and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect--Ladies, or fair ladies, I would wish you, or, I would request you, or, I would entreat you, not to fear, not to tremble: my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life. No. I am no such thing: I am a man as other men are: and there, indeed, let him name his name; and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner”--that is to say, Messrs. Peabody and Stearns, architects. The “other prologue,” which is calculated to reassure the most timid, is the treatment of the first floor, where a disclaimer of any offensive intention is made in the insertion between the openings of pairs of banded pilasters, between the capitals of which is inserted the novel and pleasing ornament of a key-stone. In order to make sure that they are not strong enough to do any harm, they are not only designed with much feebleness, but they are projected from the face of the wall they might otherwise be imagined to strengthen, and set upon brackets. Between these Renaissance pilasters are Romanesque entrance arches, in which there is a return to truculence of demeanor; but these are seen to be not entrances at all, but only innocent windows of bank parlors, and the real entrances under them, covered with trefoiled gablets in cast iron, are obviously harmless. It is quite fair to say that up to the top of the first story there is no design in the building, nothing that betrays any evidence of a general intention. But having built thus far in futile search of a motive and of a style, they came upon both, and built over this aimless and restless collection of inconsistent details a purposeful, peaceable, and consistent brick building, a series of powerful piers connected by and sustaining powerful arches, defined by a light label moulding, and enriched at the springing with a well-designed belt of foliage. It seems incredible that the authors of this respectable building should be also the authors of the basement on which it stands. At the angle is the ingenious device of a griffin “displayed,” and with one wing folded back against either wall, to carry the metal socket of the flag-staff. This feature in all its details is designed with great spirit and picturesqueness. But the architectural impulse fails in the attic story, which should obviously be here the richest part of the building, and which is the baldest, being only a series of rectangular holes, without either modelling or decoration, and without relation in their grouping to the openings immediately under them. [Illustration: UNITED BANK BUILDING. Peabody & Stearns, Architects.]