guns, fowling-pieces, rifles, muskets, pistols, all | it failed to overturn every thing is a mystery. crammed to the muzzle with the remaining cartridges of their late proprietors; cartridge-boxes, powder-horns, all recklessly into one heap. The result was an explosion which shook the city to its foundation. Some twenty thousand pounds of powder were probably ignited. How THE MILLS HOUSE. The lunatic asylum, poor-house, guard-house, arsenal, barracks, were all tumbled into chaos. The British guard, to a man, torn in pieces; lunatics, paupers, invalids; and many of their lifeless carcasses were hurled against the walls and towers of this old church, which bore, for a long time after, the "spattered blood and brains" of the victims. But the war is overthe knights at rest-the memory of these events is beginning to fade away from the mind, and is scarcely on the record: yet the old church has taken a new lease of life; has put on new habiliments of youth and beauty; has probably strengthened itself with new armor in the cause of religion. The pastor of this church (Rev. Samuel Gilman) is well known in the literature of the country as a grace. ful and pure writer, a thoughtful and well-informed scholar, a man of fine tastes and a pleasing Fulpit orator. With one more specimen of the church architecture of Charleston we must finish our notes on this portion of our subject. The plate on p. 15 affords a full view of the building of the South Carolina Institute, and a partial view of the Circular Church (Presbyterian, formerly Congregational), which stands beside it. This church belongs to the medieval period of the Palmetto City; but recent repairs and alterations have somewhat modernized and improved it. Until recently it was without a spire. Its portico was heavy and of wretched proportions. All these faults have been amended in the modern structure, and it is now such an edifice as will not offend the eye of the critical inspector. The body of the church is a rotunda of near ninety feet in diameter, surmounted with a dome crowned by a lantern light. The building will accommodate more than two thousand persons. The effect of the interior is good; in fact, very striking, particularly with a full house. But we turn to the structure which more prominently arrests the eye in that picture. The South Carolina Institute is designed for the promotion of the mechan ical and agricultural arts in South Carolina. City and State have equally (we believe) appropriated money to its objects. The building of the Institute, as here shown us, is a structure of the Italian style. It fronts on Meeting Street, with a a façade of eighty feet. The entrance is through a lofty archway, with staircases on either hand, leading to the great hall above. This spacious apartment will seat three thousand persons. The Roman-Corinthian portico shown in our picture, next the Hall of the Institute, is that of the Circular Church, the tower, unhappily, decapitated, an almost necessary consequence of attempting too much with the focus of a daguerreotypist. But as this tower asserts no claims to special excellence, we make no apologies for its omission. The reader will please suppose that the spire is there; that the congregation has not left the house bareheaded; though, by-the-way, it is of this very structure that an old local ballad has recorded-take this verse "Oh! Charleston is a Christian place, Since writing this passage the spire has been supplied. THE PAVILION HOTEL. simply because they couldn't, at that early day, make out to "raise the wind." They have really done both since that golden period, when there was no gold. But we must pass, with irreverent abruptness, from the spiritual to the fleshly; and we shall do this without making apologies. Ours is an animal quite as much as a spiritual and intellectual world. Even Mammon yields the ground for a season when Apicius or Lucullus declares a feast. Men who preach and write, even when they feed well themselves, are but too apt to disparage the body-to make light of its claims-to speak of it as a vulgar thing-mere earth, dross, vile and degrading, and all that sort of stuff. As if man were not made in the image of his Creator; as if the body were not itself a beautiful thing; as if it were not the soul's mortal tabernacle, though destined, like all other temples, to decay. We are not to fall into this vulgar sort of disparagement-not to encourage such absurdities. The body of man is a comely thing-a beautiful thing; to be venerated in some degree for the uses to which it is put by the soul, and as designed by the Creator, with all the elements of attraction; to be nursed with loving tenderness; to be treated with solicitude; to be honored as a model, in some measure, of a Divine original. And we are not permitted to overlook those temples which are designed especially for the comfort and consolation of the body. Charleston is by no means wanting in proper regard for these temples. She has considerable faith in their creeds and ceremonials. She has many of them, which are at once grateful to the tastes and goodly to the eye, in which you may always find good things. Her eating-palaces rank among the best specimens of architecture; and that most of these are only of late erection is in proof of the fresh start which she has taken in the arts and refinements of civilization. Those of the old school have passed away. They sate, for a long time, melancholy in her highways. They were, in an architectural point of view, quite unworthy of the devout and dignified uses for which they were designed. They were shapeless and unsightly to the eye; and though it is said that "Good wine needs no bush," yet good dinners, such as Lucullus provides, always require to be eaten in the chambers of Apollo; and we doubt if Apollo ever had his feasts served up on Olympus in more costly temples than the three specimens which we propose to give of those which commend themselves to the gastronomes of the Palmetto City. There, for PRIVATE RESIDENCE example, is the Charleston Hotel, a vast pile, with a noble colonnade, designed by Reichardt, a German. This is a stately fabric, capable of accommodating some three hundred lodgers of average dimensions. Its present host is Daniel Mixer, a publican greatly renowned for his capacity at the conception and concoction of good things, solid and liquid, of whom the Charleston epicureans always speak in terms of tenderness and a grateful sympathy. Mixer is proprietor also of the Moultrie House, the summer refuge of Carolina on the sea-board, at Sullivan's Island; and, during the summer solstice, when the Dog Star rages, his guests transfer themselves from the city to the Island House at pleasure, and grow young in the embrace of ocean, fanned with pleasant breezes from Ireland, Cuba, Cape Horn, and other agreeable and equally near neighborhoods. The Charleston Hotel, on the present site and plan, has once been destroyed by fire; but, to employ an original comparison, it has risen, as you see, like another Phoenix from the flames. One-third of a mile below, in the same street (Meeting), stands the Mills House, a still newer fabric of great, sudden, and well-deserved popularity. The Mills House takes its name from the proprietor, who, as the name almost signifies, is a millionare-the J. J. Astor of Charleston. The structure was designed by Hammerskold, a German. The style, as you will see, is in good taste, though florid. The proportions of the main building are well maintained, and show impressively, in spite of the apparent insignificance of the piazza, and its want of elevation in degree with the height of the edifice. The effect might be bettered by a second piazza, taking in another story of the house; but chacun à son gout, a motto which will answer admirably in the interior of the building over which the presiding genius of Nickerson provides so variously and amply as to assure all parties of the privilege of choice, however capricious they may be of taste. He, too, like his contemporary, Mixer, has a formidable host of followers and admirers, whose faith, lacking in whatever other respects, admits of neither question nor cavil in regard to his wine-cellar and cuisine. He ranks, in fact, pre-eminently, as one of the 1 great, if not the greatest, of Southern house- no properer host than Mr. H. L. Butterfield, who The three establishments whose portraits we have given will suffice to show that the people of the Palmetto City are far from insensible to what is due to the august, the beautiful, the spiritual, and the esthetic, in that mortal temple of an immortal nature which your vulgar moralists are but too prone to disparage. There are sundry other excellent establishments, devoted to the same domestic deities, which are, no doubt, quite as capable of ministering happily to the appetites of the race; but as our daguerreotypist has thought proper to confine us to these three illustrations of the order, we sub Half a mile above, in the same street, you find spacious accommodations at the Pavilion Hotel. This structure, though of less pretension exteriorly than its two neighbors, is yet a fine, ample, commodious building, capable of re-mit to his decision; particularly as our aim is ceiving and entertaining happily, almost as many guests as either. Its style, within and without, is less ornate and expansive. Its tastes are simpler, and it appeals more to the grave, quiet, and solid portion of the community than to the gay, flaunting tribes in the courts of fashion. Hither come the sturdy farmers, and the brooding merchants, and the philosophical politicians, and all who love "their ease at their inn," without feeling the necessity of putting on dress breeches for dinner, or exhibiting themselves in costume of character at the bal masque by night. For all this class of persons, there is, perhaps, the architectural rather than the gastronomical, and designed to show where our Charlestonians feed, rather than how they feed. And here, for the present, we might close our labors, having sufficiently sampled from the city to satisfy the curiosity of the stranger. Hereafter, we may extend our gallery. A single specimen, however, of the more recent among the private dwellings of Charleston may not be amiss, particularly as it exhibits a singular departure from the usual style of modeling in a region where, as we have said before, there is no end to the variety, and where each man who builds makes a law for himself, doing what he deems meet in | are some very pretty and imposing ones to be his own eyes, with his brick and mortar, without found in the several burial-places, dedicated by caring to ask what eye of taste he may gravel by his performances. Here is the residence of Mr. J. T. Mikell, a planter, we believe, and lawyer. affection to private worth. We shall select but This is one of the most ambitious of the private dwellings of Charleston. The fence, bythe-way, which is shown in the picture to be of wood, is to be superseded by an open railing of iron. Our daguerreotypist was simply a little too quick for the contractor. Talking of daguerreo-ceiving House are all happily designed in a typers, by-the-way, reminds us to report that we owe our pictures to several of the best in Charleston, Cook, and Cohen, and Bowles and Glenn; all of whom deal with the sun on familiar terms, making as free use of the solar establishment as if they had a full partnership in the concern. We suppose, however, that the privilege is not confined to these parties, and that Brady and others are permitted a share upon occasion, and when Apollo is not engaged with better company.. Charleston is not, like Baltimore and Savannah, a city of monuments. As yet she has not reared a single one to any of the remarkable men who have made her annals famous. But there MONUMENT IN MAGNOLIA CEMETERY. graceful and modest fashion. The natural beauties of the site which the Magnolia Cemetery occupies have been very happily brought out, and Art and Nature seem to have united their forces to make appropriate to the purpose, and grateful to the sentiment, this last lodging-place of humanity. There are miniature lakes and islands, solemn groves and bird-frequented gardens, which soothe the sentiment, beguile the eye and mind to wander, and fill the soul with a grateful melancholy. The place is new, and lacks nothing but time to hallow it with great and peculiar attractions. We detach a single one from several of its monuments. It is wrought of Italian marble exquisitely chiseled. The four niches are occupied To be withheld from heaven." We have said that Charleston has raised no monuments to any of her great men. She is beginning to feel the reproach which should follow this neglect, and there is some promise that she will shortly relieve herself from all censure on this score. The ladies of Charleston have taken in hand the erection of a monument to the memory of Calhoun; have raised some $30,000 or $40,000, and are now meditating the design after which they will build. They have not yet resolved upon any plan, though several have been submitted. One of these, the only one which we have seen, has been lithographed, and we therefore copy it. It was adopted originally by the military of Charleston, who entertained the project of a monument themselves; but money came in slowly. Republicanism and pa |