Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/70

50 Sloan's Architectural Review and Builders' Journal. [July, and to plan magnificently. A hundred 3'ears hence, and this Park will be only in its infancy. But if we, of this day, allow its borders to be hemmed and cramped, then, in its true proportions, it will never be at all. Its popularly accepted scope embraces every possible manifestation of nature, improved and heightened by art. A matchless field is here. Will Philadelphia circumscribe it ? or will she not rat her protect its amplest borders, treasure the natural beauties it has retained through all its vicissitudes, and give it genially to present and future surveyors, engineers, architects and landscapists, to be en- abled in better times, when zoological and botanical gardens, play-grounds, parades, parks, summer-houses, obser- vatories, water-gates, hedges, fountains, statues, reliefs, monuments, memorials, lodges, orchestras, stairways, miradors, trees, shrubbery, fruits, flowers, and tame or half-wild living pets abound in, on, or near all its paths and drives, or frequent all its thickets, lawns, crags, waters and woods, to say: "Wonders of this description have, with scarcely an exception, arisen through the exac- tion of princes from the substance of their people, who were barely tolerated therein. This is the voluntary offering of the people to themselves." Popularly, the least appreciable, yet really the strongest of all the bases of argument upon the score of utility, re- mains untouched. It is this : that which uses the discoveries of art, thus height- ening the charms of nature, to gratify the senses and the mind of man, just as surely gratifies and purifies the soul, in- citing it to "Look through nature up to nature's God." THE REMOVAL OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL, THE CAPITOL, AND OTHER PUBLIC BUILDINGS, -yS a matter which has often been bruited, and lately in the House of Representatives by General Logan, who favors some point in the valley of the Mississippi. He is said to be in posses- sion of facts and figures, prepared by the ablest architects in the country, giving the aggregate cost of moving the principal buildings to any designated point on the great river. One of these professional gentlemen says, that ten millions will be ample to take down, remove and rebuild the principal edifices now in Washington, D. C, namely, the Capitol, Treasury Building, Patent Office, and Post Office. It is understood, that any one of the Western States, within whose borders the Capital may be located, will give the land and incur all the expenses. Polity only acting upon mankind in the mass, no possible system of govern- ment creates personal purit}' ; working upon and improving mankind in the in- dividual, Christianity alone can do that. Therefore we cannot fairly be charged with venturing beyond our scope when we say, that towns existing simply as seats of government, all whose inhabi- tants depend, some way or other, upon office-holders, transient or permanent, are not apt to rate so high in general, public or private morality, as those which have grown up from an assured support in commanding position and the wants of a large surrounding com- munity. We wish that Washington, the city, were as pure as its projector, Washington, the man ; but we would be the most unsophisticated of Americans, to hint such a resemblance. Many of the best of the land are often there, but pretty much all the worst are general^ certain to be. The residents are most at fault in giving little, and charging much. The sojourners, if political manipulators, scarcely find any of their class better than themselves, and the