"It must be confessed," said Mr. Ellsworth, "that the order of things has been reversed here. Architecture is usually called the parent of the fine arts; but with us she is the youngest of the family, and as yet the worst endowed. We had respectable pictures, long before we had a single building in a really good style; and now that we have some noble paintings and statuary, architecture still lags behind. What a noise they made in New York, only a few years since, about St. Thomas's Church!" {St. Thomas's Church" = St. Thomas Episcopal Church was erected at the corner of Broadway and Houston Street, in New York City, in 1826, in the Gothic style which was only beginning to replace the Greek Revival. Susan Fenimore Cooper shared her father's dislike of Greek Revival houses that imitated Grecian temples, and his love of the Gothic} "Yes," said Mr. Stryker; "the curse of the genius of architecture, which Jefferson said had fallen upon this country, has not yet been removed." "Some of the most ludicrous objects I have ever laid my eyes on," said Hazlehurst, "have been pretending houses, and, I am sorry to say, churches too, in the interior of the country; chiefly in the would-be Corinthian and Composite styles. They set every rule of good taste and good sense at defiance, and look, withal, so unconscious of their absurdity, that the effect is as thoroughly ridiculous, as if it had been the object of the architect to make them so." "For reason good," observed Mr. Wyllys; "because they are wanting in simplicity and full of pretension; and pretension is the root of all absurdity." They had now reached the spot Charlie had selected for his picture; the young artist pointed it out to Miss Wyllys, who was in the other boat. "This is the spot I have chosen," he said, "and I hope you will agree with me in liking the position; it commands some of the finest points on the lake: that is the Black mountain in the back-ground." His friends admired his choice, acknowledging that the view was one of the most beautiful they had seen. "It must be difficult to choose, where every view is charming," said Elinor. "How beautiful those little islands are; so much variety, and all so pleasing!" "You will see hundreds of them, Miss Wyllys, when you have been over the lake," said Hubbard. "There are just three hundred and sixty-five, marm," added one of the boatmen, the guide of the party; "one for every day in the-year." "This must be May-day island," said Elinor, pointing to an islet quite near them. "This one, half wood, half meadow, which shows so many flowers." "May-day island it shall be for the next six weeks," said Charlie, smiling. "I have chosen it for another view."