She had a vigorous bar, a sumptuous church establishment, and boundless, though shifting wealth. But all these together, smitten as they were with the palsy of voluptuousness and oppression, had not the power to bring forth one great name, to achieve one heroic deed, or on the other hand, to foster any growth of humble, diffused happiness. Her sin, plated with gold, dazzled the eyes and confounded the consciences of men, but, like the ornaments of a sepulchre, it only beautified outwardly what within was full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Those events of her history which bear on the abolition of slavery will be specially noticed hereafter. THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE. The rule held, anciently, that a nation's architecture was the exponent of its national character, growing with and out of its social, civil, and religious peculiarities, and modified by climate, habit, and taste. In those early ages, the halcyon days of the art, men built with a purpose, built what they wanted in a natural and appropriate way, and--built successfully. So true was this, that to this day, most of their relics proclaim their own origin, just as fossils determine the relative positions of their enclosing strata, and history owes to architecture the solution of many of her hardest problems. The ancient Egyptians, for instance, gloried in the erection of the most magnificent tombs that their genius could produce, and, ruined as they are, we find that it is in their sepulchral monuments--the rock-wrought mausoleum, and the stupendous pyramid--that their art-current found its readiest flow. Compare these with the light and graceful structures of the Moors, the cool, arcaded courts, and the tesselated pavements, the orange trees, and the fountains. 'But no comparison,' says Fergusson, 'is applicable to objects so totally different. Each is a true representative of the feeling and character of the people by whom it was raised. The plaster Alhambra would be totally out of place and contemptible beside the great temple-palace of Karnak. No less would the granite works of Egypt be considered monuments of ill-directed labor if placed in the palace of the gay and luxurious Arab fatalist, to whom the present was everything, and with whom the enjoyment of the passing hour was all in all.'