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we must pause before the House of John good or settled with him which could not be Knox!

The edifice stands at the head of "the Nether-bow," near the High Street, Edinburgh (old town). A considerable space stretches in front where a large concourse might assemble, and from the upper window the Reformer was used to pour forth his eloquence without fear, favour, or affection. At the corner may be seen his bust of rudest stone, in the most artless sculpture, and near it, a triple inscription of the name of GOD in Greek, Latin, and English. The several apartments have been rented to different tenants whose sign-boards show prominent in our plate, but behind these is a redeeming trace more sublime in its associations than the mark of the bloody hyssop on the lintel and door-posts of Israel-immediately over the door, in the strong and simple language of the time, is written :

"Lufe. God. above. all. and. your. nichbour.
as. yourself."

Knox has now been in his grave nearly three centuries. His works have thus far stood the test of time well; and the present age evinces an increased desire to do him justice. But there is scarce a name in history which excites among men such strong yet conflicting emotions-his traits divide each generation into ardent friends or bitter enemies, and many who agree on other points, crave to differ about the Scottish ICONOCLASTES.

In the front rank of opposers stand all those interested in existing abuses, all who "love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil." To such, John Knox was the torchbearer of Time, pouring light on their orgies. But on the same side we find a very different class, whom to confound with the first would be the grossest injustice,- —we mean the gentle and the amiable, who abhor revolution as "the worst remedy of the worst of men," and whose actions and lives are in happy contrast with their latitudinarian principles.

Of his admirers we must hail all the true friends of true progress. Knox was the very incarnation of "advancement." Nothing was

proved such,-and he kept his eye steadily on the morning sky of Christianity, and rejoiced as it grew brighter and brighter towards the perfect day. It is true, these characteristics may also have attracted to his standard the bold and bad, who follow the battle for spoilbut none such were his intimates in life, and could only follow him at a distance.

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The subjoined is his portrait by Thomas Carlyle, a sketcher not much given to flattery. They go far wrong who think that Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all. He is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious, hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he was very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present. . . . An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low: sincere in his sympathy with both."

Knox pretended not to perfection himself, and no sane friend will claim it for him; but if we apply the old test that "he is most illustrious who is most useful," the Reformer will not occupy a mean place among the benefactors of his race. His was a most ungracious task, and he was not insensible to its grievousness. He felt like Moses while slaying the Egyptian, and hoped his countrymen would live to see and enjoy the "great deliverance" which he was working out for them. Lovelier men, in milder times, might and would follow and plant the tree of healing; his task was to root up the upas of centuries, and this accomplished, he died.

"He had a sore fight of an existence-wrestling with popes and princes,―rowing as a galley slave, wandering as an exile-a sore fight

but he won it. Have you hope?' they asked him, when he could no longer speak-he pointed upward with his finger and so died. His works have not died-the letter of his work dies, as of all men's; but the spirit of it never!" (Carlyle, Hero Worship.)

All honour then to his memory-and honour to the lowly rooftree that sheltered his aching head.

IMPROMPTU.

"PAR ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.

A un ami qui demandait un conseil sur une maison qu'il faisait bâtir.

Veux-tu, sans règle et sans équerre

Orienter la ruche à miel?

Ouvre la porte sur la terre,

Et la fenêtre sur le ciel.

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THE WASHINGTON NATIONAL MONUMENT.

BY THE REV. J. H. ALLEN.

(See Engraving.)

On the border of the broad and beautiful | Washington's death. But nothing was done Potomac, due west of the Capitol and south of the President's house, on a spot in full view for ten miles down the river, till it sweeps round the bend at Mount Vernon, stands the beginning of the giant structure that is to be.

At a distance, it might be taken for a rather ungainly block of white dwelling-houses, but for the clear lines and surface it presents against the horizon. On a pyramidal base of dark stone, near twenty feet high, some fiveand-thirty feet of the marble obelisk are already built; and by the end of the season, it will be at least a hundred feet above the ground. Stone to the value of five thousand dollars is already prepared for use; and a steam engine is in working order for hoisting it to its resting-place. So much of the work is done and paid for, and about ten thousand dollars were on hand to commence operations on the first of April.

Agents are canvassing the country in every direction. About a thousand dollars were received in one week; and funds are coming in pretty steadily, at the rate of about three thousand a month. I saw lately a handful of golden eagles, the Chickasaws' gift of two hundred dollars "in testimony of their love for their great father." The Choctaws are to send their contributions in the shape of a block of stone. The several states of the Union are contributing their monumental blocks from their own quarries, and probably not one will be unrepresented in it. The Masons and the Odd Fellows have appropriated each Order its gift. About two hundred companies and associations have offered their subscriptions in granite and marble, at an average cost of about fifty dollars. Children's schools have sent their offerings in little sums; banks and capitalists in larger ones. About half a million more will be required to fill out the grand outlines of the plan, to say nothing of the decorative appendages below.

The first project of some such great national structure dates back as far as 1783, when Congress passed a resolution to erect an equestrian statue of Washington in the national capital, wherever that might be. In 1804, the subject was taken up again in connexion with the public testimonials of mourning, after

till 1833, when a "Washington National Monument Society" was formed with Chief Justice Marshall at its head, and measures were taken to gather funds. By way of apportioning them as widely as possible among the people, subscriptions were limited to a dollar; it being calculated that if only a quarter of that were given by every working man, it would be more than enough for the most imposing monument in the world. But one dollar is so little towards a million, that to many it seemed nothing at all; and some who would have freely given a thousand, refused and ridiculed the one. Then came the "crash" of 1837; the propitious season went by; only thirty thousand dollars were obtained; and the ambitious project went to sleep.

It woke again in 1847. While it slept, its seed had been growing, and had now expanded to fifty thousand dollars. Some thirty thousand more were added by diligent endeavours, and it was judged time to begin. The plan adopted was one quite as remarkable for vastness of outline as for beauty of detail; and it had this special recommendation, that its grandest feature must be completed first, and may stand by itself as long as it is thought desirable. The address at the laying of the corner-stone, was to be delivered by John Quincy Adams, on the 22d of February, 1848; but that day he was dying in the Capitol, and the Hon. Speaker Winthrop fulfilled his office on the fourth of July following.

In judging of the plan from the engraving, one should translate it by the aid of his imagination into the towering magnitude it is intended to have. As to the Doric colonnade and the circular "Pantheon" with its Italian balustrade, they are merely representatives for the present of a part of the architect's conception, and are never likely to be built. A great deal of affliction and indignation in respect of them, has gone to waste. I will endeavour first to do justice to his intention, and then suggest the modifications which he himself has hinted at, and which the public taste will doubtless demand.

The main thing in the structure is an obelisk, fifty-five feet square at the base, and intended to be six hundred feet high. Some intimations

have been thrown out of reducing it to five | such a muffled and uncomfortable look to the hundred; but the popular will should suffer no engraving-I have the best reason to think abatement. It is not the American temper to that the architect himself is not over-partial to retreat! The full altitude will be a hundred it. It was thrown off hastily, simply to hint and fifty feet higher than the cross of St. Pe- at his intention; and has been, unfortunately, ter's, and a hundred and twenty higher than reduplicated and perpetuated in ten thousand the largest pyramid. The plain shaft on such a indifferent lithographs, to the prejudice of the scale, will be the noblest of monuments. Its total design, and the obscuring of his idea. beautiful proportions are not given in any en- An Egyptian structure, with American details, graving that I have seen. From a thickness (representing the characteristic productions of of fifteen feet, the walls diminish at that our continent in place of the symbolic scrawls height to thirty inches, leaving an open that cover the vast fabrics of Thebes) seems to space, or well-room, of twenty-five feet square. be his own preference, and is certainly capable I asked the architect one day where he could of very great richness and beauty; but for find a capstone large enough to cover it. His purposes of mere explanation, the drawing answer was, it should be roofed with an enor- given is as good as any other. mous flat pyramid of glass! The ascent is to be by flights of iron steps at the four sides, far easier than the dizzy whirl by which one rotates to the top of the monuments at Bunker Hill and Baltimore. The hand-rail, being hollow, will serve as a conductor for gas; and the whole of this prodigious vertical cavern shall be as light as day!

What will make it particularly interesting as a national structure, is the emulous sending in of the blocks of stone, before spoken of, from states and associations. Michigan, we hear, will send a block of pure native copper. Minesota has transmitted a slab of the red pipestone whereof calumets are made-a stone held sacred among the Indians, both curious and valuable. California has only to follow it up by a block of gold quartz, of which a whole ridge of mountains there is said to be composed. Two noble specimens of gray marble are already on the ground from Tennessee. Arkansas and Maine, have each a block there with the unadorned name of the state. One of the purest white, bears the inscription, "The City of Washington to its Founder." The Delaware stone has a medallion head of Washington, three inches in relief, with an inscription of workmanship to correspond. The state contributions are to be built into conspicuous positions at the landings of the stairs; and, with the others, will make a decoration as unique as beautiful. It will be a running inscription of five hundred feet: This is the Contribution of a Continent. And withal there is a pleasant contrast between this and the old monuments of Egypt (which it rivals) in the republican spirit which is building and adorning it, for not only is it a free gift, and not the task-work of a despot, but the men who labour on it have given out of their wages, some five, and some ten dollars each as their contribution; and several of them something besides in labour.

As to the circular structure-which, to say nothing of its incongruous architecture, gives

The intention of the lower portion, then, is to symbolize the entire nation, as the shaft above commemorates its model man. For it is a "National" as well as a "Washington" monument. The plinth on which it rests is a vast crypt, or arched structure, forming a platform or terrace three hundred feet square, and twenty-five feet high. Besides the needful offices, &c., for the persons in charge, it might serve as a national mausoleum of the illustrious dead of our country, and something of the associations might in time be gathered about the spot, which make Westminster Abbey and Santa Croce holy ground. The circular temple standing upon this elevated terrace, is two hundred and fifty feet across, and seventy-five feet high. Spreading either way from the porch or vestibule (surmounted by a colossal sculptured group) is a circular row of Doric columns forty-five feet high and seven or eight in diameter; the scrolls in the entablature being the escutcheons of the several States. This colonnade forms a covered gallery of magnificent dimensions, adorned with colossal statues of eminent men, say the signers of the Declaration. Entering by a lofty portal (here represented as something like forty feet in height), you come to an interior gallery, lighted from above, and adapted for the display of banners, pictures, and statuary on the largest scale. The entire circuit of this gallery would be about five hundred feet. Here, again, in the course of time, would be gathered a majestic assembly of our statesmen, Greenough's Jove-like Washington, perhaps, presiding in the solemn council. The elevated terrace above, and the apartments for various purposes that might be formed in the waste room behind the Doric entablature-itself twenty-five feet high-need no detailed description. Above them all, towers the great Obelisk to the additional height of five hundred feet.

How far the complex idea of such a structure as a monumental work justifies so diver

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