A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.Thoreau, Henry David
History
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.
Thoreau, Henry David
Brown, John, 1800-1859; Québec (Province) -- Description and travel; Slavery -- United States
“The twenty-five halls in the inside of the square are to be each two
hundred feet square and high; the forty corridors, each one hundred feet
long and twenty wide; the eighty galleries, each from 1,000 to 1,250
feet long; about 7,000 private rooms, the whole surrounded and
intersected by the grandest and most splendid colonnades imaginable;
floors, ceilings, columns, with their various beautiful and fanciful
intervals, all shining, and reflecting to infinity all objects and
persons, with splendid lustre of all beautiful colors, and fanciful
shapes and pictures.
“All galleries, outside and within the halls, are to be provided with
many thousand commodious and most elegant vehicles, in which persons may
move up and down like birds, in perfect security, and without
exertion.... Any member may procure himself all the common articles of
his daily wants, by a short turn of some crank, without leaving his
apartment.
“One or two persons are sufficient to direct the kitchen business. They
have nothing else to do but to superintend the cookery, and to watch the
time of the victuals being done, and then to remove them, with the table
and vessels, into the dining-hall, or to the respective private
apartments, by a slight motion of the hand at some crank.... _Any very
extraordinary desire of any person may be satisfied by going to the
place where the thing is to be had; and anything that requires a
particular preparation in cooking or baking may be done by the person
who desires it._”
This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found
to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal. This
last sentence has a certain sad and sober truth, which reminds us of the
scripture of all nations. All expression of truth does at length take
this deep ethical form. Here is hint of a place the most eligible of any
in space, and of a servitor, in comparison with whom all other helps
dwindle into insignificance. We hope to hear more of him anon, for even
a Crystal Palace would be deficient without his invaluable services.
And as for the environs of the establishment:—
“There will be afforded the most enrapturing views to be fancied, out of
the private apartments, from the galleries, from the roof, from its
turrets and cupolas,—gardens, as far as the eye can see, full of fruits
and flowers, arranged in the most beautiful order, with walks,
colonnades, aqueducts, canals, ponds, plains, amphitheatres, terraces,
fountains, sculptural works, pavilions, gondolas, places for public
amusement, etc., to delight the eye and fancy, the taste and smell....
The walks and roads are to be paved with hard vitrified large plates, so
as to be always clean from all dirt in any weather or season....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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