AMERICAN AECniTECTURE. 



town with its tasteful hall, school houses, library, theatre, museum, banks, courts of 

 justice, &c., cheerfully erected and gi-acefully arranged by its free and enlightened 

 inhabitants — for their own use and pleasm-e of course-— but with a wise regard for 

 mutual advantage and individual enjoyment, that ensures the sympathy of every 

 passing stranger, the more readily too, as each discovers that he, even he, has been 

 thought of, and that some study has been expended to give him pleasure ? No ; this 

 is not a result to be looked for at present. Does the secret of beauty lie in the private 

 buildings, the stores, the ware-houses, the mansions, the villas, the hotels, the streets, 

 or the cottages ? There are probably as magnificent hotels and stores in the large 

 cities of America as any where in the world. Architecture, within the last ten years, 

 has managed to get a genuine foothold in this department of building ; it has begun 

 to pay^ and that i-s truly an excellent sign, and one that offers food for reflection and 

 solid encouragement : yet it is the few and not the many even here that speak of 

 refinement and a love of gi-ace, which is as averse to meretricious display as it is to 

 ungainly awkwardness. Among the private residences a great number are excellent, 

 but still the mass are unsatisfactory in fonu, proportion, color, and light and shade. 

 What is the reason of all this ? WTiy is there comparatively so little beauty in 

 American buildings ? Some will say America is a dollar-loving country, without taste 

 for the arts. Others, that expense is the obstacle, and that the republican simplicity 

 of America cannot afford the luxuiy of good architecture. 



The latter of these solutions is clearly incorrect, for it is knowledge and not money 

 that is the important source of any pleasurable emotion that may be caused by a 

 building ; indeed, a simple, well planned structure, costs less to execute for the 

 accommodation obtained, than an ill planned one, and the fact of its being agreeable 

 and effective or otherwise, does not depend on any ornament tliat may be superadded 

 to the useful and necessary forms of which it is composed, but on the arrangement of 

 those forms themselves, so that they may balance each other and suggest the pleasant 

 idea of harmonious proportion, fitness, and agreeable variety to the eye, and through 

 the eye to the mind. All this is simply a matter of study before building, not of 

 additional cost in building. 



The other solution of the problem, that Americans do not appreciate the beautiful, 

 and do not care for it, or value it, is a more specious, but equally erroneous one. 

 There are doubtless many obstructions that have hindered and do hinder the develop- 

 ment of correct taste in the United States ; but it is not that the spring is dry, but 

 that these obstacles prevent its water from flowing freely : and yet there appears no 

 real difficulty that earnestness and ordinary patience may not overcome. One impor- 

 tant evidence of a genuine longing for the beautiful may be at once pointed out. 

 Almost every American has an equally unaffected though not of course an equally 

 appreciative love for the country. This love appears intuitive, and the possibility of 

 ease and a country place or suburban cottage, large or small, is a vision that gives a 

 zest to the labors of industrious tliousands. This one simple fact is of marked impor- 

 tance ; it shows that there is an innate homage to the natural, in contradistinction to 

 the artificial — a preference for the works of God to the works of man — and no 



