fashion of encaustic tiling. of the Palmetto Temples of Mammon. This god | ing of the Banking Hall being of the most showy is not without his worshipers in this region. The State Bank is a flourishing institution, though the outsider must not imagine that its name involves any connection with the body politic. There is a State Bank of South Carolina, called the Bank of the State, and its fiscal agent. But the State Bank is a private corporation, flourishing and well managed, as you may infer from such a building. It is no cold worship, be assured, which frames such fabrics to its deity; and we are constrained to admit that there are many of the temples to the Living God which would show very meanly alongside of those which are here to be seen reared to one of his most powerful rivals. This State Bank is one of them. what says the poet? But "Mammon wins his way, where angels might despair." At all events, whether the god be worthy of such a shrine or not, it is enough for us that the shrine is more than worthy of him. The upper chambers of this golden temple are consecrated to mercantile literature-in other words, occupied as a commercial reading-room. The finish of the interior is extremely fine-the oak carving being rich and abundant, and the pav While our hands are in among the bankers, let us cast our eyes to the right, looking up East Bay from the steps of the Custom-house. Here you see a group of buildings, and the three first of these are all banking houses. That huge, heavy, and somewhat unsightly fabric in the foreground, with the Roman-Doric portico, is the Planters and Mechanics' Bank, a structure of the Charleston medieval period, which has recently undergone such renovation and improvement as was possible with a very ungainly original. Within, it is a most commodious and excellently planned building for the worship to which it is dedicated; spacious, cool, airy, elegant, and capable of hoarding any amount of money. Without, it is, as you see, a most imposing deformity-a miserable abuse of a mixed model-which has always seemed to us without grace, or symmetry, or beauty. But the worship of the deity goes on prosperously within. in spite of the bad taste of the temple. Its offices are urged unceasingly, and good dividends sufficiently declare that Mammon is satisfied with the offerings laid upon his shrine. Next this precinct, which is rather more common than proper. Very soon, and sensibly, the climate affects the plaster. It grows damp and dingy, blurred and spotted; finally cracks, flakes, and falls away; and, what with stains, blotches, and breaks, it needs new plastering as frequently as a house of wood needs paint. to it, and above, is the Farmers' and Exchange | to convert this most unpretending establishment Bank-a fanciful little fabric, a little too ornate into an Etruscan or Italian palace. Beyond, for such a worship, and showing beside the in our picture, all the houses that you see are Planters and Mechanics' as a toy-box under the employed in trade-shops, warehouses, etc. This eaves of the tower of Babel. But for the over- is a region (East Bay) wholly given up to trade. whelming bulk of its burly brother, we should These buildings are all of brick, thickly stuccoed call it a bijou of a banking house. It is a nov--a mode of coating and clothing the brick, in elty in the architecture of Charleston, if not of the day, being Moorish in all its details, yet without reminding you of the Alhambra or the Vermilion towers. It is of brown stone of two tints, laid alternately-an arrangement which adds considerably to the effect. The interior is finished with arabesque work from floor to ceiling, and is lighted with subdued rays from the summit. This gives a rich and harmonious effect to the whole. It is of recent erection, Jones and Lee the architects. The corporation itself is a new one, and prosperous, like all the temples reared to the god of the Mines, the Counter, and the Mint, in this virtuous city. The building just above it is a shop and warehouse, and gives you a very fair idea of the style and size of building usually allotted in Charleston to the retail traders. That tall structure further on is the Union Bank, of an old style, but not the oldest, in Charleston architecture. It indicated a sort of first period, of progress and improvement, in the architecture of this city; its directors will, no doubt, receive an impulse from the new graces of some of their rivals, which shall prompt them THE CENTRAL CHURCH. But we have now paid sufficient tribute to the several temples of the Charleston Mammon. Let us turn to those structures which have been reared in a more philanthropic spirit, and under the auspices of nobler deities. Of these better temples, the Palmetto City claims as large a proportion as any city in the world. The Orphan House is one of these sanctuaries, of ancient foundation; dating back to an early period in the local history. Originally a spacious brick building of three stories above the basement offices, the length of the house was 180 feet by a breadth of thirty feet. Recently it has been found necessary to enlarge it. It is now 228 feet long, seventy feet deep, and with an extension in the rear of nearly 100 feet more. contains about 130 rooms; the dormitories, play, school, and dining rooms and hospitals, all being large and noble apartments. Of these, It eight are twenty-eight by sixtyfive feet square, and several others nearly as large. The house is by far the largest building in the city. The cupola contains the great fire-alarm bell of the city. Its site is a very fine one-very nearly central, occupying an extensive square which fronts south on Calhoun, west on St. Philip's, and north on Vanderhorst streets; on the latter of which, within the same inclosure, the orphans have a neat chapel of their own, separate from the main building. This asylum constitutes a noble charity of which Charleston is very proud. It was founded in 1792, is well endowed, supported chiefly by the city, and rears, nurtures, and instructs from 200 to 250 children of both sexes. Jones and Lee were the architects by whom this structure, was enlarged and modernized. We omit from our picture the pretty little lodge in front, the stuccoed wall, and an ancient statue of William Pitt, which occupy the foreground. The Roper Hospital is another of the noble charities of this city. It takes its name from the benevolent citizen upon whose bequest it was founded. It is also designed by Jones and Lee. It is, as you see, a graceful and airy structure, peculiarly suited to its objects. According to the wishes of its founder, it is open for the reception of the sick, irrespective of creed or country. The building is Italian, flanked with towers and arranged with noble piazzas, which afford an admirable promenade under shelter for the convalescents. The comforts of the interior suitably correspond to the external beauty of the structure. The household is provided, like the Orphan House, with a regular physician, with nurses and attendants; and though of only recent erection, it has already, during the last yellow-fever season, done admirable service, being crowded with destitute sufferers from the epidemic, all of whom experienced the blessings of that noble charity which was contemplated by the generous founder of the institution. In the distance, in the same picture, you have a view of the Medical College of South Carolina, a building which, badly planned in the first instance and of very indifferent style, has recently been renovated and greatly enlarged and improved. It contains, probably, the finest anatomical lecture-room in all America. As a school, this institution is highly prosperous, and asserts a distinguished rank among the hundreds of medical colleges throughout the United States; deriving character, necessarily, from the names of Geddings, Dickson, Moultrie, Prioleau, Frost, and others. We may mention that Charleston has also a good literary college of excellent local standing; though the endowment (from the city) is quite too small to enable it so to extend its educational attractions as to draw patronage from abroad. Its pupils are mostly from the city, and it does not absorb all of these, having a powerful competitor in the College of the State, which possesses, besides the prestige of an ancient reputation, a large annual appropriation from the public treasury. The professors of the Charleston College are able and accomplished. One of the departments of the building contains one of the best museums in the United States, second perhaps to none. A library has recently been founded, based upon a large gift of books by a munificent citizen-the collection now reaching something like ten thousand volumes. ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH. The college building would show well in a picture, but our daguerreotypist has omitted it from his survey. Talking of schools and colleges brings us to the admirable military academies of South Carolina, one of which is established in this city. This is a highly flourishing institution, which usually numbers from 150 to 200 students, onehalf of whom are élèves of the State-beneficiary pupils. The graduates of this institution have mostly been working-men; have almost in every instance, on leaving the school, passed at once into useful public employments; showing the superior discipline and training of the academy over all the other schools of the country, especially in producing the solid results of a practical and scientific education. No graduates of any other institution in the State have ever so instantly borne testimony to the virtues and excellences of their Alma Mater. It supplies by its military organization what is the great deficiency in Southern training-discipline. The Southern boys are of ardent, impetuous temper, strong of will, and impatient of authority; and it is only by a military training, which makes discipline a point of honor as well as duty-which coerces the respect of the student through a certain esprit du corps, without irritating his self-esteem-that you can exercise a proper control in their government. Judging by the results thus far, the State of South Carolina could not do more wisely than to turn all her public schools and colleges into so many military academies. The Citadel Academy building occupies a large space, and opens upon the largest of all the public squares of the city. Indeed, this is the only public square in Charleston that merits the title. one of the most airy and attractive in the Palmetto City. Here, too, fronting west on the same square, is a new and beautiful church of the Baptists. Our artist includes it among his collection, and we give it as a very pretty specimen of the Norman style of architecture, the only specimen, we believe, south of the Potomac. The spire of this church is 224 feet high. The interior is finished with an open timber roof of bold, free design. The Norman details and decorations have been carried out in every The original design of this structure was by Wesner; the wings have been added, and other improvements made, after the designs of Col-portion of the structure, which adds, in no mod The side walls are 40 feet high, and the or front, is 70 feet to the point of the ga onel White, another of the architects of the erate degree, to the architectural pretensions of Palmetto City, who takes high rank in his the city. Its extreme dimensions are 80 feet profession. You see that such a building im- (front) on Meeting Street, and 155 on Henriplies ample room and verge enough. It fronts etta. south, on the great square or parade which west, spreads away to, and borders on, Calhoun ble. The audience-room, which is elevated 5 Street. With this square, that of the Orphan House, on the west, but a few hundred yards off; that of the Charleston College, on the southwest, a few hundred yards further; and a square on the east, which fronts the Second Presbyterian Church; all this precinct is well ventilated, and sprinkled with churches, large dwellings, fine, spacious grounds, and pleasant gardens. This section of the city is altogether ST. PHILIP'S CH ROH. feet above the pavement, is 55 feet wide by But Jones and Lee. The Baptists have four churches in Charleston, and have lately received a new impulse which daily increases their numbers. The square above is occupied by the Second Presbyterian Church; but as this fabric did not commend itself to the taste of our artist, he has foreborne its portrait. It belongs to what we have called the medieval period in the Palmetto City; in which, while taste was beginning to assert its desires for improvement, there was no corresponding capacity, on the part of the local arts, to serve properly its desires. It seems to have been the plan of a mere mechanic. It is one of the many heavy brick and stucco deformities of Charleston. A far better style of church architecture is another house of the Presbyterians, called The Central Church, a quarter of a mile below in the same street. This is a recent structure of temple (Grecian) form, approached by a spacious flight of steps, leading to a fine portico of the Roman Corinthian order. The proportions of the exterior are admirable-decidedly the finest specimen of this class that Charleston possesses- very chaste and elegant, both within and without, and as nearly faultless, in respect to symmetry, as we can conceive such a work to be. There is an objection, however, to the style, but only as it regards locality. To be altogether satisfied with the Grecian temple style, we must first satisfy the mind and eye in respect to place. Now, there is no getting over the absurdity of a Greek temple on a dead city level-taking a model from a mountnin, designed expressly for a great elevation, and letting it down upon the plain, where it is overlooked on every side by meaner, but taller, structures. This Central Church, placed upon the Sunian Steep, would be perfect of its kind. The American rage for Gre It cian models, some few years back, made its way in this matter of architecture, though they still to the Palmetto City, and several were raised of expend large sums upon ambitious monstrosithis class, which consumed a great deal of mon- ties, public and private. The Municipal Watchey, without any adequate result in beauty. The house is one of these atrocities of taste. It is Hibernian Hall, The Jewish Synagogue, The modern. The City Hall is in frivolous taste, Baptist Church (Wentworth Street), are all but belongs to a comparatively early period, and specimens of this sort, none of them so admir- was designed for other uses. The State House able as the Central Church, and all of them building, meant for public offices and the keepout of place, for proper effects, where they ing of archives, is a dull, square mass of brick stand. The Grecian style is wholly inappro- and stucco, which has but the single merit of priate to such a dead level as that of Charles-looking solid, and perhaps of being so. ton. The skies, climate, and plain surface of was designed by Robert Mills, a native archithe city considered, and the light Moorish, Sar-tect, who has distinguished himself more reacen, Italian-even the Gothic-are all in bet-cently, and most deplorably, according to our ter propriety. But about the time when these fabrics were conceived, the Greek was something of a frenzy North and South, though rarely a proper style for either region. But men built their dwellings, offices, and outhouses after Grecian temples; as if the Greeks themselves had ever assigned such fabrics as abodes for any but their gods, or had ever built such structures, whether for gods or men, any where but on noble eminences, looking grandly forth upon plain or sea! But we have survived these absurdities of thought and taste. The people of the Palmetto City, especially, are improving notion, by his design for the Washington Monument of the Federal City, the conception of which seems to be due to a very vivid recollection of one of the little old three-cornered cocked hats of the Revolutionary period, with a great rapier of the Middle Ages thrust upward through its crown. We are not sure that the good citizens of Charleston now differ in any respect from us in regard to the buildings we have indicated. They could wish, most of them, that the fine sites which they disfigure were occupied by more proper fabrics. They have other build |