Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/17

 1868.] Introductory Review. INTRODUCTORY REVIEW. FOR the instant, we design taking such a hasty glance over the coun- try at large as may be had by the curious traveller after attaining the dom- inant crest or peak of any particular region. What he gains in prospect he loses in landscape; prospect being an imperceptible gradation from map to bird's-eye view ; landscape, the aspect of surroundings from a comparatively low outlook, with air-softened reaches ■ of the distance. Applied to our specialty, prospect is ensemble and landscape de- tail. In these preliminary remarks, we necessarily drop the particular for the general. In no one attribute is the contrast more marked between the old world and the new, than in the effect of human " improvements" — not always improve- ment — upon the face of nature or the busy mart. In the trans-Atlantic coun- tries new buildings arise and old ones are felled ; but, with few great excep- tions, the intelligent traveller may turn and re-turn through the whole of a long life, and not lose his way for lack of the time-honored landmarks. In the cis- Atlantic and north temperate regions, and more particularly inside the domain of the United States, it is perilous to a man's acquaintanceship with his own birthplace, or home of several decades, to leave it for five years. A very curi- ous exemplification of this occurred to the writer, a number of years since, on the New York Central Railroad. At some point on the south side of the track, between Albany and Syracuse, was a new water-and-wood station, apparently about a half mile long. At its eastern end, amid the forest, proceeding west- ward from Albany, men were levelling the ground, under the direction of a sur- veyor ; a few rods onwards, others were digging foundation holes; a little fur- ther, laborers had collected rough stone, wherewith masons were laying founda- tions ; somewhat beyond, other masons were squaring and proving the hewn stones resting on similar foundations ; a short distance ahead, carpenters were framing timbers ; farther along, other carpenters were adjusting joists, already framed, to the squared stone bases ; on- ward and ever onward, were others erecting posts and studs, levelling joists, adjusting tie-beams and wall- plates, the ridge-pole and the rafters; others weather-boarding and shingling, and finally a considerable portion of the work at the extreme western end, just finished, resounded with the hiss of a little stationary steam-engine and the ring of a circular saw, reducing the bulk of surrounding cord-wood into food for the locomotive, and flinging it rapidly through an open doorway, probably not in existence the day before, into great heaps alongside the track. Here was a spectacle which, without indulging in even a feather of the wing of the spread-eagle, could have been seen nowhere in the world, except in the United States. For aught we know, after fulfilling its purpose, this wooden structure may have vanished as rapidly as it appeared, and a town of several thousand inhabitants now, at the end of ten years, enliven and adorn the spot. In passing, we must observe that, considering the abundance, not only of eagles, but of spread-eagles, in conti-. nental Europe, it is a little queer that spread-eagleism should all be confined, or at least imputed to the United States. There was the close Roman eagle, perched upon thunder-bolts, careless of peril, in his own mind lineally represented by the close French eagle of the First Empire, perched upon a rock, as on an eyrie, calmly observant of the world, and making a greater spread than any