American Architecture

Evidences have been discovered, in both N. and S. America, that some part of each continent had been occupied, at some time before the discovery of the country by Europe ans, by races more highly civilized than those which po e ed it at the time of the discovery. These evidences consist in remains of buildings in Peru, Mexico, and Central America, especially in Yucatan. The Peruvian remains, which are supposed to be the work of a race anterior to the Incas, whom the Spaniards found in po e ion, are extensive and Palace at Palenque. ma ive, but of a rude and primitive character. They consist of circles of stones, like those in Europe, of which Stone henge is the most familiar example, of walls of vast stones, accurately fitted, and evidently intended as fortifications, and of square and round towers of masonry, increasing in size from the bottom to the top, and in some cases covered with domical roofs of overlapping stones. The remains in Yucatan and Mexico are more interesting as showing a much greater skill, and also in consequence of their striking resemblance to the ancient architecture of Central Asia, especially in the erection of temples upon the summit of a series of receding terraces. The most extensive building of the ruins which remain in Yucatan, that at Palenque, is thus arranged. By some it is supposed to have been a palace, and by some a temple. The extent of the pyramidal substructure at the base is 310 ft. by 260, and it is 40 ft. preeminently that of Thomas Paine, and minor poets like Barlow and Freneau. The first fiction of any note came from C. B. Brown. The first poem of real value was Bryant's Thana tops is -but here we are within the 19th century. The main beginners of a national literature were Irving, whose great succe es were largely won abroad, and Cooper, whose Leather stocking Tales , though built in spirit and style on Scott's foundation, were in subject matter purely native. W. G. Simms and others followed in his wake. Our greatest geniuses were Hawthorne, master of subtle and introspective romance, and Poe, doomed to misfortune by his deficiencies of character, but reckoned abroad our foremost literary figure. In history Bancroft, Pre scott, Widley and Parkman lead a roll of worthy names. Poetry, beginning with Bryant, was long most succe fully cultivated in eastern Ma ., where Long fellow won the love of nations, and Whittier stirred or soothed men's hearts. Emerson, most inspiring of e ayists, was at his best in his rare best verse. These were joined somewhat later by Dr. Holmes, most witty and versatile of writers, and Lowell, whose scholarship and critical aptitude too often obscured from public view his deep and splendid originative powers: his Harvard Commemoration Ode and Emerson's Problem show the high-water mark of American verse poetry. The fame of Thoreau, a prose poet, is mainly posthumous.