A FEW WORDS ON OUR PROGRESS IN BUILDING. 215 



houses," as they call every thing but a solid square block alto- 

 gether. Others have become weary of " Gothic" (without, perhaps, 

 ever having really seen one good specimen of the style), and suggest 

 whether there be not something barbarous in a lancet window to a 

 modern parlor ; while the larger number go on building vigorously 

 in the newest style they can find, determined to have something, if 

 not better and more substantial than their neighbors, at least more 

 extraordinary and uncommon. 



There is still another class of our countrymen who put on a 

 hypercritical air, and sit in judgment on the progress and develop- 

 ment of the building taste in this country. They disclaim every 

 thing foreign. They will have no Gothic mansions, Italian villas, or 

 Swiss cottages. Nothing will go down with them but an entirely 

 new " order," as they call it, and they berate all architectural writers 

 (we have come in for our share) for presenting certain more or less 

 meritorious modifications of such foreign styles. What they de- 

 mand, with their brows lowered and their hands clenched, is an Y 

 " American style of architecture !" As if an architecture sprung up 

 like the after-growth in our forests, the natural and immediate con- 

 sequence of clearing the soil. As if a people not even indigenous to 

 the country, but wholly European colonists, or their descendants, a 

 people who have neither a new language nor religion, who wear the 

 fashions of Paris, and who, in their highest education, hang upon the 

 skirts of Greece and Rome, were likely to invent (as if it were a new 

 plough) an original and altogether novel and satisfactory style of 

 architecture. 



A little learning, we have been rightly told, is one of the articles 

 to be labelled "dangerous." Our hypercritical friends prove the 

 truth of the saying, by expecting what never did, and never will 

 happen. An original style in architecture or any other of the arts, 

 has never yet been invented or composed outright ; but all have been 

 modifications of previously existing modes of building. Late discov- 

 erers have proved that Grecian Architecture was only perfected in 

 Greece the models of their temples were found in older Egypt.* 



* According to the last conclusions of the savans, Solomon's Temple was 

 a pure model of Greek Architecture. 



