NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 209 



inside first, and then plan the outside to cover it. Braidings should have 

 an ethnological character. They should express to other ages the wants, 

 customs, and habits of the age of their construction. A Grecian temple 

 was intended for external worship. An old Greek would laugh to see us 

 construct a Gn eian terople for a treasury building or a raeetii:g house. It 

 should have no windows in it, and should be entirely too dark for such 

 uses. But it is easier to copy than to originate ; and hence our servility. 

 The material should alter the character of the structure. The Crystal 

 Palace was, par c.rcd/cnce, the building of the nineteenth century. Its 

 material, its history, its purposes, were unprecedented. It is a Avant of the 

 times to build so that our hotises can be taken down and transported. 



The most nourishing time for Architecture is while a people are in a 

 semi-barbarous state. The Press supplants it in importance when it comes 

 into use. A Gothic cathedral is good to worship in, but not at all fitted to 

 preach in. A building admirably adapted to the wants of the twelfth 

 century would be strangely out of place in the nineteenth. 



The mind has no innate cognitions of beauty in architectural details. 

 The stout marble pillar we recognize as essential to the support of a heavy 

 weight only until we find a stouter pillar of greater ability to support 

 weight, which yet may be of smaller dimensions. A bronzed iron pillar of 

 a few inches diameter satisfies the mind ; but if we paint it to look like 

 stone, it seems insufficient, and our taste is shocked. 



NOTES ON ACOUSTICS AND VENTILATION. 



The prosecution of the works at the "Washington Capitol having been 

 transferred to the War Department, the Secretary at War deputed Captain 

 Meigs to the special charge and direction of the works, which, under his 

 supervision, have progressed in a manner highly creditable alike to the 

 liberality of the American Legislature and the reputation of those to whom 

 they have been intrusted. On examination of the reports from various 

 officials employed in the erection of this structure, it is particularly ob- 

 servable that proper provisions for the effectual warming and ventilation, 

 as well as the best means for insuring an equal dissemination of the voice 

 of speakers, have been made during the progress of the works ; and not, 

 as is too often the case in our own country, left until after the completion 

 of the building, when alterations are objectionable, not only from their in- 

 convenience and expense, but from the apparatus, &c., involved in these 

 matters being so frequently unsightly and out of all character with the 

 architectural design of the structure wherein they are placed. 



The results of the experiments and observations of Captain Meigs, in 

 connection with the interior arrangements of the "Washington Capitol, will 

 ba found to contain much that is exceedingly valuable and universally ap- 

 plicable. We give, therefore, his " Notes on Acoustics and Ventilation, 

 with, reference to the new Halls of Congress." 



These notes were submitted to the consideration of Messrs. Bache and 



