattern to vary by some slight shades of difference, therefore a superior intelligence must have established all the boundless diversity of which our boasted varieties are but the faintest echo. It is the most intelligent farmer who has the greatest success in improving his breeds; and if the animals he has so fostered are left to themselves without that intelligent care, they return to their normal condition. So with plants....'—Ed. Con.

[5] In Latin, Sublaqueum, or Sublacum, in the States of the Church, over thirty English miles (Butler says 'near forty,' Montalombert, 'fifty miles') east of Rome, on the Teverone. Butler describes the place as 'a barren, hideous chain of rocks, with a river and lake in the valley.'

[6] Monasterium Cassinense. It was destroyed, indeed, by the Lombards, as early as 583, as Benedict is said to have predicted it would be, but was rebuilt in 731, consecrated in 748, again destroyed by the Saracens in 857, rebuilt about 950, and more completely, after many other calamities, in 1649, consecrated for the third time by Benedict XIII in 1727, enriched and increased under the patronage of the emperors and popes, in modern times despoiled of ts enormous income (which at the end of the sixteenth century was reckoned at 500,000 ducats), and has stood through all vicissitudes to this day. In the times of its splendor, when the abbot was first baron of the kingdom of Naples, and commanded over four hundred towns and villages, it numbered several hundred monks but in 1843 only twenty. It has a considerable library. Montalembert (Monks of the West, ii. 19) calls Monte Cassino 'the most powerful and celebrated monastery in the Catholic universe; celebrated especially because there Benedict wrote his rule and formed the type which was to serve as a model to innumerable communities submitted to that sovereign code.' He also quotes the poetic description from Dante's Paradiso. Dom Luigi Tosti published at Naples, in 1842, a full history of this convent, in three volumes.

[7] Gregor. Dial. ii. 37.

[8] Butler, in his Lives of Saints, compares Benedict even with Moses and Elijah. 'Being chosen by God, like another Moses, to conduct faithful souls into the true promised land, the kingdom of heaven, he was enriched with eminent supernatural gifts, even those of miracles and prophecy. He seemed, like another Eliseus, endued by God with an extraordinary power, commanding all nature, and, like the ancient prophets, foreseeing future events. He often raised the sinking courage of his monks, and baffled the various artifices of the devil with the sign of the cross, rendered the heaviest stone light, in building his monastery, by a short prayer, and, in presence of a multitude of people, raised to life a novice who had been crushed by the fall of a wall at Monte Cassino.' Montalembert omits the more extraordinary miracles, except the deliverance of Placidus from the whirlpool, which he relates in the language of Bossuet, ii. 15.

[9] 'Scienter nesciens, et sapienter indoctus.'

[10] The Catholic Church has recognized three other rules besides that of St. Benedict, viz.: 1. That of St. Basil, which is stilt retained by the Oriental monks; 2. That of St. Augustine, which is adopted by the regular canons, the order of the preaching brothers or Dominicans, and several military orders; 3. The rule of St. Francis of Assisi and his mendicant order, in the thirteenth century.

[11] Pope Gregory believed the rule of St. Benedict even to be directly inspired, and Bossuet (Panegyrie de Saint Benoit), in evident exaggeration, calls it 'an epitome of Christianity, a learned and mysterious abridgement of all doctrines of the gospel, all the institutions of the holy fathers, and all the counsels of perfection.' Montalembert speaks in a similar strain of French declamatory eloquence.

[12] Cap. 5: 'Primus humilitatis gradus est obedientia sine mora. Haec convenit iis, qui nihil sibi Christo carius aliquid existimant: propter servitium sanctum, quod professi sunt, seu propter metum gehennae, vel gloriam vitae aeternae, mox ut aliquid imperatum a majore fuerit, ac si divinitus imperetur, moram pati nesciunt in faciendo.'

[13] Cap. 48: 'Otiositas inimica est animae; et ideo certis temporibus occupari debent fratres in labore manuum, certis iterum horis in lectione divina.' vina.'

[14] The horae canonicae are the Nocturnae vigiliae, Matutinae, Prima, Tertia, Sexta, Nona, Vespera, and Completorium, and are taken (c. 16) from a literal interpretation of Ps. cxix. 164: 'Seven times a day do I praise thee,' and v. 62: 'At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee.' The Psalter was the liturgy and hymn book of the convent. It was so divided among the seven services of the day, that the whole Psalter should be chanted once a week.

[15] Cap. 59: 'Si quis forte de nobilibus offert filium suum Deo in monasterio, si ipse puer minori aetate est, parentes ejus faciant petitionem,' etc.

[16] Cap. 40: 'Carnium quadrupedum ab omnibus abstinetur comestio, praeter omnino debiles et aegrotos.' Even birds are excluded, which were at that time only delicacies for princes and nobles, as Mabillon shows from the contemporary testimony of Gregory of Tours.

[17] Cap. 66: 'Monasterium, si possit fieri, ita debet construi, ut omnia necessaria, id est aqua, molendinum, hortus, pistrinum, vel artes diversae intra monasterium exerceantur, ut non sit necessitas monachis vagandi foras, quia omnino non expedit animabus eorum.'

[18] This Maurus, the founder of the abbacy of Glanfeuil (St. Maur sur Loire), is the patron saint of a branch of the Benedictines, the celebrated Maurians in France (dating from 1618), who so highly distinguished themselves in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, by their thorough archaeological and historical researches, and their superior editions of the Fathers. The most eminent of the Maurians are D. (Dom, equivalent to Domnus, Sir) Menard, d'Achery, Godin, Mabillon, le Nourry, Martianay, Ruinart, Martene, Montfaucon, Massuet, Garnier, and de la Rue, and in our time Dom Pitra, editor of a valuable collection of patristic fragments, at the cloister of Solesme.

[19] He was the last of the Roman consuls—an office which Justinian abolished—and was successively the minister of Odoacer, Theodoric, and Athalaric, who made him prefect of the pretorium.

[20] Or Vivaria, so called from the numerous vivaria, or fish ponds, in that region

[21] Comp. Mabillon, Ann. Bened. 1. v. c. 24, 27; F. de Ste.-Marthe, Vie de Cassiodore, 1684.

[22] I take this anecdote on Mr. Underhill's authority.

[23] As in the Hotel du Louvre in Paris.

[24] The great Bible-printing establishment at Oxford encloses a spacious courtyard, which is laid out as a garden. The foliage is agreeably disposed, and there are shrubbery walks, flowers, vases, and parterres, all arranged in the best taste. Consider what a healthful influence this must have on the character of the workman.

[25] 'Buried with his niggers.' Such was the answer of the rebel commander at Charleston to General Gillmore's demand for the body of Colonel Shaw, who commanded the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first negro regiments organized, and was killed in an unsuccessful attempt to carry Fort Wagner by assault.

THE END