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 5 and 

 that business, not taste, must engross the attention of a young nation* 

 We are jjrepared 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 feeKngs 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 inaterials should be adapted to his object, but they should neve? 



