The saying that ours is not a cathedral-building age is so obviously true, and so familiar, that the proposal to erect in New York the most important religious monument on this side of the Atlantic strikes many, and perhaps most, cultivated persons with a sense of incongruity. It is so especially true that this is not a cathedral-building country that an American cathedral seems a violation of the unities in place not less than in time--an anatopism as well as an anachronism. It is a reflection calculated to give us pause that even while we were considering what should be the character of an American cathedral in the city of New York, the Assembly of the State, being in possession of what was acclaimed at the time of its opening as “the most monumental interior in this country,” should have decided to demolish rather than to restore its most monumental feature, and should have been hopelessly vulgarizing it by substituting for its stone-work a system of iron posts veneered with wood, and of beams enclosing panels of papier-maché, without eliciting any general or effective protest. The very marked increase of interest in the art of architecture in this country within the last few years has been accompanied by a corresponding advance in the practice of that art, but it has scarcely as yet [Illustration: DESIGN FOR THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CATHEDRAL OF ALL-SAINTS AT ALBANY, N. Y. By Henry Hobson Richardson.] produced any manifestations that can be called monumental. Our monuments, like those of the Romans, are the works of engineers, and not of architects. In fact, the disproportion in magnitude and in interest between the Roman baths and aqueducts and the Roman temples is exaggerated in the relation between our works of utility and our works of art. Our engineers stand ready to span wider openings and to rear loftier structures than were ever bridged or raised before, provided anybody can be convinced that these unprecedented operations will “pay.” The result of their labors, on the æsthetic side, is fairly summed up in the remark of a recent European visitor that public works in America are executed without reference to art.