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display. The novelty of its ? surprised the town & disturbed the simplicity (?) of our richest merchants who had been only extravagant enough to support the miniature pedemients of their front doors on 10 inch columns. The PA bank soon followed to enrich a more ample space and to gratify the pride of its accomplished architect, not withstanding the mortification he often experienced & especially on one occasion from an eminent merchant who [[strikethrough]] had [[/strikethrough]] would not commend the bldg, saying he was no friend of the fine arts. He was a friend to the coarse arts. This, Latrobe thought, was a very coarse & illiberal sentiment but he had the honor of a fellow feeling w/ King Geo II who said that he hated poetry & pntg. Since that period of taste, architecture has been rapidly spreading in our country. Latrobes' capitol now being enlarged to an imperial grandeur, Walter's exquisite Girard College, & numerous examples of gothic arch. are diffusing principles of the purest taste enslaved to no exclusive system, but leaving to architecture the same liberty of expression that is allowed the variations & refinements of the language.

This taste for architecture is the natural precursor of sculpture & pntg. Greece derived her knowledge of sculpture from the Egyptians. Many Egyptians of long ago [unclear] The art was practical to