176 [Assembly 



Upon the subject of architecture, there has been a great deal of 

 misapprehension and error palmed off upon the public, \vhich it is 

 our intention in part to correct. How often have we heard it re- 

 marked, that we in modern times have retrograded in the knowledge 

 of architecture, taking the position, that inasmuch as we have had 

 no occasion to throw away money in building monumental pyramids, 

 and other massive constructions, that we are unable to grasp with a 

 subject so vast. Is this the case ? It may be recollected, that in 

 the re-building of the Merchants' Exchange in the city of New- 

 York, that a few men, aided by a couple of horses and the use of 

 machinery, hauled up from the wharf at the foot of Wall street, 

 those elegant but massive pillars, which now ?dorn the front of that 

 building; that the same men and horses elevated them into their pla- 

 ces in about two hours each. 



Had the weight of those pillars been ten times as great, a single 

 horse and less men, could have raised th^m with equal ease in forty 

 hours each; by which we have the proof that by the use of machine- 

 ry, which the ancients had no knowledge of, a single horse may be 

 made to elevate a larger mass of building material into place, than 

 we have any account of being used in the construction of those nu- 

 merous structures of ancient days, found near the river Nile in Egypt, 

 whose magnitude and greatness have so much astonished modern tra- 

 vellers. 



Present a demand upon a modern architect, to build in one half 

 the length of time which was taken by the Egyptians to erect those 

 alluded to, and a pyramid of ten times the extent, and each block 

 ten times the weight ever used in a building, and they would en- 

 gage in it with a force of men not exceeding as one to one hundred 

 employed by the Egyptians, and one half of these would be repre 

 sented by the steam engine. The facts are, that in the absence of 

 Despots, we have no occasion to imitate their grand follies. 



Require of an engineer of the present day to construct an aque- 

 duct forty miles in length, passing through and tunneling moun- 

 tains, crossing over large streams of water and deep hollows, bring- 

 infT the waters of a larg-e river to, and distributing the same to the 

 hand of half a million of people, and the work is done; the Croion, 

 like the pure air of Heaven flows for all; too common to be classed 

 araonji the wonderful things of earth. 



That the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, at a very early day pos- 

 sessed a deep knowledge in the art of stone cutting, and a high and 



