Architecture in the United States. 103 
doing it already. We have a vast advantage on this subject, and it 
is surprising how little we have felt it. We have yet to choose the 
sites of what are to be large towns and cities, in a generation or two: 
we have to plan them, with full choice as to convenience or beauty; 
we have most of our public buildings to erect; we build from one 
to three hundred private edifices yearly, in each of our large cities ; 
we have a population enlightened, and capable of appreciating beauty 
in these things ; and we have the whole world to choose our models 
from—or what in some of them is better still—to travel over, and 
from which to collect beauties, and form a model for ourselves. 
_ Let no one urge that we are not prepared for these things; that 
they require wealth and leisure, which we have not for them; and 
that business, not taste, must engross the attention of a young nation. 
We are prepared for them. It is as easy in planning a town to con- 
sult good taste and beauty as not to do it, and unless this is done 
now, the odds are greatly against its ever being done. It is as easy 
to build in good taste as not, if good models were only before us. 
And here let me express my regret that we have so few of them, 
and my hope that the deficiency will soon be supplied. I can con- 
ceive no greater benefit than would be conferred on his country by 
him who would go abroad, and collect there the best specimens of 
architectural beauty, whether in public or cheap private edifices, and 
place the whole before our community in a form that would be ac- 
cessible to all and easily understood. For this the public certainly 
are prepared. We are prepared also in pecuniary resources. Taste 
is perfectly consistent with simplicity, indeed, cannot exist without it. 
The best specimens of architecture which we have, I mean the Greek 
temples, are characterized by simplicity in every part. Many of them 
are of costly substances it is true; but many of them also are of the 
plainest materials; and yet by these last the traveller pauses with 
the warmest admiration, his feelings kindle, and he finds a powerful 
effort necessary to tear himself away. The material indeed is al- 
ways of secondary consequence : it is the “mens divina,” the chast- 
ened and powerful intellect diffused through the labors of the true 
architect, that gives the force to their charm. It is nobleness of de- 
sign, vastness and grandeur of conception, proportion and harmony 
of parts, that are, or ought to be, the aim of an artist, and the object 
of our attention in his works. Stone, and mortar, and wood, are to 
him only subsidiaries, and ought to be by us little regarded. ‘True 
his materials should be adapted to his object, but they should never 
