Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/72

 52 Sloan's Architectural Review and Builders' Journal. [July, clearness would be clouded, as the trans- parent waters of the Mississippi after receiving the turbid flood of the Mis- souri — the Capital had better return here. In times long gone by, we justly lost it by parsimoniousness, having been out-bidden in the offer of land by Maryland and Virginia ; or rather, we believe, having refused to give any land at all ; but Philadelphia is the birth- place, the bulwark and the natural Capital of the Republic, and holds the position best adapted to the com- bined wants of commerce, manufactures, and government. London is sixty miles from the sea ; Paris, as the crow flies, one hundred and fifteen, with the disadvan- tage of a much longer voyage by its narrow, crooked river ; so that while London is its own port, Paris requires Havre in that capacity. Philadelphia, by the windings of the Delaware, a much finer stream than the Thames, is only fifty miles from the ample, open bay, and but a hundred from the open ocean. We would not admit the assembled wis- dom of the nation within the built por- tion of the city, but provide a grand locality out on some of the hills of the -Schuylkill, or the Wissahickon, in the immediate neighborhood of the great Park, that is to be. And when the Capi- tol shall be re-erected, there will arise a fitting opportunity of making its centre, now of friable, dirty, whitish-gray sand- stone painted white, of white marble, the same as are its much finer wings. Now it does not typify either the found- ers or the progress of the nation prop- erly. As the founders were greater men and better men than any public genera- tion of their successors, the main build- ing should have, if any difference, better material and finer ornament than the wings, at all events it should not compare unfavorably with them ; and its grounds should be healthy, spacious, adapted to the necessary accompanying public buildings, full of natural variety and picturesque beauty, and heightened with all the appliances of high art. The natu- ral we have, the artificial we can pro- cure ; and it is to be supposed that the commonwealths of the East, at this alert age of the world, will be at least as gen- erous, at least as full of forecast, as those of the West. Should the Capital come, nay, return, hither, so much the better for the Capi- tal, so much the worse for ourselves. We neither need, nor want it. This ar- ticle has merely been evoked by the de- sire for an exposition of the fitness of things. What we say of Philadelphia we believe to be true ; if true, her pre- dominance will be manifested in the ful- ness of the future, and will be all the same, whether she shall or shall not be the titular Capital of the United States. To all intents and purposes the Capi- tal at Washington is about the same as if at Philadelphia or New York; and whilst assuredly no patriotic New Yorker would patiently listen one in- stant to the claims herein set up for Philadelphia, he would surely main- tain that the " great cosmopolitan me- tropolis " and the " overgrown provin- cial village" combined, are, in every essential thing, the two hubs of the uni- verse on one side of the axle, with their circumferences everywhere ; and that Boston, the previous conscious hub, and Baltimore, which would like to be one, — both of them young little giants, by no means arrived at their full growth, — are merely two very snug wheels within these other wheels. At the same time, in view of the in- evitable, sketched in these paragraphs, we recommend that the Capitol and the Capital remain quietly where" they are ; and that, instead of the White House, a new and stately Presidential Mansion be built far away from the autumnal miasma of that reach of the Potomac now graced by the modest home of the Executive. Above all things, let us make no move, if possible, at least, no distant move, until the wealth of Asia sweeps hither across the Pacific ocean and the far western plains.