Paul.Well, Dorcas, now you have finished the book, what do you think of it?
Dorcas.I must confess, my expectations on the whole have been agreeably disappointed. From the criticisms I had read, both favorable and adverse, I was fully prepared to quarrel with it from beginning to end. I find in it much power and sustained interest. The descriptions of nature are admirable—fresh, unhackneyed, and vivid. Western New York, with its blue lakes, sloping hills, shining brooks, quiet woodlands, spring buds, autumn flowers, winding country roads, and laden grain fields, stands before one, clearly pictured. The characters, with theirisms, seem like old acquaintances, and the seething, fermenting condition of American society is most accurately represented. There is pathos, too, in the story, and many will read it with moistened eyes.
Paul.So far so good, but—?
Dorcas.But there runs through the entire work a vein of sentiment or philosophy, which wears a very suspicious resemblance to that of a certain school just now popular in France. I need not tell you, Uncle Paul, how distasteful to me is that school, nor how false I think the premises upon which it is founded. I am convinced there is a difference in the mental and moral constitution of men and women. I will not bore you by any disquisition upon relative superiority or inferiority, but will simply give you a portion of my idea as I find it laid down by St. John Chrysostom: 'Do not confoundsubmissionwithslavery,' says the golden-mouthed Greek. 'The woman obeys, butremains free; she isequalin honor. It is true that she is subject to her husband; and this is her punishment for having rendered herself guilty in the beginning. Mark it well; woman was not condemned to subjection at the time of her creation; when God made and presented her to her husband, He said nothing of domination; we hear nothing from the lips of Adam which supposes it. It was only after having violated her duty by leading him astray to whom she had been given as a support, that she heard these words: 'Thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee.''
Now, in the book under consideration, we are led to suppose that even the 'exceptional women' find submission and dependence, not only delightful, but absolute necessities of their being. They are only too happy tosuccumb to the powerful magnetism attributed to men by reason alone of their manhood. (A doctrine too repulsive to admit of discussion.) I fancy that thinking, sensitive, and high-spirited women have not yet ceased to find submission and dependence apunishment. They may take up their cross cheerily, and wear it gracefully, but none the less do they feel it to be a cross. As for pecuniary dependence, so long as all goes smoothly and matters are so arranged that the wife is not obliged to ask the husband for funds, the power of custom and of legal provisions may be sufficient to prevent any disquietude; but after the first misunderstanding, the first unkind word,hismoney, as it passes throughherhands, burns like coals of fire, and the bitterness of her heart, as she perhaps vainly longs for some means of employment by which to procure at least sufficient for her own personal expenses, would cause him a new and strange sensation, did she not deem it herdutyto suppress all evidence, even the existence, of such self-assertion, and quietly shoulder this with the rest, as a portion of the burden to be borne through the valley of humiliation into which she has entered, and wherein, by reason of the especial power granted her of knowing and loving God, she usually finds herself Heaven's own missionary, the keeper and guide of souls. Now, do not misunderstand me, Uncle Paul; when I say that marriage is a valley of humiliation, I intend no reproach to men; I simply state a fact dependent upon the nature of things, and upon the primal sentence passed against the pride that, in spite of the prohibition of the Almighty, sought to know all things, 'to become as gods.' Meekness, humility, self-abnegation, affection, are the beautiful flowers that grow by the wayside; but the pathway is not the less thorny, and no good can be accomplished by denying or sugar-coating the fact.
Paul. I do not doubt the correctness of your views, Dorcas; but your rather vehement statement of them somewhat surprises me, as you yourself married of your own free will, and at an age when women, if ever, are supposed to know their own minds.
Dorcas. That my own marriage has been a happy one, and that my good husband has striven, by recognizing my womanly as well as individual idiosyncrasies, to render the yoke as light as it possibly can be, is the very circumstance that gives me a right to speak and offer my testimony against ideas which I think wholly unwarranted by the facts in the case. The views of modern philosophers, attacking the sanctity of Christian marriage, are to me perfectly abhorrent. Deprive marriage of its mystical, sacramental, penitential character, and it ceases to be the bulwark of a well-ordered society. I must again call upon St. John Chrysostom to speak for me. He says: 'Marriage is one of the most surprising mysteries, by reason of the sublime character which belongs to it, of representing the alliance of Jesus Christ with His Church. The necessary consequence of which is, that it should not be contracted lightly and through interested motives. No, marriage is no bargain; it is the union of the entire life.' This is what true marriage should be; but in so far as mankind fall below the lofty standards set before them, so far does actual marriage fail to reach its glorious ideal. Meantime, reverence for maidenhood is one of the strongest safeguards of the sanctity of wedded life, and no delusions of any school, whether romantic, sentimental, Micheletic, humanitarian, or Lutheranistic, should be permitted to obscure this reverence. Neither my own experience, nor that of the young maidens best known to me, teaches me that the idle hours of women are haunted by dreams of some human lover, who must be found to save them from despair. I cannot think that marriage is essential to, or even best for, the happiness of women. If we enter the nearest institution of Charity Sisters, Sisters of Mercy, or of the Poor, we cannot fail to remark the contrast between the healthful, cheery, unsolicitous countenances of the inmates, and the nervous, suffering, careworn faces of the wives and mothers in our midst. Both live in the conscientious performance of equally estimable duties, but the pleasing of a Heavenly Master would seem to be a more peaceful and less wearing task than the gratification of an earthly lord. Let us hearken for a moment to an eloquent French theologian: 'Woman's nature, in some exceptional cases, rises to such a height of intellect and sensitiveness, that it ceases to be capable of accepting that subordination which constitutes the essence of Christian marriage. Think you there are not women athirst for the ideal; who are crushed by the commonplace of ordinary affections; who would go beyond that narrow circle traced round them by domestic cares? Give to such natures as good, kind, and conscientious a husband as you will, do you think he can ever satisfy the ardent longings of their mind and heart? Do you think they can find in the family the realization of the brilliant dream caressed by them from the earliest years of infancy? Do you not believe that they will constantly feel cruel disappointments, infinite tortures, and the deepest anguish?'
Paul. But if such be a true statement of the case, what are these good ladies to do?
Dorcas. The world has always need of intellect and enthusiasm, and these, directed by the spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice, without which nothing good or great can be accomplished, will point the way to the fulfilment of whatever may be the especial vocation of the individual. The author above quoted continues: 'Some heroic virgins have played so wonderful a part that, by the sublimity of their devotion and the power of their intellect, they have occasionally eclipsed the renown of the most illustrious men. A St. Catherine of Sienna was the light of doctors, the ambassadress of nations, the counsellor of popes, and the admiration of her age. A St. Rose of Viterbo, a charming and graceful child, became the intrepid buckler of Rome against the pretensions of the Ghibelline emperors. A St. Clara, by her ardent love for the poor and the Cross, was worthy of aiding the Seraph of Assisi in his admirable reform. A St. Theresa astonished the world by the grandeur of her character in the age of the Loyolas, the Xaviers, and the Francis Borgias.' To these few but striking instances we may add Joan of Arc, whose patriotism and valor saved her country from the dominion of the foreign invader, and, in our own day, Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix, together with hosts of courageous maidens, who in every Christian land yearly devote themselves to the service of suffering humanity. I should weary you, uncle, were I to pursue this subject into farther depths: suffice it to say that it is one which no man, however tender or talented, could ever exhaust, for there are chords in the feminine organization beyond his comprehension—strange chords, the resolution of which will be found only in that heaven where there shall be no marrying nor giving in marriage.
Paul. You mentioned Joan of Arc: did you observe that the author of 'Hannah Thurston' notices the fact, that while she has been poetized by Schiller, Southey, and others, no woman has ever yet made her the theme of song?
Dorcas. I was no little surprised to find such a reproach issuing from the lips of one who must have known that no man had yet sung her in his verse who had not violated the truth of history and smirched the beauty of a noble character, devoted solely to her country and her God, by picturing her as enamored of some mortal lover. Shakspeare must here receive his shareof blame, although the national prejudices still existent in his age may offer some excuse. Voltaire is not to be mentioned, Schiller twaddles through a tissue of sheer inventions and impossible absurdities, and even Southey, who strives to be faithful to history, thinks he must invest her with a 'suppressed attachment' in order to render her sufficiently interesting to be the heroine of a poem. (Inconceivable and insane vanity, that imagines no woman can live her life through without laying her heart at the feet of one of the 'irresistibles'!) The historic character of Joan of Arc has been terribly maltreated and misrepresented by every man who has attempted to portray it, with the single exception of the German historian, Guido Goerres, whose work, by the way, has been reverently done into English by two sister women.
Paul. Well, and the final conclusion to all this?
Dorcas. The final conclusion is, that a large portion of even the worthier souls in this world, is drifting away into a sea of materialism, shrouded in rose-colored mists of poetry and sentiment, and it behooves every earnest friend of humanity to sound the alarm, and at least strive to give warning of the danger.
'Far how can a man die better,Than in facing fearful odds.For the ashes of his fathers—And the temples of his gods!'
Macaulay'sBallads of Ancient Rome.
Alone—and widowed so early,Aged only twenty-one—Only so few of her years are past,And yet her life is quite done!Quite concluded her life is—Nothing for hopes, or for fears;Nothing to think of, or look to seeBut a barren desert of years!Slender, lithe little figure—Graceful and yielding form,Never again to be held in the closeClasp of a manly arm!Oh the sweet oval face,And the wonderful violet eyes!No more to be sealed with true kisses,And opened to love's paradise!And oh the sunny, brown hair,Which breaks into ripples and wavesO'er her sad brow—like the laughterOf young children over graves!Put it away under widow's weeds—Draw it as straight as you can:Never again will the dear little headBe held to the heart of a man.Dazed, she sits in the twilightOf the funeral-darkened room,Her whole soul gathered to listen—alas!For a voice that is stilled in the tomb.Dear voice, now silent forever!God help her! It seems a dream!She hopes, even now she may waken;But see yonder cruel sunbeam.How it wanders over the carpet—It lights up the distant room—It falls on his portrait—hisportrait!—His face shines out in the gloomAs warmly and loving as ever;—But, oh, there hangs under its frameThe sword he has wielded so bravely—The blade that has lettered his nameOn the tablets of Glory—erectedO'er the bodies of thousands of slain;Who have died to preserve the Republic!Ourloss—but the nation's great gain.Wring the small, white hands together—Clasp them close over the breast:—Prisoned heart, throbbing so wildly,Never again to know rest.Can you not leap and be joyful,Knowing the nation is free!Gentle-eyed Peace is but waitingSure of a welcome, to be.Ask not for pæans of triumphFrom 'only a woman's' heart:Alas! in the triumph of nationsShe hath but an humble part!Hers to be patient, and suffer—While her soul goes out to the frayWith the one who is dearer than heaven,To see him shot down by the way.Anguished, for drops of cold waterThat e'en to the vilest we give!Mangled and crushed and insulted!God! can I write it, and live!Fold the hands o'er the soft bosomBaby hands never caressed—Hush into patience the sweet lipsNever to man's to be pressed.There on the altar of nationsShe has given the soul out of her life:Holocaust greater was never:God help the poor, little wife!
Jamaica was discovered by Columbus himself, on the 3d of May, 1494, while prosecuting his second voyage. On his fourth and last voyage he was shipwrecked on its northern coast, and, through the cruel jealousy of the governor of Hispaniola, was detained there nearly a year before relief was sent. In the dearth of historical associations, I have sometimes pleased myself with gazing at the high summit of Cape Clear Hill, which is far and wide conspicuous along the northern shore, and reflecting that the eye of the great discoverer may have often rested upon it during his weary detention, endeavoring thus to raise present insignificance somewhat by linking it with the one illustrious name in the annals of the island.
Sevilla d'Oro, the first settlement of the Spaniards in Jamaica, was founded in 1509, near the place of Columbus's shipwreck. It soon became a splendid city. Traces of pavement are still discoverable two miles distant from the church and abbey around which the town was built. In a few years, however, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arisen. Even the cause of its destruction is not certainly known. It is supposed, however, to have been a sudden irruption of the Indians. These were of the same voluptuous and gentle race which peopled the other Great Antilles, but, like them, might have been roused to temporary madness by the diabolical cruelties of the Spaniards. If so, their brief revenge availed them little, for by 1558, the sixty thousand Indians, who inhabited the island when discovered, had been extirpated, it is said, to the very last one. Near the seashore in the east of the island are some caves, in which mouldering bones of the unhappy aborigines are still found, who had taken refuge here, preferring to die of famine rather than to fall into the merciless hands of the Spaniards.
After the extirpation of the Indians, the labor of African slaves was introduced. Some sugar was raised, but the greater part of the island was devoted to the raising of cattle and swine. Besides the few whites and negroes needed for this, and a small number at two or three seaports, the population was mainly gathered in the town of St. Jago de la Vega. This was built on the south side, a few miles from the sea, after the destruction of Sevilla d'Oro. At the time of the English conquest in 1655, during Cromwell's protectorate, the population consisted of twelve hundred whites and fifteen hundred negro slaves. They were summoned by the English admiral to take the oath of allegiance to England or to leave the island. But they declared that they could do neither; that they were born subjects of the King of Spain, and knew no other allegiance; and, on the other hand, that they were natives of Jamaica, and had neither friends nor kindred elsewhere. They implored him, therefore, not to exact an impossible oath, nor yet to turn them adrift in the wide world. But the misfortunes of Spanish Papists were a matter of little concern to English Puritans. They were expelled the island, but leaving their slaves in the mountain forests of the central ridge, they planted a seed which for generations bore bitter fruit to their cruel enemies. These slaves became the nucleus of those formidable Maroon communities which for generations were a terror to the island. Their masters, having conveyed their families across to Cuba, returned with a body of Spanish troops, hoping, in their turn, to expel the invaders. They intrenched themselves in a natural fastness that appeared impregnable, and an English messenger being sent to demand a surrender, the venerable governor, Don Arnoldo Sasi, it is said, ordered him to be shown around the fortification, that he might see that it was impossible to take it, and then dismissed him with a handsome present. But the English soldiers knew no such thing as an impregnable fortress; they soon stormed the height, and, as the Spaniards were fleeing along the cliffs, picked them off like so many crows. A few attendants hurried down the aged governor to the sea, and conveyed him across to Cuba. And thus perished the tranquil and happy colony of St. Jago de la Vega. The victors took possession of the deserted town, which has finally become the seat of government. But they changed its Popish appellation of St. Jago de la Vega to the homely but unimpeachably Protestant name of Spanishtown, which it still bears in popular use, although officially it has resumed its former designation. There were two Roman Catholic churches in the town, each of which gave the name of its patron saint to the street on which it stood. But the Puritans would know them only as Whitechurch street and Redchurch street—names which, I believe, still remain, curious monuments of Puritan scrupulosity in that southern land. Spanishtown has increased in population to about five thousand, and in its palmy days of slaveholding prosperity exhibited doubtless much pomp of vice-regal splendor. But this has long fled, and its sandy streets are now almost as silent and sombre in the glittering sunshine as if traversed only by the ghosts of the Spanish colonists who dwelt here in peace until ruthlessly thrust forth by the English invader.
After the conquest, the island filled up with English, partly by voluntary emigration, and partly by a double deportation from home, first of refractory Cavaliers during Cromwell's protectorate, and partly of mutinous Puritans after the return of the Stuarts. These often renewed in the streets of Spanishtown the brawls of the mother country, and the exclamation, 'My king!' which the negroes are fond of using, is said to be a genuine relic of the time when it was the watchword of the outnumbered but courageous Cavaliers. Even after the Restoration, the Puritans were for a while in the ascendant in the island which the Puritan protector had wrested from the great foe of Protestantism; but gradually all traces of that hardy sect disappeared from a land which an enervating climate and the rapidly advancing barbarism of slavery rendered far fitter for another sort of inhabitants, namely, the buccaneers. The buccaneers, it will be remembered, were not exactly pirates preying indiscriminately upon all. They were rather English corsairs, who took advantage of the long enmity between England and Spain to carry on, in time of peace and war alike, perpetual forrays against the Spanish settlements and commerce of the West Indies. They were simply the jayhawkers and border ruffians of their day, and, with some traits of chivalry, differed probably as little from pirates as Quantrell and his fellow scoundrels differ from robbers. This villanous crew early resorted in great numbers to Jamaica, which became as good a base of operations against a power with which England was professedly at peace as Liverpool and Greenock are now against another power with which she is professedly at peace. Dr. Arnold, in one of his letters, says he imagines the British West Indies have never recovered from the taint of buccaneer blood. It is hard to say, for the universal corruption of morals and justice induced by slavery, existing in the overwhelming proportions which it had in the West Indies, renders it almost impossible to measure how far any subsidiary influence of evil may have helped to aggravate the mischief.
Jamaica, like the other colonies, soon received a constitution. Like her sisters on the continent, she opposed a spirited and successful resistance to the early encroachments of the crown. When our Revolution broke out, her Assembly passed resolutions declaring their entire concurrence in the principles set forth by the Congress, and gave as the reasons for not joining in our armed vindication of them, their insular position, and the peculiar nature of their population. Had geography permitted, Jamaica would doubtless have made one Slave State the more in the original Union, and would have been one of the fiercest afterward in the secession. We may well believe that nothing but the knowledge that she would be crushed like an eggshell by the mighty power of England, hindered her in 1834 from heading her sister islands in a revolt against the impending abolition of slavery, and thus giving the world twenty-seven years earlier the spectacle of a great slaveholders' rebellion.
The history of Jamaica, otherwise so monotonous and devoid of interest, even to its own people, yet includes one awful event, the destruction of Port Royal by the earthquake of 1692. This city, built by the English soon after the conquest, on the tongue of land which encloses the present harbor of Kingston, soon became the most splendid city of the English in America. Its quays and warehouses, Macaulay says, were thought to rival those of Cheapside. This wealth and splendor were not wholly the fruit of lawful commerce, for Port Royal was the favored resort of the buccaneers. Their lawless forrays against the Spanish filled it with wealth, and filled it also with voluptuous wickedness.
Tradition adds, perhaps to give emphasis to its doom, that just before the earthquake, a successful expedition had filled the city with booty, which loaded the warehouses, and even overflowed into the dwelling houses and verandas. But the stroke of judgment came, and a few shocks of an earthquake in a few seconds buried the greater part of the dissolute and splendid city beneath the waters of its own harbor. The decaying bodies that were thrown afterward on the shore produced a pestilence which swept off three thousand of those who had survived the earthquake. The sad remnant went over to the inside shore of the harbor, and built Kingston. A poor village of some twelve or fifteen hundred souls, adjoining the naval station, is now all that represents the once wealthy and wickedcity, the Sodom of the West, and smitten with a fate like that of Sodom.
The same earthquake which destroyed Port Royal, almost ruined the island. Whole plantations changed their places. The mountains were strangely torn and rent. In many parts the immense accumulation of earth fallen from the mountains choked up the course of the streams for twenty-four hours, and when at last they burst their way through, they bore down on their swollen floods thousands of trunks of trees, branchless and barkless, to the sea. The gorge of the Bocaguas, through which the Rio Cobre winds in a glorious succession of cascades and whirling pools, is said to have been entirely filled up, causing the waters to overspread the upland basin of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale with a lake, which lasted nine days before the waters tore loose from their confinement, and swept over the plains to the ocean. There was evidence of a slight subsidence over the whole island. The earthquake of 1692 is undoubtedly the most desolating convulsion of nature which has ever befallen any portion of the English race.
For generations after the destruction of Port Royal, it was affirmed that the spires and housetops of the sunken city could be discerned on a clear day through the waters of the harbor. Even now there is a floating belief that they may occasionally be dimly descried, though I have never been able to ascertain whether it is worthy of credit.
Since then, although there are often shocks of earthquake, sometimes several in a year, and though some have occurred quite destructive to property, there has been none to divide with that of 1692 its awful preeminence of desolation. It is true, we know not at what time such a one may come, and it has been truly said that 'this beautiful island may be regarded as a gorgeous carpet spread over the deeply charged mines of a volcano.' Hurricanes, though very much less frequent than in the Windward Islands, have yet left their traces in the annals of Jamaica. Particularly noted are those of the 28th of August, 1712, of the 28th of August, 1722, and the series which, with the exception of two years, annually ravaged the island from 1780 to 1786 inclusive. It was in one of these that the town of Savanna-la-Mar was so completely overwhelmed by the sea, driven over it by the force of the wind, that when the flood rolled back to its home, not the slightest vestige of the place was discernible. In such a region the petition of the Litany, as it is here offered, 'From lightning, tempest, andearthquake, good Lord, deliver us,' falls on the stranger's ear with unwontedly solemn force.
The awful magnificence of these convulsions of nature is in strange contrast with the insignificance of the record of human actions in this island. Not that Jamaica was an insignificant member of the empire. Far from it. The teeming source of wealth, she was, on the contrary, during the whole of the eighteenth century, continually increasing in importance. Even dukes were glad to leave England to assume the princely state of a governor of Jamaica. Six hundred thousand African slaves were introduced during the last century, of which number something over half remained at the beginning of this. Human blood flowed in fertilizing streams over the island, and out of this ghastly compost rose an opulence so splendid as to silence for generations all inquiry into its origin or character. It secured its possessors not only easy access, but frequent intermarriages among the aristocracy of England, who thus in time came to be among the largest West Indian slaveholders. Jamaica was justly reckoned one of the brightest jewels in the British crown. But the brilliancy was merely that of wealth, and as the ownership of this was transferred more and more to Great Britain, the island itself at length came to be of little more independent account than anoutlying estate. Petty squabbles between the governors and the Assembly, occasional negro conspiracies, soon suppressed and cruelly punished, and the wearying contests with the remaining negroes, who, under the name of Maroons, long maintained a harassing warfare from their mountain fastnesses, and yielded at last to favorable terms, are almost all that fills the chronicles of the colony.
The island society, unrelieved by any eminence of genius or virtue, or by the stir of great public interests, presented little more than a dull monotony of sensuality and indolence, on a ground of inhumanity. It is no wonder that Zachary Macaulay, from his experience in Jamaica as the superintendent of an estate, formed in quiet sternness that resolution to devote his life to uprooting a social system whose presiding divinities he saw to be Mammon and Moloch, which he afterward so nobly fulfilled. The graces and virtues of private character that lent some relief to this dreary picture, I shall speak of hereafter.
One relief to the prevailing dulness of Jamaica life was found in a bar of first-rate talent. There was so much wealth passing from hand to hand, and so many disputed titles in the continual mutations of ownership among the estates under the reckless system of conducting them prevalent, that the disciples of the law found a rich harvest, and it was worth while for a first-rate man to settle in the island. It is thought that the lawyers of Jamaica used to receive not less than £500,000 annually. Whether this was reckoned in sterling money or in the island currency, I do not know, but probably the latter, equivalent to £300,000 sterling. Of men not lawyers, Bryant Edwards is the only one of the last century or the early part of this of any note whatever among those permanently settled in the island. His chief claim to distinction is found in his carefully prepared and judicious 'History of the West Indies.' Beckford, the author of 'Vathek,' and Monk Lewis, christened Matthew, the patent ghost-story teller of half a century ago, and more honorably connected with the history of the island as a proprietor, whose inexperienced kindness toward his negroes had almost led to his prosecution, both resided in the island for a while. Jamaica had almost drawn to herself a name far more illustrious than any or all which had appeared in her annals—that of Robert Burns. It is known that he had already engaged his passage to the island, when the course of events turned him from it. He celebrates his expected departure in some verses more witty than moral, in which he addresses our islanders as follows:
'Jamaica bodies, use him weel,And hap him in a cosy biel,Ye'll find him aye a dainty chiel,And fu' of glee;He wadna wrang the very deil,That's ower the sea.'
Poor fellow! had he really gone, the admonition to 'Jamaica bodies' to 'use him weel,' would probably have been obeyed by making him drink himself to death ten or twelve years earlier than he did in Dumfries, and thus would one of earth's great, though stained names, have been lost in the inglorious darkness of a Jamaica bookkeeper's short life, as many a young countryman of his, perhaps not less gifted than he, had perished before him.
Among the distinguished personages of Jamaica, I ought not to omit mention of the Duke of Manchester, governor soon after the beginning of this century, who was able to boast that no virtuous woman had crossed the threshold of the King's House in Spanishtown during his administration. So that if Jamaica has never had herparc-aux-cerfs, she can at least boast her Regent Orleans. There is small need of any specialparc-aux-cerfsin a slaveholding country.[22]
In brief, except a certain interest attached to the struggles of the barbarous Maroons to maintain their wild freedom in the woods and mountains, the human history of Jamaica, from the English conquest in 1655 to the abolition of slavery in 1834, is little more than a monotonous blank.
She had a vigorous bar, a sumptuous church establishment, and boundless, though shifting wealth. But all these together, smitten as they were with the palsy of voluptuousness and oppression, had not the power to bring forth one great name, to achieve one heroic deed, or on the other hand, to foster any growth of humble, diffused happiness. Her sin, plated with gold, dazzled the eyes and confounded the consciences of men, but, like the ornaments of a sepulchre, it only beautified outwardly what within was full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.
Those events of her history which bear on the abolition of slavery will be specially noticed hereafter.
The rule held, anciently, that a nation's architecture was the exponent of its national character, growing with and out of its social, civil, and religious peculiarities, and modified by climate, habit, and taste. In those early ages, the halcyon days of the art, men built with a purpose, built what they wanted in a natural and appropriate way, and—built successfully. So true was this, that to this day, most of their relics proclaim their own origin, just as fossils determine the relative positions of their enclosing strata, and history owes to architecture the solution of many of her hardest problems. The ancient Egyptians, for instance, gloried in the erection of the most magnificent tombs that their genius could produce, and, ruined as they are, we find that it is in their sepulchral monuments—the rock-wrought mausoleum, and the stupendous pyramid—that their art-current found its readiest flow. Compare these with the light and graceful structures of the Moors, the cool, arcaded courts, and the tesselated pavements, the orange trees, and the fountains. 'But no comparison,' says Fergusson, 'is applicable to objects so totally different. Each is a true representative of the feeling and character of the people by whom it was raised. The plaster Alhambra would be totally out of place and contemptible beside the great temple-palace of Karnak. No less would the granite works of Egypt be considered monuments of ill-directed labor if placed in the palace of the gay and luxurious Arab fatalist, to whom the present was everything, and with whom the enjoyment of the passing hour was all in all.'
Still another idea, grander than any aspiration of Saracen or Egyptian, we find, when Europe, slowly shaking off the lethargy of the Dark Ages, was developing the idea of religion. It was material, however, as well as spiritual. God was glorified, not only by repentance or holiness of life, but also by the devotion of hand and heart and fortune to His earthly temples and the jewelled shrines of His saints. All that impetus which is now given to religion itself, was turned into the channels of religious art. And yet, temporally speaking, how grand were the results! Slowly but surely arose those vast and wonderful cathedrals, springing lightlyout of the quaintly gabled streets, with their richly wrought transepts and their pinnacled spires. Not trailing along the ground like the Greek temple or the Arab mosque—of the earth, earthy—but leading the soul heavenward with their upward flow of harmony. Vast Bibles of stone, bearing on lofty façade and on buttressed flank the sculptured details of Holy Writ—silent lessons, but not lost upon the rude though reverent men who dwelt within their shadow. It is sad to think that there can never be any more cathedrals. For theygrewin those times: now they would have to be built.
But we are following a tangent. Our idea is, that architecture, to be good, must be appropriate—expressive of the spirit of the age. It should be an epitome of the nation's progress, an abstract of its guiding principles, condensed, as it were, and crystallized into an art. Of what use would a garment be, though ever so elaborate, if it did not fit? Just so our houses, which are but a broader kind of clothing, should be fitted to their purpose, or they will never yield us any pleasure.
Suppose that, in searching the ruins of ancient Greece, we found nothing but pusillanimous, sham imitations of Egyptian art. Would we not despise such a paltry method of making matter serve for mind—such a miserable make-shift to save the labor of invention? And yet it is this same servile imitation of classical and foreign models that is fettering the progress of art in America. Instead of honestly constructing what we want, and then decorating it with a style of ornament that should assist, explain, and intensify it, we go wandering off to the ends of the earth, building Grecian temples and Veronese palaces, some entire and some in slices, dreary, indefinite-looking objects, devoid of all constructive principles within, and ornamented with falsified gewgaws without, stuck on in the hope of hiding rather than helping out the flimsy design. Our 'national style' we are sure can never be born of any such travesties. Borrowed architecture never fits well.
The fact is, we ignore the first great principle—the essence andsine qua non, of the art—DECORATED CONSTRUCTION. By construction is meant that mechanical arrangement of parts which is best suited to convenience and most conducive to stability. It is what the French would call themotif, the end in view, while decoration is only the means. And the moment we lose sight of it, in our anxiety to make room for some pet ornament, that very ornament becomes an eyesore, and will persist in spoiling the design, for the simple reason that the end is sacrificed to the means. Set it down, then, at the start, that ornament must be dependent upon construction, and not construction upon ornament. The useful begets the beautiful, and the order cannot be reversed.
But before proceeding to what American architecture might be, we must, in all fairness, examine it as it is.
Our great cities, of course, claim our attention first, for these centres of wealth and intellect must necessarily be centres of art, and there, if at all, are we to discover our prospects for a national style. As a single example of what it has attained to so far, nothing can be better suited to our purpose than Broadway, New York, our best-known and most essentially American thoroughfare. But what to compare it to we know not. Neither history nor geography affords a parallel. It resembles neither the London Strand nor the Parisian Boulevard, nor is it like the Ludwig Strasse of Munich, nor the Grand Canal of Venice; and yet it has something or other in common with all of these. There is all the incongruity of the English thoroughfare and the brilliancy of the French, while the frequent succession of vast palatial structures allies it still closer to the last-named examples. Perhaps, after all, the Grand Canal—the silent highway of the City of the Sea—is more like it ingeneral effect than any other street in Europe. The one, it is true, is as straight as an airline, and the other nearly the shape of an S; the one a paved roadway, noisy with the rush of traffic, and, in the other, the water washing the very walls of palaces that are mournful and deserted—while, as regards style, there is scarcely a single specimen of the Venetian in this country.
But the resemblance is this: your prevailing impression from first to last is the absence of all general arrangement, and the independent elegance of each separate façade. Each tells the same story: it is the wealth and enterprise of the citizen, and not the munificence of the sovereign, that has added palace to palace, and made the dumb stones eloquent. Remembering, then, that it is private taste and influence that is to develop our art, we proceed to the analysis of the great thoroughfare in question.
Fancy yourself, patient reader, at one end of this street, so as to command its vista. What do you see? Architecture? Very little, we imagine. Save the buildings immediately at your right and left, all the others are seen in profile, a contingency never reckoned on by their builders. The decoration is all piled on the front, as elaborate a design, often, as Palladio ever dreamt of, but at the side, every cornice and stringpiece stops as short as if it had been sawn off, and the whole side is a flat blank piece of brickwork. This is greatly aggravated by the disparity in height, and the ponderous cornices. As to construction, the prevailing type is a flimsy pile of brick and timber, 'put up,' apparently, by mutual connivance of the contractor and the coroner, and screened off from the street by a thin veneer of 'architecture.' Now there is a certain merit,sui generis, in a clever deception, but those in vogue here are too utterly transparent to claim even this. The telltale wall of brick cheats you out of the pleasure of cheating yourself, no matter how charitably disposed.
Were it necessary to represent this street upon the stage, the decorator would simply have to paint his scenes upon the edges, and leave the side toward the audience bare. As you walk along you see a given building sideways for five minutes or more, but you cannot see it as it was meant to be seen—full in front—for as many seconds. We even know of churches in the cross streets, though near Broadway, whose square towers are stone-fronted after the usual fashion, but present nothing to the crowded thoroughfare but undressed walls of brick! Yes, a Christian church,in flagrante delictu.
It will be objected to this that there is no use in finishing the sides of city buildings, as they may afterward be hidden by others. This would do well enough if they were all of the same height; but they are not, and never can be. Indeed, a house is by many considered 'handsomer' than its neighbors, just so far forth as it overtops them. The builder would hardly think it a fair beat if the cornices corresponded. The successive erections on a row of vacant lots, usually illustrate this popular ambition. Some one secures the corner and builds his house. So far, so good. Presently number two comes along, and, to secure himself from invidious comparison, piles his house half a story higher than number one. But his triumph is short, for the third aspirant soon arrives, who, true to principle, takes another step in the ascending series. So it goes till the block is finished, the whole thing looking as if architecture was a sort of auction, in which the prize of success was awarded to the highest builder.
It being one of our social necessities that our houses differ in size, we must pay some attention to their sides. Not giving them as decided a treatment as the front, but something compatible with a plain surface. And, above all,the principal cornice and roof lines should be carried round on the sides, at least as far as they can be seen. In some rare instances, where this has been done, it is astonishing to note the improved appearance andfinish, that it gives.
Did you ever consider the superior elegance of a corner house? Yet it is not so much the position as the fact that the position is taken advantage of. Being finished on both sides, it gives to the mind the idea of thickness as well as length and breadth. It is, in short, asolid, while the affair next door, overtopping it perhaps a story or two, is merely asuperficies.
But this is only a side thrust. Our 'commercial palaces' challenge the same criticism face to face. For the front, considered by itself even, is generally incomplete. A supposititious formula determines that the house must be in the Italian palace style, but the narrow lot forbidding an entire design, the builder, as he cannot put in all, puts in all he can, so that, instead of the house being a house, it is only a specimen slice of a palace. It has no particular beginning or middle or ending, and, with the long viscera of brickwork trailing off behind, it looks as if just wrenched out of the side of some Florentine or Genoese mansion. And, in very truth, is it not?
The common cause of these errors and incongruities is our self-abasement to a style which depends for its effect upon continuous uniformity of design, while, from the very nature of our society, our houses must be diverse in size and pretension. We are a social people, it is true, but our individualities are strongly marked, and our dwellings, while designed with reference to each other, should never be too uniform. How frightful those white-shuttered brick piles which monotonize the streets of Philadelphia! But to assert its individuality the house need not shoot up like a vein of trap rock through a stratum of conglomerate: an American rises, not through the mass, but out of it.
Have you ever seen a street view of Bruges or Nuremberg, those fantastic old cities of mediæval Germany? You remember them, the tall gabled houses with projecting stories, the picturesque grouping of porch and gallery and oriel, the curious old bridges and the Gothic fountains, the grotesque carvings over the doorways, and the perfect population of dormer windows and turrets and lanterns. And did you not,entre nous, like it better than those stiff, formal views of the French and Italian cities? Was not the poetry more pleasing than the prose?
'Oh well,' you say, 'these turrets and gables and things look all very well in pictures, but they would never do for our streets: we must build in some regular style, you know.' The same old error again, the same servile imitation of a vague something or other, which we call classic. Do you think the old German burghers built in any regular style? Not a bit of it. They built just what they wanted, in the most natural and plain-spoken manner. If they wanted a porch over the door, or a bay window at a certain corner, or a turret to enjoy some favorite view—they made them, put them just where they were needed. Convenience was everything, and precedent nothing.
Is there not something about this individual originality, this perfect freedom of thought and expression, that might be adapted to express the American character? And if more pleasing, why cling to the effete and cumbrous tyrannies of a soulless classicism? Why crush out all symptoms of natural growth to make room for the unsightly exotic?
Nature herself has made the law that beauty isvariety. Monotony, though magnificent, will become irksome, but variety is an unceasing delight. Versailles, with its formal avenues of shorn foliage, and its geometrical lawns and terraces, may please youmore at first sight than an English park, because the mind feels a sort of pride in being able to grasp such vast ideas at a glance. But you will find, upon a second or third visit, that the unnatural arrangement of the French pleasure grounds has something of staleness about it. Nature disdains such bondage. Louis XIV, it is said, grew weary of his splendid plaything, almost before it was finished. How different the English landscape garden, where graceful sweeps and irregular masses of foliage meet the eye with unlooked-for beauties at every turn! Well do we remember how, after a few days spent in viewing the grand dullness of the Bavarian capital, we looked wearily back to the delightful visit we made at Nuremberg, with its curious old streets and fountains:
'Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song;Memories haunt thy pointed gables like the rooks that round them throng.'
To claim the merit of variety for our streets is wrong, for they are not varied, but only incongruous. Their variety is rather that of an architectural museum than the result of any combination. We have styles enough, in all conscience, but none that will tolerate any other.
Against this may be urged the very argument with which we set out, that a nation's architecture should be the exponent of its national character, and as we are made up of every people and every class, that this heterogeneousmélangeis our normal style. But mark the distinction: Although we are made up of so many diverse elements, yet the component parts are severally and mutually held in solution. Each so affects the mass as to give rise to a new element—not a mere union, but a result—not an addition, but a multiplication. But with the representative art, the materials have merely come in contact—nothing more. Our houses lack that social element which characterizes our people. Each is itself, and itself alone, ruining the appearance of its neighbors, and ruined by them in turn.Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo, is the only law; while we are a chemical solution, our architecture is only a mechanical one.
How proceed, then, to develop our national style, that unborn something which a future age might refer to as American, just as we speak of Byzantine or Gothic? Are we waiting for somebody to invent it? We think, maybe, that it is to spring forth, ready made, like Minerva from the brain of Zeus. If this is our idea, we might as well give up at once and confess to the world our imbecility. Never, from Adam's day to this, did anybody ever invent a new architecture. It is purely a matter of genealogy. For just as we trace back a family line, can we trace the generations of art. Spite of its complications, many an offshoot can be followed up directly to the parent stock. Taking, for example, the mediæval architecture of Spain, the brilliant 'Moresco,' we find it to be a combination of the vigorous Gothic of the North with the beautiful though effeminate Saracenic—the exotic of the South. And of these latter, each is traceable, though by different lines, to the same great prototype, the Roman. For when Rome was divided, the Dome fell to the inheritance of the Eastern Empire, and the Basilica (which was only a Greek temple turned inside out) to the Western. The former, joined to the Arabian, and the latter to the Gothic, formed two great families, from the union of whose descendants sprang the Moresco. But even the Roman was a derivative style, leading us back successively through Greece, Assyria, and Egypt. Each step is visibly allied to the preceding, and yet how unlike the pyramid and the Spanish cathedral! Did history permit, all the styles that have ever existed could be traced in the same way; it is quite as easy to account for their diversities, as for those of the nations that produced them. Ham and Japheth were of the samehousehold, yet how different their descendants of to-day! As from one man sprang all people, so was there an original germ of architecture from which all successive styles have been derived.
The composite forms that have arisen since commerce and civilization have brought the ends of the world together, increase the complication. There have been marriages and intermarriages, some good matches and some bad ones, some with vigorous and some with sickly offspring, and some hybrids of such monstrous malformation as almost to make us fear that a new style can be invented. But the effect is impossible without the cause. Save the mysterious Pyramids, every structure extant acknowledges its ancestry. If physiologists are fond of claiming the history of the race as one of their own chapters, architecture has at least an equal claim.
But all this does not mean that we are mere passive agents in the matter.Weare, in a great measure, the 'external influences' that modify art. The motion exists, but it devolves upon us to give direction.
We have already alluded to Venetian architecture as being parallel in origin and tendency to our own, and much can be gained, we believe, by a careful examination of what it accomplished. Not that we ought to copy, line for line, the doge's palace or the Casa d'Oro—the arabesque arcade, or the Gothic balcony—that would only be following the well-worn rut of imitation. We are not to study the result, but the cause. For the causes that produced the style in question were not unlike what we find at home to-day. A commercial republic, there was the same liberty of expression—the same preponderance of the individual over the national; and there, as here, are we attracted rather by the elegance of independent units than by any general unity of design.
But the growth of art in Venice (we ask special attention) was due to her central situation, and the simultaneous influx of foreign elements. It was her commerce that made Venice great: her glory came and departed with it. Witnessing, as she did, the development of all the mediæval styles, she became—geographically and historically—the metropolis of architecture. 'The Greeks,' says Ruskin, 'gave the shaft, Rome gave the arch, the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch.... Opposite in their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the North and from the South—the glacier torrent and the lava stream, they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman Empire; and the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck, isVenice.
'The ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal proportions, the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of the world.'
Truly, it was a glorious success that art achieved in the Italian republic, Whether the old precedents were violated or not, the result is unquestionably pleasing, and the pleasure-seeking tourist lingers there as long as the critic.
At this transition state, through which Venice passed so nobly, have we now arrived. We have collected our materials, and piled them up together, but just as all seems most propitious,le mouvement s'arrête, the materials will not coalesce. The brass and the silver, the iron and the gold, are all in the crucible, but there is no fusion, only a discordant clash.
Alas! there is no heat. We are not warmed, as yet, with any love for art. We are too much absorbed in the rapid accumulation of wealth, or the passing excitement of the hour, to attend to anything that is noble or honest or beautiful. And now that devastating war is sweeping through the land andclogging the wheels of progress, we are learning terrible lessons; but, with experience for our teacher, learning them well. Where war prevails, civilization for the time must stand still.Inter arma silent—artes. And so long as we consider art a marketable commodity, and consign it, like merchandise, to soulless builders, so long will it remain in hopeless embryo. Only by taking a personal interest in it can we hope to make it our own.
So much for what we have done. There is little to be proud of, and little, we hope, that will influence our future art. To which we now turn our attention.
To begin with, great public buildings will never form a distinguishing feature of American architecture. It is to be preeminently a domestic style. Herein shall we differ from the European nations, for in art, as in politics, the people are the rulers. It is discouraging, at first thought, to reflect that no such magnificent architectural combinations as those of the French capital can ever find place in an American city. They are grand, they are superb, these endless successions of palaces and gardens and triumphal arches, with groves and fountains all in perfect symmetry, and well-balanced vistas radiating in all directions; but they are the result of centuries of despotism—of the impoverishment of the many and the aggrandizement of the few. This, we hope, is not to be the fashion in America. It is true that the ground plan for the city of Washington exhibits a design analogous to the above, but we think it will be a long time before it exists elsewhere than on the map. The Greeks and Romans, we know, confined their efforts to public buildings, but that was their business. They served their Governments, but our Government serves us: the spirit of the age points in an opposite direction. Since we are so fond of the classic, why not have chariots for carriages, and triremes instead of gunboats and steamers?
Our real style will first appear in our residences and warehouses, in our banks and hotels and railroad depots. It sounds odd, but it is manifestly so to be. We are a commercial republic. Old European palaces and cathedrals are doubtless very grand, and—for those who need such things—most excellent models. But with us the private element already predominates; we only need to begin honestly, and the thing is half done.
Our national dread of Gothic, except it be for church purposes, should be done away with. The Gothicprinciple, we mean; the style we may follow or may not. But to be sincere and constructive, to build with a purpose, we must do as did the mediæval builders. In their hands, our daguerrean sky-lights and shot towers, our factory chimneys and signboards, would have become glorious objects, become useful objects. Their art did not confine itself to one day in seven; it permeated the commonest details of every-day life, because they were common. Hence they ennobled everything.
But the Romans, unfortunately, never had any shot towers, or hotels, or railroad depots, and so we think such things exceptions to the ordinary rules of architecture. But after all, perhaps, this is all the better for their future, as it leaves them comparatively untrammelled. In the matter of railroad depots, England has certainly stolen a march upon us, the large city stations in that rail-bound country being perfect Crystal Palaces in size and elegance, while those for the more rural places are often the most exquisite little villas, unapproachable in neatness and taste. In some parts of the Continent, the Swiss style has been pressed into this service with notable success.
In regard to fire-alarm towers, we rejoice to be able to make an exceptional remark. New York city has actually produced two or three of these of new and elegant shape, perfectly adapted to their purpose; and yet, so far as weknow, not copied from anything else. Those in Sixth and Third avenues have a grace of outline that is really elegant, and show what we can accomplish if we only build what we want in a natural and appropriate way.
Nothing, however, is to exert a vaster influence on our style than the hotel. This 'institution,' as we have it, is comparatively unknown in Europe; beyond all nations are we a travelling and hotel-building people. Our hotels have not grown up with the scant traffic of the post chaise ordiligence; they overleaped that feeble infancy, and started at once with the railroad and steamboat. Large, luxurious, and well appointed, they are usually the prominent buildings in all our large cities.
But as yet it is only their size and social importance that distinguishes them, not their architecture. The recipe for a first-class city house is simple: a vast square front of white, with ninety-six or a hundred and forty-four windows, as the case may be, all alike, and all equidistant. The variety afforded by this arrangement is much the same as that of an uncut sheet of postage stamps. In such large masses, a single color—white especially—is always disagreeable, unless treated with some variety of form. Brick, with stone dressings, will almost invariably produce a finer front than stone alone. But, after all, the most desirable kind of variety is that which seeks to express exteriorly the inner arrangement of the building, by giving some degree of prominence to the principal rooms. As to interior, our hotels neglect a grand opportunity in making no capital of the central space they generally enclose. This, instead of being abandoned to cats and ash barrels, might be made the feature of the establishment. Fancy such a court roofed over with glass,[23]and surrounded with light arcades of ironwork forming a continuous balcony at each story, arrange a garden in the centre with a fountain, and give the whole a sort of oriental treatment, and what a really elegant effect could be produced! The main entrance in this case would be, not on the street, but on one of the sides of this inner court, while an arched carriage way, to connect with the street, would render vehicles accessible under cover. The arcades, connecting all parts of the house, would take the place of halls and corridors, besides forming delightful promenades. Some few hotels could be named, in our large cities, which seem to have the germ of this idea, but we know no instance of its complete development.
Still we have great hopes of the hotel, because it is the place of all others which it is to our interest to make look well. People go to the post office all the same, be it a barn or a parthenon, but they will go, other things being equal, to the best hotel. Here comes in the American principle of Competition, the keynote of all our enterprise. Competition is to do for us what the hope of earthly immortality did for the builders of the Pyramids, what the desire to glorify God did for the builders of the cathedrals. It is to be the soul of our art: what sort of a body it is to put on, we shall presently see. Even now it is safe to assume that no more such granite prisons as the 'Revere' or the 'Astor' will be built for hotels. Lightness, variety, and vivacity will more probably characterize this style.
Theshop frontis something that we must have in some shape or other, and, if fairly treated, it would become as decidedly American as business is. It is susceptible of great variety, but care must be taken that it harmonizes with the superstructure. How often we see massive structures of marble, five stories or more, supported on basements of plate glass, apparently; while the real supports are carefully concealed! The best method, so far tried, seems to be that in which the columns are made sufficiently prominent to show their object, and are surmounted by arches,which give a good basis for what comes next above, while affording sufficient window space to the store front.
But we must make up our mind to part with those hideous signboards, which trail their loathsome length across our best buildings, regardless of console or capital or cornice. For the importance of the sign renders it constructive, and it has as much right to take part in the design as a door or a window. Instead of being pinned on like an afterthought, it should be built into the wall, panel fashion, and by a little taste in the selection of the style of letter, it might become one of the most striking features of the whole front. Color would be better for the letters than relief, being more economical and more easily altered.
Our warehouses and even our factories might become imposing objects if appropriately conceived, for is not labor ennobling? Anything that is worth doing, is worth doing well; and if any of our manufacturing towns are hideous, they are not necessarily so.[24]There is a certain grandeur about many such places, with their myriad chimneys and ponderous wheels and whirling engines, that deserves a corresponding grandeur of expression, and some of our Pennsylvania ironworks already afford splendid examples of this. We have seldom been more impressed by the grandeur of mechanical operations than on a recent night visit to one of the large rolling mills of Scranton. The whole interior, vast as a cathedral, was brilliantly lighted by the numerous operations in molten and red-hot iron that were everywhere in progress, and, with its gleaming furnaces, ranged on either hand down the long vista, and glowing here and there from the galleries, really made us feel prouder of our race than did many a dim, dilapidated temple of the Old World.
As to churches, we cannot expect much, except that they will be tasteful and commodious audience rooms, commensurate with the importance of their congregations. The religion of to-day appeals to soul, and not to soul and sense. The world is older and better educated than in the cathedral era, and the apostles and prophets are read, not from sculptured doors or painted windows, but from the printed page and the winged word. Childhood, that cannot read, requires gaudily painted primers for its instruction and amusement, but the world is a grown man now; the press has superseded the cathedral, and if we imitate those structures in our churches, we should bear in mind that it was their size that gave them grandeur, and that they would be caricatures without it. We have heard our American church interiors spoken of somewhere as divisible into two classes—the charlotte-russe style and the molasses-candy style. This is not true, we hope; but there is too much truth in it, for it shows the influence of a too close imitation of European palaces and churches, and the hard shamming that has to be done to make this imitation apparent.
If our rural architecture has been more successful, it is because our better class of country houses are planned with reference to the landscapes they occupy. A rich level meadow with here and there a waving elm requires a different style of house from a fir-clad bluff on a river bank or a wild gorge in a mountain. No intelligent architect, we take it, would design a country house without an intimate acquaintance with the surroundings, and yet the same man, likely as not, would make you a sketch for the elevation of your house in town, without even looking to see what it was to adjoin on either side. Now this method may be correct, but it seems to us that, by first putting on paper the existing houses, say one ortwo, on each side of the space to be built upon, the new front could be much better planned, and much of that unnecessary discord avoided which destroys so many of our best streets. This is what is done in painting and other arts, and why not in architecture? Particular situations require particular treatments. A front that would appear well on a narrow street, would be inappropriate on a broad avenue or a square. A corner, or the head of a street, are most responsible situations. A tall marble front, placed in a modest row of freestone, is hideous, and yet the unrelieved monotony of many such rows is quite as bad. A dome, unless at the top of a street or on some open space, is next to worthless. Who would ever notice Boston State House or the Baltimore Cathedral, but for their elevated and central positions?
We often find among the old masters elegant architectural paintings, street views, taken from the picturesque cities they lived in. We should like to find some one bold enough to paint a street view of Broadway or Washington street or Chestnut street.
It is a pity that our architects are unwilling to acknowledge the importance of thebuttress. Concerning this feature, it is not easy to say whether beauty or utility is most apparent. It is the very idealization of strength, and hence its inherent elegance. Suppose Nôtre Dame or Milan Cathedral stripped of their double tiers of flying buttresses. Would you not say that their glory was gone—their beauty departed? And yet the old builders did not pile them up against their naves for mere beauty's sake. By no means. But they knew the immense weight of their vaulted roofs, and anticipated the outward thrust of the walls. That was the problem, and most fairly was it met. They counteracted the outward pressure from within by an inward pressure from without, and there was the buttress. But what if they had said, We are not going to spoil our fine churches by sticking props all around them, and had resorted to concealed bedplates and invisible rods of iron, would their structures have been better or nobler or more enduring? Fortunately, they gave themselves no concern, as to how they would look—for architecture was honest in those days—they simply built them, allowing decoration to come in afterward in its proper order; and thereupon the buttress became the distinguishing feature of Gothic art.
Perhaps this is the very reason why we so neglect it; but symptoms are already appearing which lead us to hope that gothophobia is on the decline, and not the least of them is the outcropping of something that would be a buttress if it dared to, but hides its real intention under a classic mask, and passes off as a pilaster or a panel border. But it has a guilty look, and the sooner it puts off its borrowed garments the better. Certainly the demand for it is immense. So long as we are a commercial people, vast warehouses, piled from cellar to roof with heavy merchandise, must abound in all our cities. And yet how utterly incompetent would many such buildings be to stand alone! So long, too, as we are a manufacturing people, must we have huge mills crowded full with heavy apparatus, vibrating machinery, andhuman lives. Have we forgotten Lawrence? Let us not wait for another such holocaust ere we learn wisdom. We can do without ornament, but we must have safety. A mere increase of dead weight is no remedy; there should be a well-studied mechanical disposition of material. If buttresses are applied to warehouses and factories with sole reference to their utility, elegance will grow upon them afterward as naturally as leaves grow upon trees.
Material must depend much upon locality, but iron is undoubtedly to hold an important place in our architecture. Already it is extensively used, but does not seem to command generalfavor. The reason is that nearly everything that has been done with it so far is not iron architecture, but stone architecture done in iron. We do not let it speak its own language; the truss, the tie rod, and the girder are kept out of sight, while every possible display is made of consoles and cornices and Corinthian columns and balustrades, and all sorts of foreign expressions. No wonder that it is unable to give an account of itself with all these false witnesses. Stone houses should be made of stone, and if made of wood or iron or plaster, they are nothing but shams, unenduring and unsatisfactory.
Now architecture requires the least amount of material that is compatible with the greatest amount of strength. The forms of different materials must be varied to suit their texture, according as it is fibrous or crystalline, tough or brittle. Iron, of course, requires a peculiar treatment. At the risk of being charged with pedantry, we say that there have never been but two iron buildings, of any pretension, in this country—the Niagara Suspension Bridge and the Crystal Palace at New York. The first still speaks for itself; and of the latter, no one who saw it can forget what an exquisite structure it was, so light and airy and elegant, and yet so strong. It was but a bird cage, though, compared with its enormous prototype at Sydenham. That is unquestionably one of the wonders of the world; its internalcoup d'œilis without a parallel. Fancy a broad level vista, a third of a mile long, flanked on either side by graceful groves of ironwork, and covered with a continuous crystal arch, a hundred feet above your head; line it with a profusion of tropical foliage and clambering vines, that grow as luxuriantly as in their native woods, and interspersed with statuary and vases gleaming everywhere through the rich masses of verdure, while here and there fountains of rare and exquisite design, rising from broad marble basins, relieve without lessening the immense length—and you may have some faint idea of this peerless structure. 'No material is used in it,' says Fergusson, 'which is not the best for its purpose, no constructive expedient employed which was not absolutely necessary, and it depends wholly for its effect on the arrangement of its parts and the display of its construction.' It is in iron what Gothic is in stone.