through one only, we may see the objects which future archæologists will make the subjects of ponderous essays; but the crowd that sees these majestic structures rising up day by day scarcely bestows a passing thought upon them, or stops to moralize on the mystery of these resuscitations of dead centuries in the midst of our busy metropolis. The moral influence of the revival of the so-called Gothic style of church architecture, would form a most profitable subject for a sermon, and we imagine that there would be no great difficulty in tracing the tendency to purple cha subles in many of our Protestant clergy, to the medievalisms in church edifices which have been introduced among us during the past twenty years. Sir Anthony Absolute shrewdly remarks of novel-reading, that those who are so fond of handling the leaves, will, in time, have a longing for the fruit. It is a natural result, if not inevitable, that those who rebuild the churches of the fourteenth century, will also desire to revive the worship to which they were consecrated. But we will not infringe on the province of the preacher; our present business is with the Old French Church.-1704. minster and not the ministers. If the rapidity with which these ecclesiastical structures have sprung up in every street, and the general respectability of their appearance, constitute any claim on our ad German Lutheran Church.-1767. miration, the claim is sufficiently largewe shall examine its validity. There are two causes for the incorrect and unimposing architecture of the greater number of churches in New-York; the one is the incapacity of the architects who design them-the other is the ignorance of the people who pay for them. Now, for the ignorance of the latter, there is every excuse which the most charitably disposed person in the world could desire to find. We don't wish to be sweeping and unjust this morning; on the contrary, every thing disposes us to mildness and amiability. We shall not say we think things are good when we know they are bad, and could prove it, if we had a mind. Intending, therefore, to do every thing that is right, we shall admit that we, as a people, are making great strides towards excellence in the various departments of art; and that there are a great many men among us who cannot be caught by mediocrity, and who demand from every man the best he can give. The great evil is, that while there is plenty of private criticism in circles whose judgment in these matters is final, the public criticism is for the most part short-sighted, illogical, narrow, and dictated by whim and pique. We know fifty cases, and men who are more intimate with these matters than we, know many more, in which works of art and literature have been either mercilessly hacked, or stoutly ignored by the press, merely because the editors had some private troubles with the authors or artists in question. Only once in a great while does a candid, impartial, generous criticism appear in our journals. It is hardly fair, perhaps, to hold the press responsible for the deficiencies of public taste, but it assumes to be a teacher, as well as a chronicler, and it should, at least, be able to give a proper tone to public opinion. The subject of architecture is one, however, of such magnitude that it is overlooked. The form of a foreign government is a subject that the press will scrutinize and dilate upon, but the form of the church next door is not worth considering. Well, when it comes to this, that the press has nothing to say which is worth hearing, we must expect that the public, mainly educated. by the press, will know very little about art, and that little will be the result of its instincts in default of other teachers; and the instincts of our people, like the instincts of the English, are somewhat dull in aesthetics. We have first rate painters among us, and one fine sculptor, but for some reason, not very plain, we have as yet Trinity Church, Broadway. utterly failed to make any mark in the domain of art, and the prospect of our doing so is very slight for many years to co me. One thing is plain as daylight to every body. Until some one of our artists St. Paul's Spire. shall do something that will stand in spite of all the flattery of friends, and all the abuse of enemies, which shall say for itself, without waiting for any one to say it-"I am excellent, come and admire me;"-which shall abide through all changes of fashion, and all the whims of dilettanteism; which shall fear no criticism, and shrink before no knowledge; in short, until a leader come, we have no right to blame the public for want of taste, and say that "to paint good pictures, and make good statues, is to throw pearls before swine," because the experiment has never fully been tried. There are many splendid examples of liberality and good construction in our church edifices, and, if they do not display the same degree of inventive genius which we can point to in our bridges, aqueducts, and other great public works designed for the general good, it will be wrong to infer that we are, therefore, deficient in architectural ability. The fault lies not, we are persuaded, either in national, or individual disability, but in the narrowness of sectarian judgment. Our architects have not been left free to exercise their genius, or they could have accomplished things in church-building equal to our national achievements in ship - building. Our churches have been designed to conform to a superstitious reverence for symbolism, and our architects have been cramped by the foregone opinions of their employers, that the science of ecclesiology was incapable of improvement or advancement; so there was no other course but to imitate some existing edifice, in the old world, as nearly as the changed order of society, and the improvements in art and science would permit. Some of these imitations have been very successful, as imitations, and there may be seen church edifices in our finest streets, placed between houses of great elegance and beauty, that display almost as much Gothic ignorance and bad taste, as any of the mouldy remnants of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. But it is quite impossible, with our improved tastes, and refined habits, to wholly imitate the barbarisms of our ancestors, even in church architecture, and the most Gothic of our ecclesiastical structures display elegances and conveniences which the best of them were strangers to. Houses are built to dwell in, as Bacon says, in his essay on building, and churches were designed to worship in; but the prevalent opinion seems to be, that churches are intended for some other purpose to symbollize a religious idea, or to perpetuate a sectarian dogma. We may call our progress in architecture a leap rather than a progress-because within five years, more has been done than in the thirty preceding the five. America has never produced a great-nay, a respectable architect. No set of men have done so much to bring the profession into disgrace, as the so-called New-York architects. There is hardly in the whole city a single correct building, and but few of the modern good churches which are sincerely and faithfully built. This is not the place to preach from this text. We shall take speedy opportunity to utter our convictions on this point. however; and content ourselves at present with merely hinting at our sentiments. The architects of New-York must in each and every case shoulder the blame of the incongruities, the weakness, the want of impressiveness, which mar our public and private buildings. When a man is spending half a million of dollars on a building, is it possible to believe that he would not rejoice to find an architect capable of making a grand design, and carrying it out grandly? A man who knows, always controls the man who does not know, and an intelligent architect always can rule the will, the taste, and the purse of his client. There are, in the city of New-York, about two hundred and thirty churches, or houses of worship, the majority of which are merely convenient houses for public assemblages, respectable enough in appearance, and answering all the purposes for which they were designed; but making no pretensions to architectural splendor, or ecclesiastical symbolism. There are some, however, which would command attention in any city of the old world, by their size, solidity of construction, impressiveness of aspect, and elegance of finish. The greater number of them are of the various styles of Gothic, and belong generally to the Presbyterians and Episcopalians, the two wealthiest, if not the most numerous of the different religious sects of New-York. The Episcopalians made the first attempt at reviving, or rather transplanting, the Gothic style of architecture on this side of the Atlantic. St. Thomas' Church, on the corner of Broadway and Prince The early churches of New-York, like all the Dutch buildings, were very ugly. The German Lutheran Church was built in the years 1766-7, in the swamp, at the corner of Frankfortstreet. Six years before, a few houses had begun to be built in that part of the highroad to Boston which led toward "Fresh Water," extending from Broadway to the place where the negroes were burnt in 1741, and to which the gallows had lately been removed; this road then began to be regulated as a street. The place near which this church was built was what its name implies, a swamp. The French Church, "Du St. Esprit," was erected in |