at if Jamaica has never had her _parc-aux-cerfs_,
she can at least boast her Regent Orleans. There is small need of any
special _parc-aux-cerfs_ in a slaveholding country.[22]

In brief, except a certain interest attached to the struggles of the
barbarous Maroons to maintain their wild freedom in the woods and
mountains, the human history of Jamaica, from the English conquest in
1655 to the abolition of slavery in 1834, is little more than a
monotonous blank.

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 woul