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obscure grave on an open and disregarded bit of land, I could not help feeling most acutely. Before the earth was thrown down upon the coffin, I, placing myself at the east end of the grave, said to my son Benjamin, Stand you there at the other end, as a witness for grateful America.' Looking round me, and beholding the small group of spectators, I exclaimed, as the earth was tumbled into the grave, Oh, Mr. Paine ! my son stands here as a testimony of the gratitude of America, and I, for France !'"

Whether this simple rite was more honorable to Thomas Paine than a statelier funeral bought by the sacrifice of principle, may be left to the judgment of the reader.

RECENT ARCHITECTURE IN AMERICA.*

Among the Anglo Saxon race, during the greater part of the nineteenth century architecture was almost a lost art. At about the beginning of the last decade, the popular taste in this direction had sunk to perhaps the lowest point ever reached. There had been ages of dulness before, but no other had produced so many large and costly buildings that were absolutely vicious in design. This is more especially true of the United States, where every state, every county and every town has a state house, a court house, or a "city hall," pretentious and costly in proportion to its means. These public buildings must be taken as an expression of the average taste; and, with a few exceptions, they are the worst examples of architecture that the world has ever seen. They almost make one despair of representative government, and the only consolation about them is that they are not fire-proof.

The first signs of the dawn of a brighter day were an effort to revive the Gothic and to give it a practical modern character. But the attempt to create a Victorian Gothic only emphasized the depth of ignorance and bad taste that had been reached; and this Nineteenth Century revival died in giving birth to the socalled " Queen Anne" style. This was the weakest child of all the ages, and, fortunately, it died young. Since the style of Queen Anne became as dead as the Queen herself, a movement has begun which seems to give promise of a popular awakening to good architecture. There are some hopeful signs about it, but it is too early to predict any great or permanent results. There are still too many indications that in our country architecture is a creature of fashion, whose style may be changed

* AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE. Studies by Montgomery Schuyler. With Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers.

as capriciously as the cut of our clothes or the shape of our hats.

The people are not altogether to blame for this. The architects are largely responsible for it, as they have flitted from one style to another like butterflies among flowers. Many of the successful architects have been, and some of them are still, willing to design a building in any desired style, Grecian, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Byzantine, Neo-grec, or Moorish. No good architecture has ever come, or ever will come, from such a process of selection. No man can speak a halfdozen languages equally well, and no architect can master all the styles. The best work of our age has been done by a man of genius, Mr. Richardson, who had also the good sense to recognize the limitations of human life, and devoted all his time and energies to making one style his own. It matters not so much what the style, as that it be followed persistently until it is fully mastered.

It is evident, however, that we cannot hope for universally good architecture until the people are taught to distinguish the good from the bad. There are now many young architects who are earnestly striving to do good work, and there are intelligent and scholarly critics who are enthusiastically conducting a crusade in behalf of a nobler and truer art; for in this work of education the critic is as necessary as the architect. Among these workers for good is Mr. Montgomery Schuyler, whose studies in American architecture, originally published in a magazine, have recently appeared in book form. The work as a whole has some defects which are inseparable from a compilation of disconnected articles; but the articles are all admirable in tone and spirit, and the book should be welcomed as a valuable contribution to popular education on a very important subject. Mr. Schuyler writes about our more recent architecture in a scholarly and judicial manner, giving generous praise where it is due, and, where occasion requires it, indulging in such scathing criticism that one's

heart warms to him.

The first chapter, called "The Point of View," is a report of an address by the author before the National Association of Builders, and serves as an introduction. It contains a

quotation from an architect, whose name is not given, which is witty, and too true, even yet: "American architecture is the art of covering one thing with another thing to imitate a third thing, which, if genuine, would not be desir

able." In this address the author pays a welldeserved tribute to the memory of John Welborn Root, which is at the same time a good text for a discourse on architecture:

"Mr. Root's buildings exhibit true sincerity-the knowledge of the material with which he had to do, the fulfilment of the purpose which he had to perform. . . . I don't know any greater loss that could have happened to the architecture of this country and to the architecture of the future than that man dying before his prime."

The second chapter, "Concerning Queen Anne," was written while that style was struggling for existence, and shows a vigor of denunciation which justifies the belief that the author may have contributed to its early demise. After describing some particularly bad dwellings in New York, he says:

neighbor could make it other than a vigorous and
effective work, as dignified as the Board of Trade is
uneasy, and as quiet as that is noisy.
. . It may

be significant, with reference to the tendency of West-
ern architecture, that this admirable building, admira-
ble in its sobriety and moderation that are facilitated
by its moderate size, is precisely what one would not ex-
pect to find in Chicago, so little is there evident in it of
an intention to collar the eye or to challenge the atten-
tion it so very well repays.'

In commenting on domestic architecture in Chicago, Mr. Schuyler says:

"There are exceptions, and some of them are conspicuous and painful exceptions; but the rule is that the architect attempts to make the house even of a rich man look like a house rather than a palace, and that there is very little of the mere ostentation of riches. The commercial palace against which we have been inveighing is by no means as offensive as the domestic sham palace, and from this latter offense Chicago is much freer than most older American cities."

The nineteenth century has been chiefly remarkable for the development of things material, and perhaps more especially for the im

latest achievement in this direction is the elevator, which is now really a vertical elevated railway, swift, smooth in motion, and perfectly safe.

"These are not subjects for architectural criticism, they call for the intervention of an architectural police. They are cases of disorderly conduct done in brick and brownstone. . . . It is enough to indicate these things, and to point out that they are all produced by the strain in minds of incompetent designers after original-provement of means of transportation. The ity and aboriginality, a purpose essentially vulgar, which would vitiate the work even of a competent designer, wherever it could be detected. For although the pursuit of excellence is sure to result in novelty, the pursuit of novelty is sure not to result in excellence." He mentions a tendency of the younger generation of architects to take themselves too seriously and their art not seriously enough." It is only fair to say that this was written nine years ago.

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To the readers of THE DIAL perhaps the most interesting and suggestive chapters are those entitled "Glimpses of Western Architecture," which form nearly one half of the book. The first one relates to Chicago. Mr. Schuyler is naturally amused by that comedy of errors, the City Hall and County Building, which violate the first principle of architecture -that a building shall be designed with reference to the uses for which it is intended. He says, however:

"Its formulas may seem quite empty, but they gather dignity when contrasted with the work of an arid swallower of formulas' like the architect of the Board of Trade. There are not many other structures in the United States of equal cost and pretension, which equally with this combine the dignity of a commercial traveller with the bland repose of St. Vitus. It is difficult to contemplate its bustling and uneasy façade without feeling a certain sympathy with the mob of anarchists that demonstrated' under its windows on the night of its opening. If they were really anarchists, it was very ungrateful of them, for one would go far to find a more perfect expression of anarchy in architecture.

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It has created a revolution in architecThe inventor of the first perfected hydraulic elevator once remarked to the writer, that he had "made it possible to build two cities where one had stood before." The elevator has made it possible and profitable to build mercantile structures of a height never before attempted. It is therefore perfectly natural that in this material and practical land these elevator buildings" should represent what is best in the recent growth and development of architecture. They are built under many new conditions of construction and of proportion, thus giving the architect a certain freedom from tradition in his design; and they are usually erected for profit, and to enter into competition with other structures of similar nature, and the architect is compelled to regard the uses of the building as of paramount importance, and to obtain architectural effects without sacrificing material advantages. These are conditions favorable to the development of good, sincere, vigorous architecture.

There is one other condition, to which Mr. Schuyler makes no reference, possibly because it has come to perfection since the greater part of his book was written, for it is really 66 something new under the sun"; this is steel construction. The use of steel for the structural parts of a building was unknown to the world when the architectural styles were formed.

and it is only within a few years that buildings have been erected in which all the supports, from foundation to roof, are columns and beams of steel. This is the lightest, strongest, most compact and homogeneous of all building materials, and out of this new construction we may reasonably anticipate, for the first time in three hundred years, the development of a new style of architecture, or a modification of the older styles as radical as the Renaissance. In all countries, the first stone buildings have followed the forms of the earlier wooden structures; and the first buildings of steel construction have been designed after the manner of stone or brick. Massive walls are suspended from slender steel columns, to give the façade the appearance of solidity which in the older structures was essential; or the same effect has been sought by using sham walls of terra cotta, which is lighter and equally deceptive. In time all this will be changed. The public will learn the strength of the light steel shafts, and architects will venture more and more to express in their designs the lightness of the construction. Gradually a new style will be evolved, and buildings will be designed as radically different from any now in existence as a suspension bridge differs from one built of stone piers and arches. What is now most needed is a fire-proof material for the exterior covering of the steel, to protect it from the atmosphere and from fire, which shall take the place of bricks and terra cotta, and present an unbroken surface, without visible joints. There is no limit to the beauty of effects which the art of man can produce in decorating this surface. When such a material shall have been found, we can imagine buildings constructed of steel as light as a cobweb, as strong as the pyramids, and as beautiful as the Taj Mahal. BRYAN LATHROP.

JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS.*

The history of the United States seems full of miracles. Virginia and Massachusetts are planted as if one should toss handfuls of wheat not unmixed with chaff into thickets of thistles; and lo! the wheat uproots the thistles, but the chaff persists with the wheat. The colonists blundered and stumbled, but succeeded. When, in 1745, Massachusetts un

*THE LIFE OF JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. By the Hon. George W. Julian, author of "Political Recollections." With two portraits and an index. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.

dertook to capture Louisburg with such trumpery plans, such insufficient means, she ought to have failed; but she took the fortress. Bunker Hill was at once a blunder, a defeat in fact, a victory in effect.

In the Revolutionary War, how often failure seems inevitable, and safety comes as an accident' As we read Fiske's "Critical Period,” which has the representative vigor of a drama, the Ship of State, without a pilot, goes amid shoals and rocks in a crooked channel, with checks of adverse winds and currents, till we are amazed to see her enter the deep blue water and spread her sails for the voyage.

To

But our greatest miracle was the overthrow of Slavery. It was the Babylon the Great of the Apocalypse, sitting upon many waters, grand and powerful, bending the statesmen and ordering the politicians to do its will, winning in all skirmishes and battles from the day it became a leading political power. lose the Northwest Territory seemed a trifle when it gained the Southwest. It was little to grant the Missouri restriction when it pushed its frontier to the edge of Iowa and gained Florida. Texas was clear gain. Controlling presidents, cabinets, congresses, legislation, diplomacy, commerce, how should Slavery fear? And yet - Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the Great!"

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The history of the rise of the powers that overthrew it is not yet all written. When a century has passed, men may survey them in full perspective. Then shall be seen the cumulative power of many strokes. Colonel Buford, at West Point, as Emerson tells us, caused the trunnions of a cannon to be pounded with a hammer until they broke off; and he fired a cannon some hundreds of times until it burst. "Now, which stroke broke the trunnion? Every stroke. Which blast burst the piece? Every blast." So not Adams, nor Garrison, nor Birney, nor Leavitt, nor Smith, nor Phillips, nor John Brown, nor Giddings, nor Hale, nor Seward, nor Lincoln, destroyed Slavery; but all the men and all the events that fought against it. Yea, let us not forget among the destroyers of Slavery, Calhoun, Mason, Slidell, Davis, Toombs, and Yancey; Brooks and Pryor, as well as Sumner and Greeley; for their madness availed much, and forced the crisis that might have been long postponed, fifty or a hundred years. Only of the leaders in this warfare can we write lives, and so give the contest dramatic form and interest.

Prominent among these will always be counted Joshua Reed Giddings, whose life has just been portrayed for us by the Hon. George W. Julian, Mr. Giddings's son-in-law. Mr. Julian himself took part in the great contest, and has already given us a volume of "Political Recollections." One who shared in the heat and stress of the battle can write with an interest and insight greater than those can have who look on affairs only as a history; and our author, though writing with the calmness of a historian and the coolness of his seventy years, never lacks earnestness or vigor. Some phrase not needed for the story will betray the partisan, as when he generally calls the representatives from the South "slaveholders ; or when he says, "The last hopes of Mr. Clay had perished forever in the nomination of the hero of the Mexican war and the owner of two hundred slaves" the owning of slaves had nothing to do with the matter, but is a little dig at General Taylor, an abolitionist slash. The reader must make allowance for the personal equation, as in all histories. Mr. Julian tries to be just; yet it is hard for an abolitionist to obey the tolerant maxim, "Put yourself in his place."

Naturally, and appropriately too, this biography of Mr. Giddings is almost entirely occupied with his political career. Two chapters tell us of his birth in 1795, on the Western Reserve, that New England of the West, and of his career until he entered Congress. Had he been born ten or fifteen years later, he might have had an education at Yale; but he had such education only as he could work out for himself in an intelligent community, with few books well studied. A raid of the Indians in the War of 1812 made him a soldier for a short time at the age of seventeen. His neighbors called on him to teach school when he was nineteen, wisely thinking that his qualities of mind would make up for lack of book lore.

To the surprise of his friends, he told them, when he was twenty-three, that he was going to be a lawyer ; and a lawyer he became. When he went to begin his studies, he had to walk forty miles, his baggage "consisting of consisting of three shirts, two pairs of stockings, four white neck-cloths, and two pocket handkerchiefs. He had also seventeen dollars in cash." It is the old story of Energy and Character starting at the bottom of the hill and forcing a way to the top. While still a student, he married the wife who helped him all his days and survived him but a few months. As a lawyer, he was

eminent especially for defending persons charged with crime, often saving innocent men who were unable to employ counsel. Sometimes he risked reputation and popularity in so doing. Serving one term in the State Legislature, he refused to go again.

In the great financial crash of 1836-7, he lost his property, and, at the same time, his health. health. He had not long resumed his practice when, in 1838, he was elected to Congress, and thus entered upon what proved to be the great work of his life, his battle with Slavery in the House of Representatives.

The first administration of General Jackson had developed from the political indifference of Monroe's time two distinct parties, one of which took the name of National Republican or Whig; the other retained the older name, Democratic. Mr. Giddings, an ardent admirer of Henry Clay and a believer in his distinctive doctrines of finance and tariff, entered Congress as a Whig, and remained such until, in 1848, he threw himself with all his force into the Free-Soil party, which was the intermediate between the Liberty party of 1840-48 and the Republican party of 1854. There was no Anti-slavery party until 1840; but in both parties there were a few men who were opposed to slavery too strongly to keep silence in Congress. There was, when Giddings entered the House, but one representative who was an avowed abolitionist,-William Slade of Vermont, who made the first speech in favor of the abolition of slavery that was delivered in Congress. But the principal figure in the fight which was already going on was the able, versatile, and vigorous ex-president, John Quincy Adams, venerable in age, station, experience, knowledge, and character.

It is a remarkable fact that the first and the last lines of contest with last lines of contest with "the slave power were mere side issues which stirred up those who cared little for the main question of slavery. To raise either of these issues was a political blunder. The first side issue was the right of petition; the second was our nationality. Mr. Adams was leader in maintaining the first right, and he was the first to say that the war-powers of the nation might be called upon to extinguish slavery; and Lincoln seized the flaming sword of Emancipation to which Adams had pointed, and with it cut down the foe of our nationality. When Mr. Giddings entered Congress, petitions on the subject of slavery were coming into the hands of Mr. Adams, because he alone had the boldness and skill to

present them. In February, 1836, a committee offered a new rule, that all petitions relating to slavery should be laid upon the table without being printed or referred. This rule was continued in various forms, one of which was known as the "Atherton gag." Against this Mr. Giddings voted, eight days after he entered Congress, but without speaking upon it. But Mr. Adams constantly presented petitions and moved references of them. He managed to make this proceeding a thorn in the side of the pro-slavery men. Upon one occasion, not narrated by Mr. Julian, he asked the Speaker whether it would be in order under the rule to present a petition from some slaves. When the tempest of fury over this "impudence" was at its height, and propositions to censure or expel him were made, Mr. Adams let it leak out that this petition from slaves asked that he be expelled. Mr. Julian gives an account of the Haverhill petition for a dissolution of the Union, for presenting which Mr. Adams was put on trial, though it was an exact copy of one presented from South Carolina some years before. After Mr. Adams had defended himself most vigorously, carrying the war into Africa, and showing what the South had done to provoke such a petition, the proceedings were dropped on the fourteenth day, the old warrior having intimated that it would require about ninety days for him to get through with his defense. When Mr. Giddings tried to get a meeting of Northern members who would stand by Mr. Adams, only eight came in, though seventy-five had voted against the introduction of resolutions of censure.

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While Mr. Adams led the battle on this line, Mr. Giddings devised another assault upon the peculiar institution," one which would be always in order, so that no parliamentary trick or rule could ward it off, and which was indeed suggested by the very plea of the slaveholders themselves that slavery was a peculiar or local institution. If local, then it is not national; hence the Free States and the Nation as a whole have the right and duty to be free from all support of it, from all aid to it. Mr. Giddings was the first to see the special advantage of this line of attack, and to use it consistently, constantly, and untiringly. He thus furnished the platforms of the Free-Soil and Republican parties. It was not necessary to present the enormities which were incidental to slavery: he could start from the first public Declaration of Independence, which, in its doctrine of natural freedom and equality of men,

put upon slavery the condemnation of the considerate judgment of mankind. He might make any reasonable allowance for the difficult position of the slaveholder, and still press his points that slavery was sectional, freedom national: he might claim that he was only defending the national interests and welfare against the encroachments of an oligarchy whose very existence was a menace to the advancement of civilization and a defiance to the moral judgment of mankind. He did but hold the South to the logic of its position, of its confessed isolation.

Is it said that this was no new doctrine? True; but it was political genius that saw how to use the old principle in a new way: high principle and unflinching courage were needed to turn it to practical advantage; and unvarying persistence was necessary to make the North adopt it in political action. This was the work which Giddings began and continued with wonderful steadfastness, working in an eminent field to which the eyes of all were turned. Outside of Congress others were urging the evils and wickedness of the slave system; and the Liberty party was enforcing the political duties of the nation. And then were true Emerson's words: "The fury with which the slave-trader defends every inch of his bloody deck and his howling auction-platform is a trumpet to alarm the ear of mankind, to warn all neutrals to take sides, and to summon all to listen to the verdict which justice shall pronounce."

Mr. Julian's Life of Giddings is a history of the work of this leader of the army of the Lord of Hosts, and is full of dramatic interest. It would be pleasant to quote many instances of his play of sword and shield in these gladiatorial contests, two or three men against the whole field; but we must forbear. On two subjects Mr. Giddings made himself specially well-informed: individual claims upon the treasury, and the relations of slavery to the general government. These were enough to give him abundant opportunity for his special warfare. His first Anti-slavery speech was on a bill to appropriate $30,000 to build a bridge across the east branch of the Potomac ; and at the time of its introduction a memorial came from citizens of the District asking that no notice be taken of anti-slavery petitions. Mr. Giddings opposed the expenditure of public money for further improvements, because of slavery and the slave-trade in the District; and he boldly alleged that the North would ere

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