Architecture in the United States. 249 
dations in the most rapid torrents; and, leaving the earth filled with 
monuments of its power, ascends to the stars, measures and weighs 
the sun and the planets, and determines the laws of their motions, 
and can bring under its dominion those cometary masses that are, as 
it were, strangers to us, wanderers in the immensity of space; and 
applies data gained from contemplation of the sidereal cane Me to 
measure and establish time, and movement, and pe a below.”* 
(Discourse V.) 
To conclude, we look upon Sir Humphry Davy as having afford- 
ed a striking example of what the Romans called a man of good for- 
tune ;—whose success, even in their view, was not however the re- 
sult of accident, but of ingenuity and wisdom to devise plans, and of 
skill and industry to bring them to a successful issue. He was for- 
tunate in his theories, fortunate in his discoveries, and fortunate in. 
living in an age sufficiently enlightened to appreciate his merits ;— 
unlike, in this last particular, to Newton, who, (says Voltaire) al- 
though he lived forty years after the publication of the Principia, had 
hot at the time of his death, twenty readers out of Britain.t Some 
might even entertain the apprehension that so extensive a popularity 
among his cotemporaries, is the presage of a short-lived fame; but 
his reputation is too intimately associated with the eternal lawit'ot 
nature to suffer decay ; and the name of Davy, like those of Archi- 
medes and Galileo and Newton, which grow greener by time, will 
descend to the latest posterity. O. 
Arr. Il.—Architecture in the United States. 
To my former remarks on the importance of this subject to our 
country, I beg leave to add a short extract from Lord Kames’ Ele- 
ments of Criticism, which is valuable as it brings experience to our 
Support, the best support in our reasonings about men. 
“I add another observation, that both gardening and architecture 
contribute to the same end, by inspiring a taste for neatness and ele- 
gance. In Scotland, the regularity and polish even of a turnpike- 
road has some influence of this kind upon the low people in the neigh- 
bourhood. They become fond of regularity and neatness ; which is 
Edinburgh Review, Oct. = t Playfair, Diss. II. 
Vol. ‘XVII he 9 : 
