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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 Excerpt:... of the twig--turns out to be a disappointment, not to say a positively black sheep, has its analogy in art. And of such curious analogy no more picturesque example exists than that supplied by what has come to be known as our "Transitional period"--a hopelessly ordinary offspring of a civilization highly cultivated and refined. To see the Transitional period in its popular aspect, which is its worst aspect, no better spectacles may be borrowed than those once worn by Charles Dickens, the novelist, to write his "American Notes "and "Martin Chuzzlewit." Only, it will not do to pass final judgment from a scathing arraignment of crimes to the extent of burlesquing the subject, as happens at times in Dickens' books. There is the documentary evidence to be sifted and examined which, I am very sure, will lessen and correct the scandal materially. And if' I have hitherto neglected to avail myself of such evidence, permitting the scandal of the Transitional period to appear as common gossip in these articles, it was for dramatic effect and for contrast. In the present article I propose to make reparation, and direct the magnifying power mainly upon that which is good. It was somewhat unfair of Dickens to expect that we should have achieved architectural grandeur in the brief time at our disposal; but I regret that his uncomplimentary description of the City of Washington in the forties is yet graphic in a degree of the present capital, though vast appropriations by Congress have been frequently lavished upon it, and misspent. We know that Dickens was not always prejudiced, by the encomiums he bestowed upon the scenery of New England, for instance, and the pretty girls he chanced to meet during his visit, who it seems contrived to be bo...