Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/155

Rh to be carefully measured and drawn-out, for it is not only very agreeably designed externally, but the plan is peculiar, and the construction of the roof presents some interesting points. If no individual will do this from enthusiasm, then perhaps the Institute of Architects will set some one at the task, and publish the result in a special monograph. Then, beside, there are the few wooden houses of the last century, left in such old towns as Gloucester, Massachusetts; houses that, to our thinking, have never been surpassed in this country in elegance of proportion, comfort of internal arrangement, or the purity of their ornamentation, although this last belongs to a poor period. There were three of these houses when we knew the beloved old town, and we presume that two of them are still standing and good for another hundred years. They belonged to Mr. Hough, to Dr. Dale, and to Captain Low. In the terrible fire of 1864, Mr. Hough's house, though saved, was seriously injured, and Captain Low's had to be blown up to prevent the spread of the flames. Here and there in our older cities, are to be found wooden spires, like that of the Old South Church in Boston, or cupolas, like that of the present New York Post-office, which show a man of taste and perception doing his best in a narrow field and with poor materials. Boston and Philadelphia preserve the most of these indications of a good day in the past, but New York, which had them in plenty, has been so flowed over by the stream of emigration and changing populations that her architecture has shifted back and forth, and taken all shapes, like the sand at the bottom of our bay.

Hardly anywhere in the country, however, is the study of the earlier building necessary to understand the building of the present. It cannot be said that there has been a growth, as in the older countries, from rudiments modified by successive occupations. Rarely, except in New York, has there been more than one occupation. The emigrants brought with them the architectural ideas of their time and country, and reproduced them in literal copies, carrying their desire to see home repeated so far as to import the very bricks from England and Holland, but they did not improve upon their models. Hardly ever were they able, in fact, to do more than copy in miniature and with diminished ornamentation, the buildings, houses, churches, halls, they bad left over seas. Then came the Revolution with its eight years of education, development, discipline; a time of hardship and poverty, suffering and loss, in which art and literature, learning and science, died in their birth, or lived a starved and dwindled life, and architecture had no better chance than the rest. After this came the "classical" mania, a pale reflection of the affectations of the French "First Empire," with its make-believe worship of Greece and Rome; and then came—nothing, and then, to-day. We laugh at