University of Virginia Library

27. XXVII.

First impressions, if preserved, before the magnifying
medium of novelty through which they are
seen becomes dissipated, are far more lively and
striking than the half-faded scenes which memory
slowly and imperfectly brings up from the past.
Yet, if immediately recorded, while the colours are
fresh and glowing, there is danger of drawing too
much upon the imagination in the description, and
exaggerating the picture. On the other hand, if the
impressions are suffered to become old and faint,
invention is too apt to be called in unconsciously,
to fill up and complete the half-forgotten and defective

sketch. The medium is safer and more accurate.
A period of time sufficiently long should
be suffered to elapse, that the mind, by subsequent
observation, may be enabled to correct and digest
its early impressions, exercise its judgment without
a bias, and from more matured experience, be prepared
to form its opinions, and make its comparisons
with certainty. How far I have attained this desirable
medium, the general character and justice of
my descriptions must alone determine.

The deficient perception of architectural beauty,
in the composition of American minds, has frequently,
and with some truth, been a subject upon
which foreign tourists love to exercise their castigating
pens—weapons always wielded fearlessly
and pitilessly against every thing on this side of the
Atlantic. The very small number of handsome
public buildings in the United States, and the total
contempt for order or style which, (with but here
and there an honourable exception,) they evince,
would give a very plausible foundation for this animadversion,
did not Americans redeem their reputation
in this point, by the pure and correct taste they
universally exhibit in the construction of their private
residences. Herein, they are not surpassed by
any other nation. Natchez, like most of the minor
cities of this country, cannot boast of any public
buildings remarkable for harmonious conformity to
the rules or orders of architecture. They are, nevertheless,
well deserving of notice, highly ornamental
to the city, and reflect honour upon the public spirit
of its citizens. The Agricultural bank is unquestionably

the finest structure in the city. It has been erected
very recently on the south side of Main-street, presenting
a noble colonnaded front, of the modernized
Grecian style; being built somewhat after the model
of the United States bank at Philadelphia;
though brick and stucco are here substituted for
marble, and heavy pillars for the graceful column.
It is entered from the street by a broad and spacious
flight of steps, leading to its lofty portico, from
which three large doors give admission into its vast
hall, decidedly the finest room south or west of
Washington. The whole structure is a chaste and
beautiful specimen of architecture. It is partially
enclosed by a light, iron railing. To a stranger this
edifice is a striking object, and, contrasted with the
buildings of less pretension around it, will call
forth his warmest admiration. The other banks, of
which there are, in all, three, including a branch of
the United States bank, are plain brick buildings,
undistinguished from the adjoining stores, except
by a colder and more unfurnished appearance, and
the absence of signs. A short distance above this
fine building is the Masonic Hall; a large square
edifice, two lofty stories in height. Its front is
beautifully stuccoed, and ornamented with white
pilasters. The hall is in the second story; a large,
plain, vaulted apartment, almost entirely destitute
of the splendid furniture and rich decorations which
characterise such places at the north. Here masonry,
with its imposing forms, ceremonies, and
honours, is yet preserved in all its pristine glory.
The first story of the building is used as an academy—the
only one in this state. It is a well-conducted
institution, and its pupils are thoroughly instructed
by competent officers, who are graduates
of northern colleges, as are most of the public and
private instructors of this state. The number of
students is generally large. Those who are destined
for professional life, after completing their
preparatory course here, usually enter some one of
the colleges at the north. Yale, Princeton, and
Harvard annually receive several from this state;
either from this academy or from under the hands
of the private tutors, who are dispersed throughout
the state, and from whom a great majority of the
planters' sons receive their preparatory education.
But on the subject of education in this country, I
shall speak more fully hereafter. I could not pass
by this institution, which reflects so much honour
upon the city, without expressing my gratification
at its flourishing condition and high character. It
is the more gratifying from being unexpected at the
south, which, till very lately, has been wholly dependent
upon the northern seminaries or private institutions
for the education of her sons. To see
here an institution that cannot be surpassed by any
of the same rank in other states, must not only be
pleasing to the friends of education, but particularly
so to the citizens of this state, to whom it is ably
demonstrated, by the success of this academy, that
literature is not an exotic, though its germs may
heretofore have been transplanted from another soil.
There is a female seminary also in the city, which,
though of a very respectable character, is not so
celebrated and flourishing as many others in the
state.

On the south side of the next square is an old
“burying-ground,” crowning an eminence whose
surface is covered with fragments of grave-stones
and dismantled tombs. The street is excavated
through it to its base, leaving a wall or bank of
earth nearly thirty feet in height; upon the verge
of which crumbling tombs are suspended, threatening
to fall upon the passenger beneath. It has not
been used for many years as a place of burial; the
present cemetery being about a mile above the city,
in a delightful spot among the green hills which
cluster along the banks of the river. This old cemetery
is a striking but disagreeable feature in the
midst of so fair a city. Adjoining it, on the eastern
side, and nearly at the extremity of the street and
also of the city, stands the theatre; a large, commodious
building, constructed of brick, with arched
entrances and perfectly plain exterior. The citizens
of Natchez are not a play-going community; consequently
they take little pride in the possession of
a fine theatre. Its interior, however, is well arranged,
convenient, and handsomely painted and
decorated. Its boards are supplied, for two or three
months during every season, by performers from
New-Orleans or New-York. Just beyond the theatre
is the termination of Main-street, here intersected
by another, from which, to the right and left,
fine roads extend into the country—one to Washington,
a pleasant village six miles distant, formerly
the seat of government of the territory and the location

of the public offices; but now a retired, unassuming
and rural spot, boasting of a well-endowed
college and female seminary—of which, more
hereafter. Of the other public buildings of Natchez,
the Presbyterian church is the finest and most
imposing. It stands on a commanding site, overlooking
the public square, a pleasant green flat, in
the centre of which is the court-house. It is constructed
of bricks, which are allowed to retain their
original colour; and surrounded by buff-coloured
pilasters of stucco work, which is here generally
substituted for granite in facings. It is surmounted,
at the west end, by a fine tower of successive stories;
on one side of which is a clock, conspicuous
from the most distant parts of the city and suburbs.
—You are aware, probably, that there are in this
country no Congregationalists, so called; Presbyterians
supply the place of this denomination in the
ecclesiastical society of all the south and west. The
prevailing denomination, however, in this state, as
in all this section of the United States, is that of
the Methodists, which embraces men of all classes,
including a large proportion of planters. I now
merely allude to this and other subjects of the kind,
as I intend, in subsequent letters, to treat of them
more at large.

The court-house is a fine, large, square building,
opposite to the church, surmounted by a cupola.
It is surrounded by a beautiful, though not spacious,
green. On the streets which bound the four sides
of it are situated the lawyers' and public offices,
which are generally plain, neat, wooden buildings,

from one to two stories in height. Should they be
denominated from the state of those who occupy
them, they would be correctly designated “bachelors'
halls.” Shade trees half embower them and
the court-house in their rich foliage. Opposite to
the south side of the square is the county prison;
a handsome two story brick building, resembling,
save in its grated tier of windows in the upper story,
a gentleman's private dwelling. There is a fine
Episcopalian church in the south-east part of the
town, adding much to its beauty. It is built of
brick, and surmounted by a vast dome, which has
a rather heavy, overgrown appearance, and is evidently
too large for the building. It has a neat
front, adorned with a portico of the usual brick pillars.
There are not many Episcopalians here; but
the few who are of this denomination are, as every
where else in the United States, generally of the
wealthy and educated class. There is also a Methodist
church adjoining the Masonic hall; a plain,
neat building, remarkable only for its unassuming
simplicity, like all others of this denomination in
America.

The light-house upon the bluff, at the north-west
corner of the city, is well deserving of notice, though
not properly ranked under the public buildings of
Natchez. It is a simple tower, about forty feet in
height, commanding a section of the river, north
and south, of about twelve miles. But the natural
inquiry of the stranger is, “What is its use?” A
light-house on a river bank, three hundred miles
from the sea, has certainly no place in the theory

of the utilitarian. The use of it its projectors must
determine. Were a good telescope placed in its
lantern it would make a fine observatory, and become
a source of amusement as well as of improvement
to the citizens, to whom it is now merely a
standing monument, in proof of the proverb, that
“wisdom dwelleth not in all men.” The hotels
are very fine. Parker's, on one of the front squares,
near the bluff, is a handsome, costly, and very extensive
building, three stories in height, with a stuccoed
front, in imitation of granite, and decidedly the
largest edifice in the city. Its rooms are large,
spacious, and elegantly furnished; suited rather for
gentlemen and their families, who choose a temporary
residence in town, than for transient travellers
and single men, who more frequently resort to the
“Mansion-house.” This is not so large a structure
as the former, though its proprietor is enlarging it,
on an extensive scale. It has long been celebrated
as an excellent house. Its accommodations for ladies
are also very good, their rooms opening into
ventilated piazzas, or galleries, as they are termed
here, which are as necessary to every house in this
country as fire-places to a northern dwelling. These
galleries, or more properly verandas, are constructed—not
like the New-England piazza, raised on
columns half the height of the building, with a flat
roof, and surrounded by a railing—but by extending
a sloping roof beyond the main building, supported
at its verge by slender columns; as the houses are
usually of but one story in this country, southerners
having a singular aversion to mounting stairs. Such
porticoes are easily constructed. No house, particularly
a planter's, is complete without this gallery,
usually at both the back and front; which furnishes
a fine promenade and dining-room in the
warm season, and adds much to the lightness and
beauty of the edifice.

There is another very good hotel here, equivalent
to Richardson's, in New-Orleans, or the Elm-street
house in Boston, where the country people usually
put up when they come in from the distant counties
to dispose of their cotton. It fronts on “Cottonsquare,”
as a triangular area, formed by clipping off
a corner of one of the city squares, is termed; which
is filled every day, during the months of November,
December, and January, with huge teams
loaded with cotton bales, for which this is the peculiar
market place.

The “City hotel,” lately enlarged and refurnished,
is now becoming quite a place of fashionable
resort.