tions of the modern painters of Europe, but who will permit no one out of his own household to look at his treasures of art. Connoisseurs, amateurs and artists, have vainly endeavored to obtain permission to look at the Landseers, Eastlakes and Turners, that rumor says hang upon his walls, giving no pleasure nor instruction to any eyes but these of their wealthy owner, who, probably, derives little pleasure from them himself. They are his own property, and he has a right to keep them to himself; as much right to veil them from the public eye as to put linen jackets on his armchairs, or blinds to his windows. We would not invade the sanctity of a private dwelling, though it contained a chef d'œuvre by every artist whose name is known to fame. But art can never flourish in a country where the works of artists are hidden from the public eye. Artists will not strive to excel each other when their works cannot be seen, or waste their energies in adorning the walls of a darkened parlor. Pictures and statues are excluded from our churches; and, were they not, they could only be seen by sectarian worshippers. It has not yet been thought necessary to cover the walls of any of our public buildings with paintings; with the exception of the suite of apartments called the Governor's Room in our City Hall, there is no building in the city belonging to the people, and open to their inspection, which has any artistic works to boast of. The Governor's room contains some fine portraits of all the Governors of the State, the Mayors of the City, and some of our military and naval heroes. The Art-Union, by its free exhibition, was doing a good work for the cause of Art, but, by some legal quibble, the operations of that excellent institution have been stopped, and nothing now remains for art but the hope that the proprietors of our great hotels, in their strife to outdo each other in magnificent expenditures, will, after exhausting the resources of the upholsterer, call in the aid of the artist to create attractions for their palatial taverns. The proprietors of the Astor House have already exhibited a most commendable spirit in this respect, and have decorated their various rooms with some very fine paintings, which have cost more than twenty-five thousand dollars. It suits the taste of English noblemen, to hang upon the walls of their drawing-rooms, and banqueting halls old pictures that have been torn from convents and churches, which represent expiring martyrs and other subjects little calculated to inspire feelings of gayety or cheerfulness. Such subjects as these we should advise our hotel-keepers, if they ever emulate the refined example of the hosts of the Astor House, to avoid, and to let their pictures be such as will charm while they elevate the feelings of their guests, or visitors. The popular sentiment may demand Scripture paintings, but they are hardly adapted to dining-rooms and parlors, where the tone of conversation and feeling is widely at variance with the looks of expiring saints and repentant Magdalens. Mr. Rossiter has painted a very large picture representing the Prophet Jeremiah "rehearsing a lamentation," in which he has grouped together all the personages who might be imagined present by the river of Babylon, when the children of Israel sat down and wept over their captivity. The artist has grappled with the immensity of his subject with great boldness, and thrown over the multitude of personages he has introduced, an atmosphere of warmth and beauty that admirably harmonizes with the ideal scene. The painting is on too large a scale for exhibition in an ordinary room, and the artist has sent it to the southwest, to be shown to those who have but few opportunities of seeing a work of any artistic pretension. NOTE. THE BOURBON QUESTION.-We learn from the Rev. Mr. Hanson, the writer of the article in our last number, "Have we a Bourbon among us?" that several new and important facts have come to his knowledge, bearing upon this romantic subject, which he will embody in an article for our April number, wherein he will examine, in detail, the new work by BEAUCHESNE on the (supposed) death of the Dauphin, which we have noticed in our Editorial Notes. PUTNAM'S MONTHLY. A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art. VOL. I.-APRIL 1853.-NO. IV. NEW-YORK DAGUERREOTYPED. BUSINESS-STREETS, MERCANTILE BLOCKS, STORES, AND BANKS. UR Custom-House in New-York, like large, solidly-constructed, and costly building, of white marble, which some people of delicate, aesthetic morals make complaints about, because it resembles a Greek temple. But the resemblance is not so exact that any body need be distressed by it. The Parthenon was only the expanded idea of a log cabin, and we have quite as good a right to an expanded log cabin in New-York as ever they had in Athens, for we have had a good many more of the primitive types of the Greek temple in our country than there ever were in Greece. Our meridian is very nearly the same as that of Athens, and the climatic requirements of both cities are similar. We think it is quite probable that our architects would have planned just such buildings as our socalled Greek Custom-House, if a copy of Stuart and Revett had never crossed the Atlantic, or Athens never existed. Our Custom-House is not so objectionable for being like the Parthenon, as for being unlike it. We do not imagine that Ictinus, the architect of that temple, would complain of his New World descendant for imitating his work, but, for not doing it more accurately. Our CustomHouse displays the Greek triglyphs in all their stiffness; but, in place of the ornamental metopes it should have, it has utilitarian panes of plate glass, to let in light upon the "attic cells," where customhouse clerks sit at their mahogany desks. There is a pediment with heavy cornices, guttæ and all, at either end, supported on ponderous fluted pillars; but the tympanumns are destitute of sculptures, so VOL. I.-23 that they look like picture frames hung up without pictures. Perhaps, some of these days, when custom-houses shall be abolished, and this marble building shall be appropriated to a better purpose, the statuary, the metopes, and the polychromatic tints which once beautified the Parthenon, will be supplied. There is room for improvement all round us; and, when the "good time" comes, we dare say our Custom-House will receive its share of attention. In the mean time, we would advise all discontented amateurs of architecture to be tolerant towards our Greek temples, and remember that, if they are not very becoming to the uses for which they were designed, that they are very solid, have cost a good deal of the public money, and are likely to last a long time; and that, if they might have been better, they might also have been worse. Our Custom-House was built under the presidency of General Jackson, who was certainly no Pericles, and could hardly have been expected to build public edifices like him. Besides, Pericles had a Phidias and an Ictinus, as General Jackson had not, to embody and improve his magnificent projects. But the site occupied by our Custom-House has been sanctified by a presence greater than that of Pericles, or any other Greek; it was in the balcony of the old Federal Hall, which stood on this spot, where Washington took his inaugural oath, as first President of the United States, and the pediment of the CustomHouse, which now looks like a blank canvas, with a splendid frame, should be filled with sculptures representing this great event in our national history, and commemorating the spot which was consecrated by its enactment. The CustomHouse stands in a splendid position for the display of a sculptured picture; its portico rears itself boldly up in its snowy magnificence, in front of Broad-street, and is elevated from the surface of Wall-street, on a platform to which you ascend by eighteen marble steps. The two ends on Wall and Pine streets are precisely alike, but the difference of position gives a look of grandeur to the Wall-street end, which the other hardly suggests. The building is entirely isolated, fronting on Wall, Nassau and Pine streets, and having an alley of ten feet on the south side, which separates it from the neighboring buildings. As a piece of masonry, it is doubtless equal to any structure in the world; and, if let alone, will probably endure as long as the Pyramids. It is built entirely of white marble, which was brought from the Berkshire quarries in Massachusetts; and the only wood-work employed in the whole structure is in the doors. The form of the building is a parallelogram, two hundred feet long, and ninety feet wide; its height is about eighty feet. The pediment at each end is supported by eight fluted columns of white marble, five feet eight inches in diameter, and thirty-two feet high. On each side there are thirteen square pilasters, with windows in the embayed intervals. The interior is divided into a grand rotunda, and numerous offices for the different departments of the CustomHouse. The rotunda is sixty feet in diameter; the dome is supported by sixteen Corinthian columns, thirty feet high, with capitals of white Italian marble. Under the dome are the desks of the four deputy collectors, and around the sides of the hall are the desks of the entrance and clearance clerks. All the business transacted with the Custom-House must first be begun here, and, in the little room adjoining, where the cashier keeps his desk, nearly two-thirds of the entire revenue of the country is received, and paid over to the Sub-treasurer, whose vaults are in the north-eastern corner of the building. In the crypt are the offices of some of the important subordinate officers; and it is only by a visit to this part of the structure that its solidity and massiveness can be felt. Some of the marble blocks weigh over thirty tons. The roof is of marble: the slabs weigh three hundred pounds each, and overlap each other eight inches. The building was commenced in May, 1834, and completed in the same month in 1841. The cost, including the lot, $1,195,000; the building alone cost $950,000. was Emerson says in one of his poems "Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone." But we Yankees have too many other good things to boast of, to feel any pride in the Parthenons which we rear for all sorts of purposes, and the Custom-House in Wall-street, solid, beautiful, and costly as it is, we are by no means proud of. Perhaps our pos Metropolitan Bank. terity may be; but our High Bridge is a much finer architectural object than could be found in all Athens, and we are not proud of even that. The late John Frazee. the sculptor, had the superintendence of the building of the Custom House, but cannot be called its architect, as he has sometimes had the credit of being. Wall-street contains many fine buildings besides those that we have given views of, and among them is the new banking house of the Seamen's Saving's Bank, on the corner of Wall and Pearl streets. One of the oldest commercial buildings in the city is the old Tontine Coffee House, between Water and Pearl streets, the large room of which was used as a Merchants' Exchange for a great number of years, until about the year 1828, when the first Exchange, which was destroyed in the great fire of 1835, was View of Dey st. from Greenwich st., looking towards Broadway. finished. One of the peculiarities of our new banking institutions is to settle down upon the corners of streets. The very finest of all the new banking houses is that of the Metropolitan Bank, on the corner of Pine-street and Broadway. This superb building is but just finished; it is faced with brown free-stone, and displays a greater quantity of ornamental sculpture upon its two fronts than the whole of Broadway could have exhibited ten years ago. It is, in fact, to our banking institutions and the drygoods business, that we are chiefly indebted for whatever of architectural excellence or beauty our city can boast of. The Metropolitan Bank is, too, a drygoods bank, which was established chiefly by drygoods merchants, for the special convenience of their own department of trade. The great leading business of NewYork, that which gives employment to the vast fleets of sailing ships and steam vessels that continually crowd its magnificent harbor; which builds the superb hotels that ornament its streets; that creates banks, erects warehouses, extends its docks, attracts thousands of traders from all corners of the continent, and makes it the great, wealthy, elegant and busy metropolis it is-is Drygoods. Under this comprehensive head is included every thing that is used for covering the human body, excepting shoes. NewYork is, in truth, what some of our ambitious tailors call their establishments, the great clothing emporium of the world. A very considerable part of all the various articles used in clothing the limbs and backs of this entire continent, the calicoes of Manchester, the cloths of Yorkshire, the laces and hosiery of Germany, the millinery of France, the silks of India, and the cottons of Lowell, pass through the warehouses of New-York, and pay their percentage to our merchants, who constitute a calico aristocracy. During the last year there was imported into the port of New-York, foreign merchandise to the amount of one hundred and eighteen millions, seven hundred and seventy-five thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three dollars; and of this amount, sixty-two millions, six ndred and eighteen thousand, four red and twenty-one dollars came under ..e head of drygoods. More than one half of the commerce of NewYork is in drygoods. We get a better idea of the immensity of this great branch of trade, by looking at that part of the city |