NUMBER VI.

ON THE BUILDING OF TOWNS.

MR. Volney, in his “View of the soil and Climate of the United States," has indulged the sarcasm so peculiar to him, in making strictures on the diet of the people of America. In the present number I must be permitted to relate the observations of a foreigner of another country, on a subject not less important to the health and comfort of our citizens, than the composition of our "gravies." He, however, cannot be charged with "requiting hospitality by publishing calumnies." It is true, the remarks were his, but they were colloquial; the blame, then, of making them public, attaches exclusively to me, and I know but little of the temper of my countrymen, if they are not always as willing to receive useful and improving hints, as they are unwilling to bear with impunity disgusting and unqualified censures.

On an oppressively hot day, in the course of the present summer, chance threw me into the company of an Englishman, who had lately arrived in this country. The conversation naturally turned towards the weather, and I was forcibly struck with the observations of the stranger.

"When I embarked for this country (said he) I figured to myself the happiness of your citizens, so completely emancipated from the despotic laws of Europe. I did not anticipate that, when that great end was accomplished, the people of an independent country would remain subject to the still more despotic customs of their mother country. I did suppose that the freedom and independence of fashions and manners would soon follow the freedom and independence of your political station; for it appears to me as natural that a youth of eighteen should clothe himself in the habiliments, and assume the prop of his grand-father of fourscore, as that a young continental nation should imitate the fashions of an old and insular country.

"How strange! that notwithstanding your great freedom of enquiry, and notwithstanding the annual recurrence of a pestilential discase in your larger towns, (which always occurs in the hottest weather too) you have not bestowed more

attention on the subject of constructing town-houses, in such a manner as to render them as cool and healthy as possible. And still more strange! that the subject of planning your towns with the view of attaining the same end, has occupied no part of your reflections on public improvements. It is admitted by all that the diseases of hot weather are more numerous and more fatal in your Atlantic towns, than those of cold: does it not follow then, that the structure of your houses, and the plans of your towns, should be as well adapted to exclude the heats of summer, as á due reference to the cold of winter will allow? To effect this, is it not essential to keep the scorching rays of the sun at as great a distance as possible, by trees, porticoes or thick walls, and to admit the heated air as sparingly as possible through small apertures? It has often been remarked, that "in the religious and castellated forms of Gothic architecture," the apartments are infinitely cooler than in the modern fashionable edifices. In them the walls are exceedingly thick, and the windows too small to admit a sufficiency of light for ordinary purposes. That stile of building has been abandoned in England, because their climate being an insular and humid one, the sunbeams are ever hailed as a welcome guest; but in the southern parts of Europe, where the sun's influence, as in your's, is powerfully oppressve, castles are the abodes infinitely preferred. In Spain, where they have not the advantage of the "castellated form," they have a very simple mode of keeping their apartments cool, by opening the windows at night to admit the cool air, and closing the shutters in the morning to exclude the hot air. Even this precaution, however is not taken in America. Your apartments, with four or six large windows, often without shutters, exhibit a very good model of a receptacle for exotics of the vegetable kingdom, but are surely not very well calculated to promote the pleasurable sensations of a human being. No one can enjoy more than I do, the "life-infusing air" of morning; but it would be almost as rational to invite a stream of the Syroc of Italy or the Symoon of the African desert, as a current of your " tainted air" passing over a pavement heated even to inflammation by the apon-day.

sun."

Our Englishman conceiving that his argument was so far

established (for it was difficult to controvert his facts) pursued the course of moral reasoners, who extend their principles from man to those collections of men denominated nations, in extending his arguments from one house to those collections of houses denominated towns.

"If it be admitted (continued he) that cold be a nega. tive quality, or nothing more than the absence of heat, I' presume that the greater portion of shade, or in other words, the smaller the portion of solar rays falling on your streets, the cooler will be your towns. This, I take for granted, is precisely upon the same principle that the night is cooler than the day; a fact which, I believe, stands undisputed. Without reflecting, however, on the difference of climate, you as servilely imitate the English in the plan of your towns, as in the padding of your coats or the stuffing of your cravats. There, wide streets and low houses are proper, because in a moist and northern climate it is essential to admit the sunbeams as copiously as possible.-Here, narrow streets and high houses are proper, because in a dry and southern climate it is essential to exclude the sun-beams as completely. as possible. In order to effect this, two different modes may be recommended: the one perhaps more convenient, the other certainly more beautiful. The first consisting chiefly of alleys, the second of piazzas or collonades.

"In the first mode, there might be two descriptions of streets: the one for carriages of all kinds, the other exclusively for pedestrians. The streets for carriages might be sufficiently wide for three to pass, and would require no foot pavements; and along these might be ranged all the wholesale stores and warehouses. The other streets would only be narrow alleys smoothly paved, into which the dwelling houses and retail stores night open. Upon this plan there would be an immense saving in the expense of pavement, and these passages would be much more agreeable than wide streets, owing to the constant shade of the houses on cach side, and the current of cooled air that must rush through them in the summer season. In Edinburgh there are many of these alleys opening into wide streets, and as the air becomes heated and rarified in the latter, its place is supplied by a current through the former, which passes, in a warm day, with such velocity as to be compared to the o

peration of the blow-pipe. In China, I am informed, they improve on the plan of narrow alleys, by spreading matts over them, from the tops of the houses, during the heat of the day. That this plan is more healthful too, we have the testimony of the most eminent physicians of Paris, who assert that in the old part of that city, where the houses are so high and the streets so narrow as never to be dry, the inhabitants are more healthy in summer, than those of the other parts of the city, notwithstanding their poverty and filth, which are powerfully exciting causes of disease. In addition to these advantages, it is certainly as easy and as cheap to keep narrow streets clean as wide ones, and whatever filth may be carelessly left on them is surely much less liable to putrefaction from the absence of the sun's rays. It will be remembered that streets are only intended as passways from one place to another, and are only used as places of rendezvous for business or pleasure, where there are no porticoes or public squares. Public gardens or squares should never be dispensed with in any town, for when laid out with taste they not only embellish the appearance of the town itself, but also, by inviting to exercise companies of both sexes, unquestionably contribute greatly to the health and sociability of the inhabitants.

"Here suffer me to express my astonishment (observed the stranger) at the apathy which pervades the citizens of Richmond in their neglect of the Capitol square. Although there are several wealthy gentlemen residing on the confines of this square, whose dwellings would be highly ornamented by its improvement; although the citizens below the hill have not a spot to which they can send their children to take the air; although there is no such place as a Promenade, to which persons of both sexes can resort for society and for exercise; although the town would be so much embellished by surrounding the Capitol with trees-not one effort is made towards effecting this desirable object. It is difficult to calculate the advantages to society by such a place of resort. You must permit me to say that you do not occupy at present the most elevated rank on the scale of refined society. The sexes are sever'd. The men frequent the Capitol, the Post Office, the Taverns, and the Barbacues. The women remain at home, or visit each other in neigh

bourhoods, as if your town were laid out in little cantons. A public garden would often bring together and make acquainted persons of both sexes, who now scarcely exchange a word with each other. The pleasures of social intercourse might thus be daily enjoyed without the trouble or parade of formal visits.

"If, however, (continued the communicative Englishman) the prejudices of your country so far prevail as to reject the plan of narrow streets, I would recommend a second mode, which although not in my opinion so well adapted to a warm climate, has many advantages over your present mode, and would certainly be infinitely more beautiful. I mean that of Piazzas, or Collonades. In all your towns which have come under my observation, the sideways or foot-pavements are about fifteen feet wide, by which the streets are rendered thirty feet wider than they would otherwise be. If then, the houses were projected these fifteen feet on each side over the street and supported by arches as at the Piazza of our Covent-Garden, or on columns as in the Rue des Columnes at Paris, you would of course have your streets thirty feet narrower and the same space within the Piazza which you now have for side-walks. This plan has the double advantage of increasing the shade of the streets by approximating the houses, and of protecting the persons engaged in business from the oppression of the midday summer's sun, and the inclemency of the winter's

storm." 99.

I.

NUMBER VII.

ON THE ILLUSIONS OF FANCY.

No single faculty of the mind affords materials for such

on.

various and curious disquisition as the fancy, or imaginatiThe metaphysician views it as the mimic of the senses, whose functions it sometimes so aptly performs, as to impose on the mind fiction for truth. In thus substituting the pictures or images of its own creation, for those of nature, he perceives that it only separates or combines those ideas which were imparted by the senses and reposited in

H