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Veneration for ancestors, and for what ancestors knew, has not been regarded as an American virtue. Yet there was a time entirely beyond the memory of this generation when traditions were religiously handed down and respected in America. It is heresy to suppose that the Colonial builders were au fait in the science of æsthetics. They were not. There was more excuse for ignorance upon their part than there is for ignorance upon ours; but architecture as a fine art was as little understood by the farmer at large in pre-revolutionary times as is evidenced by the modern farmer whose concrete ideas upon the subject are so charmingly set forth in the curiosity I have been fortunate to secure for this chapter (Plate XVIII). Only, no Colonial farmer would have dared to perpetuate such originality, even though he dreamed it in his

PLATE XIII.

MANTELPIECE, AMERICAN RENAISSANCE. EPOCH 1806.

BOTH NAME AND IDENTITY OF ITS DESIGNER HAVE IN ALL PROBABILITY BEEN IRRETRIEVABLY MISLAID IN OBLIVION, BUT HE WAS AN ARCHITECT.

Orne-Ropes’ House, Salem.

dreams, which is the only way he could possibly have conceived it. The unalienable right of the American citizen to build whatever he pleases has precedents running backward only to the 4th of March, 1829, when that popular hero, General Andrew Jackson, was inaugurated. This appears to have been the red-flag signal of license for all the vast output of American Jacobin architecture, which, of course, is not to be confused with the Jacobean of England, the seemingly innocent contraction of the suffix having the effect of a disenchanter’s wand.

Previous to this advent of rabid democracy there lingered a vestige of a certain code of social restrictions which once regulated architecture almost as absolutely as it did the private affairs of every family in the land. Once upon a time the house-builder would have no more thought of departing from what I shall call “the straight and narrow path” of precedent in architecture than he would have been guilty of a religious defection such as wilfully absenting himself from meeting, or an ethical defection such as purposely remaining single. This abrogation of personal liberty bore rather roughly, perhaps, upon the individual; but it was the very salvation of architecture, being the censorship to which we are indebted for whatever true inspiration we are enabled to draw out of the Colonial exemplars. “Precept” was the word upon which the American Renaissance was founded. The Colonial builders builded as they were taught to build, not as they may have wished to experiment. And let us see, for a moment, who their masters were, that we may be in a position to understand something of the reason for their success.

While, in olden times, the architect and the builder were often united in the same person, it must have been a very differently equipped individual from the one who awaits his customers behind the pretentious signboard thus lettered which nowadays adorns the front of many a contractor’s place of business; because this legend has come to mean extreme mediocrity in both callings. Nor does the word “architect” alone signify everything it should in a great commercial era such as ours. I have heard the head draughtsman of a noted modern architectural office in New York City distinguish one of his principals from the other partners

PLATE XIV.

DOORWAY, MEANS’ HOUSE, AMHERST, N. H.

of the firm by a very significant expression, viz.: “Mr. ——is an architect.” And I am constrained to discriminate with equal severity when I see the illustration or the usual “modern American house,” so called, placed in “deadly parallel column” beside a Colonial exemplar erected a century ago. Nobody, as a rule, can inform us who made the drawings of our fascinating prototype. Both name and identity of its designer have, in all probability, been irretrievably mislaid in oblivion; but he was an architect! (See Plate XIII).

In some recent and necessary researches for this and other work I have run across the names of a few of these architects. Their biographies are not to be found in libraries, though they merit shelf-room beside those of our greatest heroes, statesmen and authors. Samuel McIntyre of Salem, Massachusetts, and Russell Warren of Bristol, Rhode Island, respectively, are two I could mention in particular that should be done up in full levant with notes and comments upon their work and times, edited by Mr. Russell Sturgis or some one else equally competent to do so. And then the fun of it was that many a most refined and skilful artificer of the ancient régime never considered the propriety of adding the word “Architect” to his subscription. I suppose he fancied he lacked his diploma or the requisite reputation afforded by some stupendous public work. Yet, Fouquet with his celebrated Vaux le Vicomte, or Louis XIV at Versailles had no better architectural advice than had the colonists of America. The greatest architects of the world really directed the planning of the Colonial houses. Unseen, the masterhands and minds were working through the agency of deferential and obedient apprentices.

These apprentices essayed no—what boys denominate—“stunts” (see Plate XV), and their masters, to whom they frequently served life-long apprenticeships, affected no “stunts” either. Sir Christopher Wren, himself, and Inigo Jones never tried “stunts” nor did Palladio in Italy, before them, nor even the great Michelangelo. Now, if there ever was an architect justified in exploiting “stunts” it was Michelangelo, to whom marble or pigments, chisels or brushes were as subservient as to magic. But what did this

PLATE XV.

THESE APPRENTICES ESSAYED NO STUNTS.

Munro-French House, Bristol, R. I. AD 1800.

AN ANCIENT FARMHOUSE AT DURHAM, CONN.

architectural giant do when summoned to Rome to look after the construction of St. Peter’s? In the eyes of American commercialism, he made a goose of himself, he simply missed the chance of his life. He waived jealousy, he waived ambition, patronage and emolument because he preferred the serving of God and of his art to the serving of self. Fancy such a thing in our day! Michelangelo requested that all the plans of his illustrious predecessor, Bramante, the original designer of the cathedral, be brought to him: and fully appreciating the responsibility of the complex work that had descended to him by the rightful heirship of true art, Michelangelo emphatically declared he conceived it to be his duty to carry forward Bramante’s design, and, moreover, that wherever the intercedent tinkers had departed from this design, just so much had they erred. How strange this policy sounds placed in contrast to the ethics of American expediency! No doubt, the mighty Renaissance fabric at Rome has lost inestimably because this remarkable man could not live to complete it. In our day, we have changed all that. The main chance is not now art—it is money. We are still the America of Martin Chuzzlewit plus population. Our greatest architect is our greatest “stunt-master” and bears to American commercialism the same relationship that a certain society leader bears to his equally noted patroness. And it does not require the perspicacity of a Voodoo woman either, to see how ephemeral, in comparison to the ages of good architectural development, is this modern American extravaganza, which, not unlike the airy creatures who enjoyed existence in the dream of the White-King in Lewis Carroll’s classic, “Through the Looking Glass,” is liable to go out of vogue bang! at any moment, upon his majesty’s—or rather upon true art’s—awakening.

In Plate XV there is presented a type of American farm-house of the early eighteenth century. Engraved upon a tablet let into the front wall of the chimneystack appears the impressive date 1727. This house is still standing in an admirable state of preservation nearby a quaint old village called Durham, in Connecticut. It was erected by a man named Miles Merwin, and a lineal descendant of its builder still occupies it. When he visited this house last summer the interior

PLATE XVI.

SO FAR AS TEACHING ARCHITECTURAL ART IS CONCERNED, IT MUST BE ADMITTED OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAVE BEEN A DEAD FAILURE.

TYPE OF FARMHOUSE, EPOCH END OF 18TH CENTURY.

impressed the writer fully as much as the exterior. It seemed to me that the same influence came back again that rushed over my senses when first I beheld the worn steps to the royal tombs at Westminster. It was so very old and replete with atmosphere! It had so much history to tell that one’s most natural inclination was to sit down quickly upon the roughly hewn doorsteps bedabbled by streaks of sunlight filtering through the foliage, and just listen. Ah, how ridiculous it would be to imagine that the wonderfully satisfying lines of the roof, the delicious overhang of the gable, the relationship of the stone chimney and the proportions generally were evolved by Miles Merwin himself, out of a printed book upon the æsthetics of design! For neither Miles Merwin nor his master-builder may be said to have originated the house they erected. I do not fancy, for one moment, that they ever contemplated such an ill-advised departure from precedent. They had been taught how to construct three or four different kinds of roofs, and they simply selected the one most suitable to the needs of this case. It was the influence and teaching of more than one great architect that designed the ancient farm-house at Durham. And now you need no longer conjecture why Colonial architecture is so good and remains in fashion. You know.

Select, if you please, the detail of the hooded entrance. A modern house-builder requested to supply some unique shelter for the doorway would understand you to mean that you wished him to invent something which, by the way, is a task infinitely agreeable to the modern practitioner. It is safe to aver that the adviser of Miles Merwin, whoever he was, had never invented anything in his life. He would not have dared to try the experiment in architecture, at any rate, more than had he been the indentured apprentice of a Florentine architect. Although I can, very easily, imagine him quoting his grandsire that this particular kind of hood he was recommending to his principal, with its deep cornice, was an exceptionally rigid and durable one. The truth of which observation time has sufficiently demonstrated. It was “Old Hickory” who issued the emancipation proclamation to young America absolving him from the time-honored and universal fealty to Art. But young America was deceived; it was a

PLATE XVII.

PERISTYLE TO A HOUSE IN WYOMING, N. J., 1897.

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE, 1899.

campaign lie. Young America was not emancipated at all. Another master was set over him, and that master was unrelenting expediency, who forthwith usurped the throne of deposed art. Perhaps we are just beginning to suspect the ruse after seventy-five years of license and anarchy in art matters. What we did was simply to exchange a legitimate sovereign for a coarse, unlettered and brutal demagogue, of whom every American, young and old, by this time, should be heartily ashamed.

And I think the present generation is somewhat ashamed notwithstanding the fact that our modern system of public instruction, liberal as it purports to be, is painfully lame in the department of the arts. They are like so many sealed books to the scholars who are expected to shape our history. The policy of Donna Inez in Byron’s great epic was to withold natural history only from her son’s course of studies. Our policy is to disseminate all the natural history available. The mixed class in physiology recites its lessons unblushingly. We encourage the sciences. The farmer builds his house, to-day, with the best of sanitary arrangements; they are nearly perfect, he installs hot-water heaters and electric lights, he keeps in touch with the moving procession upon all points save one.—What does he know about Art and American Renaissance?

The example of modern farm-house (Plate XVI) herewith respectfully submitted indicates the modern farmer’s limitations. So far as teaching architectural art is concerned, it must be admitted that our public schools have been a dead failure.

But let us not look upon these things too gloomily, and lest the reader, by this time, discover some sinister intention upon my part to slur the memory of the hero of New Orleans, I wish to state that, personally, I have only the greatest respect and admiration for a man who positively refused to be frightened. Like Napoleon, Jackson was unquestionably the man for the hour—the times, and devilishly bad times they must have been by 1837 to have grown inimical to the very commercial interests that had let them loose. By their aid, however, are we not permitted to see ourselves somewhat as others see us, so at last, we shall have discovered the true mission of these times in the economy of art?