ings, however, which commend themselves as antiques, where they might not do so as architectural models; such, for example, as the old State House building, now used by the courts of justice; a colonial structure, of good proportions, and simple correct style, without pretension, and of that British period, "when George the First was king," when the tastes of Britain, in palace, grounds, and garden, were all trimly Dutchified, after the royal model. The saving feature in the style of this building is to be found in its wholly ambitionless aspect. It is content to be big, solid, square, and lofty, serving its purposes, and making no fuss, and challenging no man's admiration. And this is no small recommendation in the case of plain fabrics, as of plain people. in 1761. Its tower is supposed to be one of the noblest ornaments of the city. The proportions are good; the effect is graceful and imposing. The extreme elevation is 168 feet; no great elevation, perhaps, except in a city so little above the sea as Charleston. It is here even now overtopped by others. But it is not a mere spire. It is a series of ornamented chambers, gradually rising from each other; and involves dimensions of greater bulk and weight than any other of the city towers, St. Philip's alone excepted. The church of St. Michael seems to be deficient in relation with the tower, and the effect is not good. It is too squat for the steeple. The extreme length of the body of the church is 130 feet, its width 60. As a whole, the structure is in good taste, simple and proper; while this steeple, from its proportions, and an air of grace and lightness, which lessens greatly your idea of its bulk and weight, is in the highest degree pleasing and impressive. But on the opposite corner of the street, southeast of Broad and Meeting, is another antique of the old colonial period, the sight of which always rouses the pride of the Palmetto citizen. This is St. Michael's Church (Episcopalian), a fine old fabric, and one of the best specimens This tower constituted, until a comparatively of the British architectural talent of its day, at recent period, the great landmark of the city least as this was exhibited in its American pro- from the sea. It was the chief, or only beacon, duction. in the period of the Revolution, and was painted This fine church was first opened for worship black, when the assailing British fleet was an UNITARIAN CHURCH. ticipated, in order to prevent their use of it as a guide to the harbor. But this was a mistake. Black against a light-blue sky was a more certain landmark than white. It has a very musical chime of eight bells, none sweeter in the country. In the humid climate of Charleston the bells acquire a rare sweetness of tone, and those of St. Michael's are especially musical. Of these bells there is a curious history. They were taken down and sent, as a portion of the spolia opima of the captured city, to London for sale. They were bought by London merchants, and restored by them to the church, whether as a gift or by purchase we are not able to say. If the former, then due credit must be given to the Mammon worshipers, who were thus willing, upon occasion, to pay tribute to Jehovah! Next to St. Michael's, the veneration of old Charleston is accorded to St. Philip's, another Anglican church. This building, as you will perceive, was of statelier cast and character than St. Michael's, though, until a recent period, it was sur mounted by a belfry instead of a tower. In one of the great fires by which this city has been so often devastated, old St. Philip's perished. It was subsequently rebuilt, nearly upon the former plan, and the tower was added from an architectural design of Colonel White. This tower is about 200 feet in height, and its proportions are very much admired; by some, indeed, preferred to those of St. Michael. St. Philip's was founded in 1711, though not used till 1723. Its form is that of a cross, the foot of which, constituting the nave, is 74 feet long, 62 wide. The arms form the vestibule, tower, and porticoes, at each end, projecting 12 feet beyond the sides, and surmounted by a pediment. The interior decorations of this church are rich and impressive, much more so than St. Michael's. The church, as a place of worship, seems to have been greatly preferred by the early and more aristocratic settlers. Its monuments are so many trophies of the past, and of many of the remarkable men by whom the rising character of the Palmetto City was first established. For the history of both of these establishments, the curious reader is referred to Dalcho's Church Histo THE CIRCULAR CHURCH AND THE SOUTH CAROLINA INSTITUTE. ry of South Carolina; a very useful and in- pattern. The windows are of richly stained structive chronicle. Next to these, from its size, beauty, and the height of its steeple, is the Roman Catholic cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar. This structure occupies a fine situation at the west end of Broad Street. It is of recent erection, of brown freestone, from a design by Keely, of Brooklyn. Its style is graceful and imposing. The spire is said to be some 220 feet in height. Of its details we have nothing to deliver, and no space if we had. Of the general effect our portrait will convey a sufficient idea. In the same quarter of the city, and at no great distance from this cathedral of the Catholics, though in another street (Archdale), is the Church of the Unitarians, the only one which that sect maintains in the Palmetto City. This building has quite recently undergone renovation, having been converted from a mere oblong square, with an unsightly tower, into the neat Gothic temple which you now behold. The remodeling of this church was effected under a plan of Jones and Lee. The old walls still remain, but so changed that the work seems almost magical. The building, as it now appears, is of the perpendicular Gothic. The interior is most elaborately finished, with fantracery of an extremely rich and complicated glass, the effect of which, as described by a line of Spenser, One "A little glooming light, most like a shade," admirably answers for that dim religious light which properly belongs to such a structure. The church is not large, but its finish is more costly, perhaps, than that of any other religious structure in the city. The old fabric, by-theway, had quite an antique experience of its own, which made it one of the local monuments of the place. In the Revolution, occupying its present site, it stood on the very confines of the city, on the west. There were few dwellings near it; some public structures only. of these was a "pest-house," another "a prison" and "house for the insane and poor," and, lastly, "an arsenal" and "place of arms." Not far off was one of the city bastions or batteries, and, close by, a powder magazine, one of the largest in the place: there were also barracks for soldiers. On the surrender of the city, the citizens were ordered to bring all the arms and munitions of war in their several houses, and deposit them at this arsenal and place of guard. They did so, very sullenly, and with the natural feelings of ill-suppressed pride, mortification, and that rage which "does not dare to speak, but shows its teeth," they threw down their 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 graceful and pure writer, a thoughtful and well-infrned scholar, a man of fine tastes and a pleasing pulpit 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 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. two 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 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. nursed with loving tenderness; to be treated | example, is the Charleston Hotel, a vast pile, with solicitude; to be honored as a model, in with a noble colonnade, designed by Reichardt, some measure, of a Divine original. And we a German. 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 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 |