Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/156

146 the "classical period," with its wooden pediments, its porticos of wooden pillars, and its dread of chimneys; but it was a fatal period, for all its folly. It established itself among us as the "official style;" gave us Washington Capitols, Patent Offices, Treasury Buildings, Girard College, United States Banks, Custom Houses, and keeps on giving them; to-day, even, builds us a new County House, pedimented and pilastered a la mode, and, in all likelihood, will give us a new Post-Office in the same style.

The period that followed the classical mania was one of transition. All the people who had money to build with, built pediments and pillars, of stone if they could afford it, which, thank heaven, very few of them could—otherwise, of wood, painted to look as much like stone as possible. If our readers remember, there was also a little spurt of philo-Egyptianism here and there, which left traces of itself in our "Tombs," and in the entrance gate of Mt. Auburn Cemetery, over whose sham, wooden sublimity Fanny Kemble, in her piquant and clever "Journal," bursts out into an honest fit of indignation. Beside these there were standing, till lately, a few private houses, their doors guarded by Sphynxes, and their fronts stuck about with cheerful emblems—scarabei, winged globes, dog-headed Anubis, Thoth, Ammon, and lotus. But this was mere pedantry and affectation; the whim of rich people, who, as usual, did not know what to do with their money. As for the great body of the people, if they had to build, they followed the true Gradgrind style, four walls and a roof, with holes for light and air, and larger holes for ingress and egress. Of architectural design, of beauty, of taste—from Dan to Beersheba all was barren.

At that time it would have been hard to prophecy from what quarter the next moulding influence would come. If a man had looked to culture, refinement, general education, to produce it, he might have supposed that Boston would be the true east for that sunrising; but, from first to last, the arts owe almost nothing to Boston, and the omens in that quarter are all as unfavorable to-day as ever they were. If art could be suckled on theories, all would go well with her in that pleasant Massachusetts country, but neither art nor artists thrive there. If by chance an artist gets born there, he has this choice presented very early: To jilt the muse, to starve, or to come to New York. If he be rich, he goes to Paris, gets airs, and comes back to sing monotonously for the rest of his days, "There is no art but French art, and Couture is its prophet." Therefore it happened that, though at the period we speak of. Dame Nature was doing a good many blessed deeds in Massachusetts; might have been seen in the twilight, if one had had eyes, leaning on a rail fence and musing over Concord; or, in bright, Summer days, ripening the huckleberries in the sunny Lexington pastures for the little tow-head Socrates, that he might earn his Greek