Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/255

Rh, in a time in which plays dealt so much with the supernatural, play-writers would have done nothing, had they not found full support in carpenters of superior capacity. The name of William Van Schepdael, a carpenter who, assisted by a mason, Henry Vits, covered an arm of the Seine, at Paris, with a vault some thousand yards long, supported by only eighteen hundred wooden pillars, in order to have the space utilized for building purposes, is unknown even to the majority of his fellow tradesmen, but his work remains, and is, even at present, one of the industrial glories of Paris.

In order to avoid repetitions, in connection with the history of carpentry in England, it will be sufficient to state that, begun as anywhere else, it kept step with the development of the country, yet we feel bound particularly to mention English ship-building. The geographical position of the land, which naturally determines its inhabitants' tastes for seafaring, explains the progress of ship-building there. Although the fleets of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, of Spain and Portugal, had, at different times, won great fame, England eclipsed them all.

It was the privilege of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries to fix carpentry on a thorough scientific basis. The works of Monge, his lessons of descriptive geometry; the profound works of Prony, on statics, hydrostatics, and hydrodynamics; the researches and discoveries of Lalande, Inghirami, and many others formed a wealth of scientific principles from the application of which carpentry naturally derived unspeakable advantage. Regular schools were founded, among which that of Monge ranks first. Thence have come Krafft, Hassenfratz, Morisot, and scores of carpenters who raised the art to the level of a science.

In several States of the Union the three stages of civilization alluded to in the beginning of our sketch are shown in a striking manner; there, on the same farm, the log-cabin, the frame-building and the brick house are still frequently seen; what has been in Europe the work of centuries, here has been that of a generation, and yet it represents an improvement on former work. It is a peculiarity of American frame-buildings to have all the improvements of the best built stone houses in Europe. Americans have done with carpentry what was before deemed to be a privilege of masonry and iron exclusively. If we dared express our opinion, we would say that, as regards architecture, carpentry is here ahead of masonry. In comparing the pleasant frame-houses of the American farmers with the half-ruined brick dwellings of the French and Italian peasants (who are, however, the most comfortable of European country people), it is to be doubted whether masonry is really indicative of a more advanced civilization. Were we not to make great allowance for the peculiar circumstances in which this country has developed its moral and material faculties, we would solve the question against the generally accepted theory, and proclaim carpentry still the greatest agent of progress. Carpentry