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farm for ever famous, which he had called Mount Vernon, in compliment to the gallant Admiral; and here George went to live with him, soon after leaving school.

This was in his sixteenth year. Before this time he had shown a decided predilection for geometry, trigonometry, and surveying, which, as the profession of a surveyor was at that time particularly profitable, his friends had encouraged, and he had pursued the requisite studies with characteristic earnestness. The last two years of his school-life were chiefly given to the theory and practice of the art which laid the foundation of his fortune, not only by the opportunity it gave him of purchasing new lands advantageously, but by the habits he then acquired of calculation, accuracy, and neatness, so conspicuously useful to him through all the important affairs which devolved upon him in after life. When by way of practice he surveyed the little domain around the school-house, the plots and measurements were entered in his book with all the care and precision of the most important business; and if an erasion was required, it was done with a pen-knife, and

with such care that scarce a trace of the error can be perceived.

"Nor was his skill," says Mr. Sparks, "confined to the more simple processes of the art. He used logarithms, and proved the accuracy of his work by different methods. The manuscripts fill several quires of paper, and are remarkable for the care with which they were kept, the neatness and uniformity of the handwriting, the beauty of the diagrams, and a precise method and arrangement in copying out tables and columns of figures. These particulars will not be thought too trivial to be mentioned, when it is known that he retained similar habits through life. His business papers, day-books, ledgers, and letter-books, in which, before the Revolution, no one wrote but himself, exhibit specimens of the same studious care and exactness. Every fact occupies a clear and distinct place. **** The constructing of tables, diagrams, and other figures relating to numbers or classification was an exercise in which he seems at all times to have taken much delight."

(To be continued.)

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PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF NEW-YORK.

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cally, but relatively, standing as it has, until within a few years past, a marble oasis surrounded by a desert of bricks and mortar. The marvel of it is that such a building could have been built at all in the infancy and poverty of the city, and that it should have stood nearly fifty years without exerting the slightest influence upon the tastes of our people who were continually building and rebuilding. It was only another proof that education in taste, as in morals and science, must be progressive, and that a community must learn their alphabet in art, as well as in letters, before they can learn to read and understand the productions of enlightened minds. We know when the City Hall was built, and by whom, but how it was, why there should have been such an outbreak of taste and public liberality just then, so disproportioned to the exigencies of the times, without antecedents or followers, has always been to us a subject of especial marvel. Even at the present day, when the wealth and popula

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tion of the city have increased ten-fold, the new public buildings are comparatively mean and barbarous. There stands the beautiful City Hall, with an offspring of hideous Egyptian, Greek, and Gothic structures, without a lineament of the graceful features or elegant form of their progenitor. It is marvellous that the city fathers should have passed in and out of the City Hall day by day for half a century, and never have been imbued with a feeling of love for the beautiful edifice which was their official home, nor have imparted something of its grace and elegance to the new structures which they erected for municipal uses. But such, unfortunately, is the fact; and the City Hall remains a splendid exception to the tasteless and uninformed character of the other civic buildings of the metropolis of the New World. But, something of the wonder which the existence of such a building as the City Hall excites, subsides when

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we find that it was during the mayoralty of such enlightened men as Edward Livingston and De Witt Clinton, that the building was planned and completed. The corner stone was laid in September 1803, and it was nearly ten years in building. The front and two ends are of white marble, but the rear is of a very fine dark brown sandstone, not used, as has been ignorantly supposed, because its back was to the then rural districts, for the builders of the City Hall were not so cramped in their ideas as to imagine that New-York would never extend itself higher up than the Park; but for the same reason that Cologne Cathedral is unornamented on its northern side, because it lies always in shadow, and the warm tint of the stone is more suitable to its aspect than the cold glitter of white marble would be. Let any one look at the City Hall with this thought in his mind, and the brown stone of the rear will no longer look incongruous or improper.

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Though we can make this apology for the rear of the City Hall, which is as beautiful as the southern front, we have none to offer for its rusticated, brown stone basement, nor for its awkward wooden belfry, which has been recently added. The names of the architects were Macomb and Mangin, and as they left no other evidences of their genius, the City Hall must be regarded as an inspiration.

But, the City Hall of New-York is an exceptional institution in more respects than its architectural exterior, and as respects all other public buildings in the Union. It is in this Hall that has been commenced a permanent gallery of historical art, which, even at the present time is of great value; but, to our posterity, it will prove a precious treasure; in it are preserved the portraits of all the governors of the State, and of the mayors of the city; they are hung in the noble suite of apartments known as the Governor's Room, and in other parts of the building are the portraits of many of our eminent men and military heroes. This plan of preserving the portraits of the chief magistrates of the State and city, is one which should be imitated, not only by the nation, but by each of the States and cities; it would be a cheap way of encouraging art,

and establishing galleries of incalculable value in a historical point of view.

In the Governor's Room are full length portraits of the twelve governors of the State, from Lewis down to Fish, including Tompkins, Clinton, Van Buren, Marcy, Seward and Young; two of them are by Trumbull, and the rest by Catlin, Vanderlyn, Inman, Weir, Page, Elliott, Gray, and Hicks; there are, also, the portraits, en buste, of twenty-two mayors, and full lengths of Presidents Washington, Monroe, Jackson, and Taylor; Lafayette by S. F. B. Morse, General Monckton by the same artist; and Generals McComb, Brown, Scott, and Swift; Commodores Perry, Decatur, and Bainbridge; there are also original portraits of Columbus, Governor Stuyvesant, Bolivar, Hendrick Hudson, and Paez, General Williams, and of Mr. Valentine, who has been many years clerk of the Common Council. In the Chamber of the Board of Aldermen, a very beautiful apartment, are full length portraits of Washington and George Clinton, painted by Trumbull, and of John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, by Weimar; in the chamber of the Assistant Aldermen, a department of the city government which has been abolished by the new Charter, are full lengths of Commodores Hull and

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McDonough by Jarvis; in room No. 8 is a half-length portrait of the renowned High-Constable, Jacob Hays, and, in the Mayor's Office is a half-length portrait, painted by Mooney, of Achmet Ben Ahmed, the captain of the Imaum of Muscat's frigate, which visited New-York about ten years since. In the Governor's Room there are marble busts of De Witt Clinton and Henry Clay, in the chamber of the Board of Aldermen there are busts of John Jay and Chief Justice Marshall, and in other parts of the Hall there are busts of Thomas Addis Emmet, and Chancellor Kent, and marble tablets in honor of several distinguished members of the New-York bar. Until within a few years past there was a noble banqueting room in the City Hall, where the city feasts used to be held on occasions of high public festivals, such as the Fourth of July, when the Mayor presided at the feasts surrounded by the Aldermen and their distinguished guests, and mighty bowls of punch were quaffed, and enormous tureens of turtle soup eaten for the good of the city. But these civic feasts have fallen into disuse, and the magnificent apartment, with its crimson curtains, has been made. into two mean-looking court rooms, by a dingy partition. In one of the rooms is kept the City Library, the mere existence of which is hardly known

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to the majority of our citizens. contains many valuable books, and a very choice collection of rare engravings and interesting works of art, which were presented to the city through the agency of Mons. Vattemare by Louis Philippe of France, and other foreign rulers. The Law Library of the New-York bar is in one of the lower apartments of the Hall but it is only accessible to members. The famous "tea-room," where the Aldermen used to feast at the public cost, is a rather dingy apartment in the occupancy of the keeper of the Hall, the tea-room expenses having been denied by law. The tea-room was so called on the lucus a non lucendo principle, for the potations most indulged in, in that convivial apartment, were mostly champagne and brandy. The City Hall was sufficiently spacious to afford offices for all the municipal business of the city, besides rooms for the United States Courts, but it is now insufficient for the accommodation of the municipal offices alone, and, besides appropriating the entire extent of the old Alms House in the rear, a spacious Hall has been erected in which the newly organized Council under the reformed charter will hold its sessions; at the east end of the Hall is the Hall of Records, the old debtor's prison modernized with porehes and columns. The buildings used for municipal offices, which are

clustered together in the rear of the City Hall, are of a very miscellaneous character, and appear to have been dropped down by accident, or to have been placed there temporarily with a view to some future arrangement. One of them, as we have mentioned, was, originally, an alms house, erected before external ornaments were considered as essentials to that class of public buildings; another is a circular house, which was originally put up for the exhibition of a panorama; another was a rough stone building, in which poor debtors used to be incarcerated for the crime of poverty, but it has been stuccoed, and pedimented, and pillared in the style of a Greek temple, while there are two new edifices, both constructed of brown freestone, but, to keep up the general

confusion, made of unequal dimensions, and as little in harmony as possible. Not far above the public buildings in the Park, is the City Prison, commonly called the Tombs, from the sepulchral style of its architecture. It occupies an entire square, with its principal front on Centre-street, as represented in the engraving. The ponderous and gloomy character of Egyptian architecture harmonizes esthetically with the purposes of a prison, but it is both barbarous and costly, and there is no good reason for erecting in the midst of a city an object which has such a nightmarish influence on its neighborhood. The ground on which the City Prison stands was once a swamp, its cells are damp and unwholesome, and the whole interior is dark and dismal; it is con

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structed of huge blocks of granite, which are oppressive to look upon, and must have a chilling effect upon the nervous system of passengers through Centre-street, who have within them undivulged crimes, in it is held the Court of Sessions, and all public executions take place in one of its courts.

In the immediate neighborhood of the Egyptian Tombs is another building equally gloomy in appearance, but of a different style of architecture, if such a word can be applied to a building that is devoid of style.

The New Armory, or down-town Arsenal, stands on the corner of White and Elm streets, with a frontage of one hundred and thirty-one feet, by eighty-four feet. It is built of a dark blue granite,

with square-headed, narrow windows, a battlemented parapet, and flanked by square towers. It is employed as a receptacle for the ordnance of the first division of the State Artillery, the lower story being appropriated for a gun room, and the second floor for a drill room. It is wholly devoid of ornament, but is substantial, and, if it should ever be needed as a place of refuge, it could resist a very strong force. But, we imagine that its capacity as a fortress will never be tested by a siege. On the roof is a telegraph pole intended to communicate by signals with the State arsenal further up town.

But the greater number of the buildings belonging to the city are not to be found in the streets and avenues; the hospitals, prisons, alms-houses, and nurseries, are

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