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 j 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 children 

 shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying what mean these 

 stones ? then ye shall let your children know, saying, &;c." Had 

 we an arch to commemorate the visit of that warm, noble heart- 

 ed, tried, good friend, posterity would place on it a value, compared 

 with which, the gold it might 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. 



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 follow, 

 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." 



