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Omnes.—Welcome, Father, you are just in season.
It is the last bell which you hear.

Abbot.—As it should be, my children. I am
never late, but love not to be too soon. Ha! who
is this? our Poet, our Lopez de Vega? Whence
come you, my son? Whither have you been?

Poet.—To Georgia, Father.

Abbot.—What, Rowland Springs?

Poet.—No, indeed! I remembered too well
your favorite maxim, never to go where all the
world goes; in particular, to those places where
we see little besides our own people. I have been
on a visit to the wild places—the mountains, the
rocks, the waterfalls, the Currahee, Tallulah,
Toccoah.

Abbot.—Ah, dog! But there rests against
your name, in the records of the Monastery, a fine
of a dozen of Champagne. You went without
leave, after your usual fashion: without beat of
drum; selfishly seeking pleasures which you were
not disposed to share with your brethren. For
my part, I can enjoy no pleasure unless I share it.
I see but a small part of the beauties of the landscape,
unless some dear one is nigh to partake my
delight.

Poet.—And it was with this very feeling, Father,
that I went alone. I shall report their beauties
and delights hereafter. Too much company
spoils for me the charms of the prospect. There
will be always some blockhead to cry aloud, at

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the moment when you are bathing in rapture—
“What a glorious prospect!” Such people distress
and sicken me. I seek to feed, and in silence—
to feed the soul through the medium of the
eye—and, at such periods, I care not to listen to
the buz of human voices. I would hear no
sounds save those which are properly kindred
with the scene: the voice of the torrent, or perhaps
of some grey eagle or lordly vulture, as he
sweeps in mighty circles, and screams in unison
with the hoarse roar of shrieking waters. Feeding
thus alone, my digestion is always good.—
The thoughts and fancies which I then enjoy are
taken into the system, and become fused, as it
were, with all the natural faculties. In after days
they find utterance as a part, not simply of the
scenery, but of myself. It is thus, and then, that
I share all my delights with my brethren. I give
them no crude exclamations. I give them the
symmetrical conception—the full conclusion---the
perfect wholeness of the prospect—with enough
of myself, to enable them to determine to whom
they should be grateful. To have them with me
when I am studying my picture, is to endanger its
propriety and symmetry. Their exclamations at
such moments are as ungracious and intrusive as
the interruptions, by the vulgar and pretending, of
the favorite strain of music, breaking the symmetry
of its finest parts, under the impudent plea of
declaring their delight, and applauding the performer.

Abbot.—You are ingenious and subtle, as usual
contriving to rebuke your neighbor in defending

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yourself. But do you class your fellows of the
Monastery with the vulgar who are guilty of such
monstrosities as those you describe? Do you
hold us to be people of that order, who perpetually
demand your opinions of what you see, and
challenge your admiration of the things they affect
to admire? Do we not all know what a fine and
unusual prospect demands? Do we not know
that nothing is more gradual in growth than the
capacity for judging of the new and unfamiliar?
Who sees all the charms of a picture, where the
picture has anything in it, at a first glance? We
must wait until our standards grow, as they do
always if we give them time, from the survey of
the scene itself; and nothing is more vexing or
impertinent than the vulgar challenge: “Is'nt that
beautiful?” from people who can scarcely tell an
eagle from a cow, and know no more of poetry
than a donkey. Verily, my son, your offence is
great, if you confound the children of our beloved
order with such miserable cattle.

Poet.—It were a great sin, Father, were I guilty
of this offence. I spoke in generals only. I
have had the brotherhood gratefully in mind, during
all my journey. It was to prepare the way
for them, to make myself familiar with the terra
incognita, that I might be useful in their guidance,
that I went first alone. It was the first suggestion
to our Brother, the Editor, upon my return last
evening, that we should all visit together, the
scenes which I have been compassing; for verily,
Father, they well deserve the regards of our
blessed order. In particular, Father, they appeal

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to thee! They will refresh thy fancies, they will
stimulate thy imagination, they will fill thy mouth
with good things, and thy youth will be renewed
like that of an eagle, when he has bathed his pinions
in the fountains of the Sun!

Abbot.—Thou amendest thy error, child! We
will think of this tour of survey which thou counsellest.
It may meetly follow after our return from
Sullivan's. They tell me much of these wild regions
of our sister State. They speak of Tallulah
as being a scene of great magnificence.

Poet.—Equal, in most respects, to Niagara,
Father.

Abbot.—Ha!

Poet.—More various and wild, full of beauties
which Niagara does not possess, and of a grandeur
little short of the awful glory, which is the
charm and wonder of that great world-cataract.

Abbot.—Toccoah?

Poet.—Beautiful as a virgin's first dream of
love. Beautiful as a nymph gazing into the maternal
fountain.

Abbot.—Son, we shall go thither on our return.
But our boat is underweigh. Let us get to the
bows. I like ever the forward prospect.

Editor.—We owe much, Father, to Master
Hillard, by whose enterprise frequent boats ply
between the city, the island, and other places. He
hath opened the way to Haddrell's Point.

Abbot.—Drop the Point, I prithee! Why
cumber the language unnecessarily? The place
should be called “Haddrell” only. It is a good
name,—sounding, without being affected or petty,

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and needs no addition. We have a most atrocious
habit of finding bad names for good places, and
spoiling them when they are excellent. We must
clap on a ville or a ton, when there is no sort of
necessity for it. How much do we improve Rutherford,
as the name of a village, or Clinton, by
mounting it with a rider? I abominate these terminations!
How much better were Charleston,
as Ashley, and Georgetown, as Winyah, instead
of perpetuating clumsily, the memory of a Scotch-French
profligate, or a Dutch-English-Hottentot!
Hereafter, say Haddrell—the Point will be understood.

Editor.—Ita lex.

Beauclerk.—Certainly, for such a pretty city,
Charleston should have a more appropriate uame.

Abbot.—It is a pretty City! With a thousand
deficiencies, it has yet a thousand attractions. Our
egotism has led us to insist upon our moral qualities
only; our graces of society, our frank hospitality;
the elegance of our women, the high character
of our gentlemen. These are things, certainly,
of which we may be proud. But we have regarded
these too exclusively, and have accorded nothing,
or but little, to the physical beauties of our
home. Certainly, no city could have been more
happily seated. Two tributary rivers enclose her
in their ample embrace. The ocean sweeps up to
her very doors, making a grateful murmur at her
portals, and bringing her the odors from a thousand
islets of the deep. If she lacks a back ground.
such as high mountains alone can bestow, she has
a compensative beauty, thus rising nymph-like,

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from the very bosom of the waters. Had our
architecture corresponded more with our situation,
there would have been few cities along our
Atlantic border to surpass, or even equal her, in
beauty to the eye. But our buildings are generally
very wretchedly conceived. Our architecture
has been sui generis. It has borne no likeness to
anything in heaven or in earth, or in the waters
that surround the earth.

Editor.—There is an improvement, Father.

Abbot.—So there is! We have now some
clever native architects, and they have done something
already, and will do yet more. But a great
deal is yet necessary. There is one important preliminary
to be taught and felt, before we can do
any thing successfully in this department,—namely,
that every climate has its own requisites for
building, and its necessities must determine the
character of its structures. Now, instead of looking
to Venice for our models in Charleston, we
have been going back to the Greeks. The Yankees
first fell foul of the Greeks, and made sad
havoc of their mighty fabrics. A retired shopkeeper
in Manhattan will build his kitchen after
the plan of the temple at Icomium, and the model
of the temple of Theseus, is the humblest that he
could choose after which to plan the little structure
at the extremity of his half acre lot, which,
considering its uses, need not be seen at all. The
passion for Greek models, for a season, spread here
and there, and every where among us. And it
was all a monstrous absurdity. We can admire
the glorious fabric of Minerva, kissing the clouds

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from a lofty elevation of a thousand feet above the
sea; but the same building, squatting down in the
streets of a squat city like Philadelphia, is a manifest
absurdity. These ambitious imitators over-looked
the fact, that the Greeks planned their buildings
for mountain elevations. They were made
low and bulky accordingly, the mountain being,
in fact, a great foundation pile for the edifice. To
relieve the weight of the buildings they were surrounded
by colonnades. If these colonnades were
necessary to the relief of a building when on a
mountain, how much more necessary on a plain?
Yet, among us, the side columns, which were
thus employed for the purpose of lightness and
relief, have been knocked away entirely, and the
density and dulness of the structure have been
correspondingly increased. Our models should
be found among the old states and cities, the sites
and climates of which have some correspondence
with our own. As I have already said, some good
ideas might be got from the architecture of Venice—
we might look also among the Byzantines,—
and something quite as good might be gleaned
from the abandoned stores of the Moors of Grenada—
an elegant people; the atmosphere of their
region resembling that of Charleston, if the scenery
does not. I have no doubt that our best models
would be found among the Saracens of the
time of Abderrahman. They were a people accustomed
to warm climates, of exquisite tastes,
and a rare appreciation of all the luxuries of life.
How they would have adorned that Battery!—
What glorious courts, what delicately wrought

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columns, what umbrageous verandahs, what minarets
and porches, with what a happy distribution
of light and shadow, sparkling fountains and Mosaic
avenues and pavements, to say nothing of the
green relief from vines and festooning shrubberies,
would they have made to crown that promontory,
so beautifully placed at once for ostentation and
enjoyment. There is a corner lot, one of the best,
still remaining at the point of the Battery. I know
not who owns it, or whether it remains in the
hands of the city or not. If it does, let them sell
it at any price, to some man of equal taste and
wealth. Let him employ one of our excellent
young architects, and let the space be crowned
with a couple of light Moorish towers, connected
with a court of columns opening on the south.
The towers should be quite lofty. Indeed, to be
light, they must be so. The basement should be
sufficiently high to enable the architect to begin
the real building at a point sufficiently above the
line of the Battery, as to be distinguished—base
no less than apex—from the sea. It was a sad
error in those who built, having any part of the
building below this line. This basement, given up
to the offices, to kitchen, and even carriage house,
would leave the lot, otherwise a small one, large
enough for all purposes. Such a structure, judicionsly
adapted, would give that finish to the Battery,
which is at present its great deficiency. There
is a new Custom House to be built. What a glorious
chance here for a fine structure, looking loftily
out upon the sea! And a model adapted from
the architecture of the Saracens, would be of the

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very best sort, inasmuch as their style is susceptible
of the most various application. Every requisite
vault, office, court, or chamber, essential to
such a building could be had; while the structure
at the same time, would accord with and relieve
the flatness of the sight, and could be adapted to
soothe and disarm the oppressive languors of the
climate.

Editor.—We are passing Castle Pinckney. Do
you remember, Father, whether that Fort existed
in the Revolution?

Abbot.—It did not. It was simply a marshflat,
with very little soil, such as you see its unoccupied
extremity now. I believe that its chief
uses were as a place of execution. Remind me to
ask our venerable friend, Dr. Johnson, if it was
not there that Tweed and Ground water were hung.
It was there, certainly, or at White Point. I believe
that many of the Pirates, by whom our coast
was haunted in ante-revolutionary periods, were
justified at the spot now covered by the Castle.—
What a pity that Government does not enclose
and build upon the whole of this flat, making an
ample Citadel, which, even if Charleston were in
the hands of an enemy, could, if well provisioned,
be held by five hundred men.

Editor.—But its health is said to be doubtful.

Abbot.—Would not enclosure, with a wall of
stone, and filling up, render it healthy? Would
it not have the effect also of contributing to deepen
the channel and the harbor, by circumscribing the
river, and preventing the wash from the shoals?
Fort Johnson in the Revolution, was then

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employed to do the duty of Castle Pinckney; but it answered
the purpose very imperfectly. Its guns
failed to cover the ships of the British lying in
Rebellion Roads.