CALIFORNIA. THE HALLS OF EUROPE. MY GOOD FRIENDS, It has appeared to me probable that now, as the contract for building this Hall is brought to a close, and you are about to disperse and take up employment elsewhereit might be agreeable to you to hear some discourse respecting your work, and to compare what you have done with what has been done in other countries. Reflection on the labour you have each in his sphere of usefulness expended on this building during the last four months, may be the more satisfactory to you when you consider the purposes for which it is immediately and ultimately intended when you know that they are of the highest social importance to which our ambition may well be directed, and when, in addition to this, you can assure yourselves that the building recommends itself especially to your recollection, inasmuch as, in its present state of advancement, it exceeds in magnitude many of the largest with which you may be acquainted; and further that it bids fair to rival, when completed, those of the greatest distinction and celebrity in other lands. It will be a relief to your minds to be informed at the outset that it is not within my purpose to preach to you on Architecture. For me, a layman, to lecture on the subject of your daily occupation would be as impertinent as was the act of the rhetorician who descanted on the art of war in the presence of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general. However, you will probably not be displeased to hear a few remarks respecting some of the great buildings of ancient and modern times-presented to you, not in strict historical sequence, far less with a critical spirit, but solely to furnish you with a mete-yard of comparison by which you may measure the dimensions of this great Hall, the work of your hands, and assure yourselves that yours has been no ignoble occupation. Such an inquiry is interesting in many points of view. By thus seizing a few of the boldest types with which man has left on the earth's surface the mark of his civilisation, there is ample material for reflection. We may not merely survey with astonishment and awe the vast proportions of the ruins which attest the power and affluence of peoples represented now only by shattered tribes, or vagrant outcasts -not the mere stones-though they be immensely larger than those employed in modern times—not merely the details of ornamental structure or the decorations unsurpassed in effect by the productions of the successors of the primitive artists-but, rising from these grosser material topics, we may seriously ponder on the men who did these things, on the early unfolding of the force of their intellect, on the grandeur of their conceptions, on the fertility of their genius, on the skill, intrepidity, and perfection with which they embodied their thoughts; in days when the mechanical arts were in their infancy, when the application of steam as a motive agent was unknown, and while the world bad not been favoured with the flood of little contrivances which the small cleverness of our age has poured upon us, and of which-being protected by patents—it is so proud. The sequel of such considerations may be pursued at another time; at present our first excursion is naturally to Egypt. There, in the fertile valley of the Nile,-formerly swarming with a people under subjection to despotic kings,are found the remains of works the reported size of which we might discredit but for the acknowledged veracity of those who have measured them. The alleged antiquity of them we might distrust but for the recent discoveries in chronology, verified in a great measure by the unriddling of the hieroglyphic symbols graved on the indestructible materials employed. Of these it is not necessary to offer to your notice more than two or three examples, for nothing is more truly descriptive of an excursion up the Nile than the expression, that after a time the traveller becomes listless from the perpetual succession of desolation, and feels "be-ruined, be-templed, and bepyramided" to death. Having mentioned at a venture and leaving you to figure to yourselves great square, oblong, or irregular courts, containing forests of granite columns, with avenues of obelisks, sphynxes, and nondescript objects, and directing your attention to Lepsius' book on Egypt, the right royal gift of the King of Prussia to the Library, we will proceed to Greece. As in Egypt, an ostentatious yet morose dominant influence exulted in the display of architecture in its most ponderous and durable forms-so in Greece the genius and character of the people presented it in a different aspect. There, while liberty of thought was unfettered, while the poetic fire pervaded society, and while a religious culture prevailed, more intellectual than the debased superstition of the Egyptians, a greater elegance in style is to be observed. This spirit extended itself to Asia Minor and to Italy, and other countries colonized by the Greeks. In all are to be found remains of large buildings, chiefly temples, erected in honour of the somewhat formidable body of gods and demigods who were believed to have originally tenanted or to have been admitted into Olympus. Portions of these have been so frequently repeated or imitated as to be sufficiently well known to most of you. Here then, as in the last instance, a few only will be mentioned in order to give you their size. First in rank-though not the largest-stands * Warburton : "The Crescent and the Cross." † The Walhalla, near Ratisbon, a remarkable building, erected by Ludwig, king of Bavaria, under the direction of his architect, Baron Klenze, is a literal copy of the Parthenon of Athens, with the exception that it is elevated on a lofty terrace approached by a noble flight of steps, rendered necessary to secure an artificial plateau on a rock overhanging the Danube. |