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 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

1704, by the Protestant Huguenots escaped from France, and settled at Brooklyn, New Rochelle, &c. Both these churches are now destroyed to make room for other buildings. We regret their loss, because though they were informed by no spirit of beauty, they were built in a sincere desire to do the best that lay in the builders' power, and, at all events, were marred by no pretence, and told no falsehoods.

The visiter to our city, who comes from over the water, sees the spire of Trinity Church rising far above the mass of houses and the clustered masts. It is a graceful and beautiful spire-the crotchets, perhaps, are a little too thickly placed, and not of sufficiently marked character; and we could have wished that the windows had been omitted from it, since, unless these features are kept very smalltoo small in such a spire to be of any use-they invariably interfere with the upward tendency of the lines. To have omitted the windows, however, would have been to have lost a good opportunity for making money, an opportunity which American and English committees, whe

Church of the Divine Unity, Broadway.

ther ecclesiastical or viaductile, never lose sight of. Accordingly, we find that

edifice, with a wooden spire, which it has displaced. That was a very plain, matter of fact structure, with an incongruous semi-circular porch jutting out in front. A model of the old church was preserved till lately in the vestry room of the modern building, and afforded a very edifying contrast. The new church belongs to the Perpendicular Period of Pointed Architecture, and was erected between the years 1838 and 1845, after the design of Richard Upjohn, an English architect, if we mistake not, settled in New-York. The material is the light brown freestone, from the Little Falls quarries, in New Jersey, and is, throughout, finely cut. The church, which, unlike all the other Protestant churches in

the city, is open every day in the year, from sunrise to sunset, is entered by two side porches, and on Sundays by the large door in the Tower. The tower is, with the spire, 280 feet high and is provided with a clock, which strikes the hours, and chimes the halves and quarters, and a full chime of bells-the only one in the city, and a gift, for which the writer of this article desires to make his best bow to the Corporation for all the pleasure it has given him to hear. Over the principle door there is a large window filled with elaborate tracery, which lights nothing and is of no use. It is put there. like the niches in the tower sides, for show, and we wish that the architect had been willing to leave those spaces bare.