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ways showily painted, either of a bright red with white lines upon the seams, or of a clean looking yellow. In many of the more recent ones, the lintels and steps are of marble. Stone buildings are very rare.

Except the City Hall there is scarcely a public building deserving of notice. This is a splendid edifice, almost entirely of white marble; the architecture however is unfortunately very faulty, so that the very reverse of Ovid's description, "materiam superabat opus," is in this case applicable. Internal convenience seems to have been the presiding principle in its design, and a republican propensity to saving, exhibited in constructing the basement story of red free stone, and the dome of painted wood, has still farther injured its appear

ance.

The building is an oblong square with projecting wings, two stories in height besides the basement; with a portico of half the height between the wings, and a kind of lantern dome, supporting a figure of Justice. The portico consists of sixteen Ionic columns, springing from a handsome flight of steps, but unhappily surmounted by a balustraded balcony, in place of a pediment. In the front there are no less than between sixty and seventy windows; some of them flat and others arched, and a few with intervening Corinthian pilasters. The prevailing defect is the absence of simplicity and grandeur. The portico, in relation

to the building, is exceedingly dwarfish, and the windows with their minute ornaments break down the whole into too much detail; the injudicious use of red stone also, in the basement story, materially diminishes the apparent height. The principal entrance is by the portico in front; within is a handsome lobby, with a marble stair of elegant proportions leading to the second story, and from a circular railed gallery at the landing place, ten marble columns arise, supporting the dome. The apartments of the building, are appropriated to the use of the Common Council of the city, and the different Courts of Law. The chair occupied by the Mayor in the Council Room, is the same in which Washington sat, when presiding at the first Congress of the United States; and a full length portrait of this great man, with those of some others of the Revolutionary chiefs, adorns the walls. In the other rooms there is a profusion of portraits of officers who distinguished themselves during the recent conflict. It is remarkable, that in this building there is no room at all adapted for the purposes of a popular meeting; we may well wonder at this omission in the principal city of a republican state, where every Act of the Legislature is introduced by the proud preamble, "wE THE

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, BY THE GRACE OF GOD, FREE AND INDEPENDENT.'

A very few of the churches are of stone, but their architecture in general presents glaring speci

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mens of bad taste.2 The steeples are in some cases lofty, but always of wood, and though as gay as white paint and a gilt weathercock can make them, have to one from the old country an air of paltriness and insecurity; one of them is so exceedingly slender that it might not inaptly be likened to an enormous darning needle. In one of the principal churches, the architect, wishing to avoid the incongruity of a steeple rising above a Grecian portico, has placed it at the other end of the building; in

? After the above remarks on the general style of New York architecture were written, a number of the North American Review reached me, (a work to which I shall hereafter have frequent occasion to refer) containing extracts from 'Letters on the Eastern States,' published anonymously at New York in 1820, from which I select the following corroborative testimony.

"How few buildings in this country, either public or private, are constructed with a due regard to the principles of beauty, or a wise distribution as to convenience for the occupants. How often are they left to mere mechanics, who erect them with the aid of the Builder's Assistant,' with about the same degree of success that would be obtained in a correspondence guided by the Complete Letter Writer.' -There are in Boston, Providence, and in some other towns, places of public worship that are not destitute of merit, but it is united with great defects. It would be an invidious task to point out all these, but there are two cases where bad taste has operated to destroy a good effect where it might have been produced, that may be mentioned as examples. A church was built a few years since in Boston, for which the original design was very handsome. It was intended to be a parallelogram, with a Doric portico; the walls were plain with large windows, making only one story, and built of a beautiful white granite. Thus far the original design; but the plans of an architect have to pass through the hands of a committee. The first thing that was done was to add a steeple; a very pretty one; and this though a

this there is of course only a choice of difficulties, but the result is in the present case not happy, for the awkward position suggests to the spectator the idea of a tail.

In front of the City Hall is a triangular grass plot of half an acre or so, intersected with gravel walks, and skirted on two sides with a few poplars, which is dignified with the rather inappropriate name of the Park. Green turf however is scarce within the precincts of the city, and the natives may be

sort of monster in architecture, is justifiable from the agreeable effect it produces at a distance: no church indeed ought to be built without one; a village spire is always picturesque, and awakens pleasing emotions; and the effect of steeples and domes, in giving an air of animation and grandeur to a town, may be judged of negatively, by seeing what a dull, lifeless, unmeaning aspect, Philadelphia presents to the observer without, though it is such a handsome city within. The next alteration was to change the form to an octagon, a figure which is appropriate enough for a crystal, but is an absurdity in architecture. The portico was Doric, but these columns, though made of wood, were with an Ionic proportion! thus mutilating and destroying its whole beauty. To remedy this glaring fault, an addition which does not belong to the order was put on at the bottom, to diminish their dyspeptic appearance, that only increased the disorder. If it had been proposed to paint one red, one green, one blue, one yellow, it would have been scoffed at as absurd; and yet it would have been a less grievous blunder than has been committed for it is not uncommon in Italy to see columns of different coloured marbles in the same edifice, where the proportions are all alike. Fortunately these deformed columns are of wood, and must soon grow shabby. They will then perhaps be replaced by columns of the Nova Scotia freestone, which is easily worked, and is now getting into use here for every thing where the chisel is required." Vide North American Review, No. XXVIII. Pp. 86-88.

now,

excused although they overrate a little what they possess. The only other portions are the Bowling Green, and the Battery. The Bowling Green is a small oval enclosure, at the lower end of Broadway, in the centre of which once stood a leaden statue of our good old king; but when the natives threw off their allegiance to George the Third, they turned his representative into bullets, and fired them at his troops. The Battery is a stripe of ground at the southern extremity of the island, about a quarter of a mile in length, which in the days of the Dutch governors was the site of an earthen breast work, over which a few pieces of cannon presented themselves to the vessels coming up the bay; but the embankment has long been levelled and the guns thrown aside. It is now covered with a verdant turf, and shaded by the branching foliage of numerous trees; with a modern stone fort, of great strength, projecting from one corner of it into the

water.

In a summer evening the battery is a deservedly favourite promenade, and the prospect which it affords is very rarely to be equalled. The noble bay expands before it; bounded, on the left by the sloping hills and valleys of Long Island, in front by the Narrows about ten miles off, and on the right by the shores of New Jersey. Two or three forts appear, upon as many islands, and vessels of every size, from the seventy-four gun ship, to the sloop, at anchor or under sail. The cliffs of