Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/241

Rh from grateful respect to Daniel Wadsworth, Esq., who, in addition to other liberal donations, freely gave for the public good a spot hallowed by the sacred memorials of his ancestors.

This new edifice, which is an ornament to the city, is of light, grey granite, laid in large blocks, and unhewn. Its style of architecture is Gothic, of the castellated character, massive, and with little decoration, but strongly marked by its towers and battlements.

The interior is divided by walls into three equal compartments. The principal rooms are in the second story, each seventy feet long, thirty wide, and from twenty-five to thirty in height. One of these apartments is occupied as the Library of the "Young Men's Institute," comprehending at present about 10,000 volumes; and by their reading-room, which is well supplied with European and American periodicals. Another is appropriated to the Fine Arts, containing pictures in history, landscape and portrait, with a department for sculpture; and a third accommodates the archives of the "Connecticut Historical Society," which comprise five thousand bound volumes, beside multitudes of pamphlets and manuscripts.

The "Natural History Society" has its Collections, and holds its meetings in the lower story; where are also smaller apartments for the accommodation of the various objects connected with the Institution.

May the benevolence that projected and completed this fine structure, dedicating it to those objects that