Architecture in the United States. 263 
umphal arches erected among us at the visit of that great, good man, 
LaFayette, not one remains. I believe all have already perished. 
That was a bright spot in the history of our country, I should rather 
say in the history of the world: it was honorable to human nature : 
it was almost above human nature; and as the whole nation rang with 
shouts of grateful welcome to its benefactor, angels might have ming- 
gled with pleasure in the scene. How I wish posterity could have 
some striking, tangible memorial of the event. He only who has 
stood before such memorials, those stelae to the proud ages of the 
past, can know their effect on the mind. We venerate them for their 
antiquity ; our feelings grow softened and sedate before them; the 
lesson they teach is heard with reverence ; all can understand it, and 
if it be good, all will be made wiser and better by it than by almost 
any other means. It was then with a true knowledge of human na~- 
ture, that Joshua ordered his people to convey twelve stones from 
the middle of Jordan to the banks, and added, “when your childrer 
shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying what mean these 
stones? then ye shall let your children know, saying, &c.” H 
we an arch to commemorate the visit of that warm, noble heart- 
ed, tried, good friend, posterity would place onit a value, compared 
with which, the gold itmight have cost would be a poor and despica- 
ble thing. They would lead their children to its base and would 
teach them there to love a country that had realized more ‘than the 
highest fictions of the warmest heart ; to love their forefathers and to 
love all their race. It is now too late, but regrets for the past are not 
futile, if they tend to make us wise for the future. i ang 
Let them make us wise for the present. I must beg the reader’s 
permission to convey him to Marseilles again, for a few moments. 
There is in one of its streets a doric pillar, a simple and plain object, 
but with the following inscriptions on its base. 
* To the lasting memory 
of the intrepid men 
whose names here > 
Langeron, Commandant of Marseilles. 
De Pilles, Captain Governor Viguier. 
(Here follow the names of sixteen other distinguished men, officers 
and physicians.) 
They devoted themselves 
for the safety of the Marseillois 
in the horrible plague of 1720. 
