First impressions--American want of taste in public buildings
--Agricultural bank--Masonic hall--Natchez academy--Education
of Mississippians--Cemetery--Theatre--Presbyterian church--
Court-house--Episcopal church--Light-house--Hotels--Planters'
Houses and galleries--Jefferson hotel--Cotton square.
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 "Cotton-square," 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.