commercial advantages have grown up on the borders of navigable waters, where additional space has been quarried with infinite labour out of the base of mountains. But ample space for a city of the mammoth dimensions of Babylon itself extends beyond and around the present limits of the city of St. Louis. At this place the Creator of heaven and earth, the Ruler of planets, and the Godlike alchymist, in his allwise disposition of elements, has spread out space on which to deposite the products of a country of immeasurable extent ! The three great rivers that make up "el Padre de los aquas"—the father of waters-and pour out, by prescriptive right, into the storehouse of St. Louis, the treasures of the surface and of the hidden recesses of the earth, would make a mighty city in the midst of passive beings. But, with the inducements now presented, where temples of commerce, with their well-supported roof-trees, sustained by broad Doric basements, and doors held ajar by clear-sighted ministers of trade for the entrance of men and things, no estimate can compass the extent of the wealth that Nature and art will heap up here! When experience shall have fully tested the hazards of trade in lower latitudes, true wisdom will point to St. Louis as the place where the purchase and sale of merchandise, and the products of the surface and of the bowels of the earth, or the exchange of these commodities, shall be carried on. The canvass-clad vehicles of trade from the ocean, and the fire-eating barks on our rivers, may meet at the confluence of their buoyant elements, and exchange cargoes, and all balances can be settled at the mammoth city of the West. Here salubrity and convenience will invite commerce and the arts to fix their abode; and here, too, will the opulent, after the money-making bustle of the morning of life, in the meridian and in the evening of their days, become tasteful and munificent. The native marbles of South St. Louis, Ste. Genevieve, and of Pulaski, on the Osage, will be speedily introduced by the builders of the city, that improvement in architecture may keep pace with the unexampled accumulation of wealth in St. Louis. To do justice to St. Louis in a description of its component parts, natural and artificial, would require more space than can be appropriated in a gazetteer, in

which is traced some brief notices of every section of a state that classes with the largest in the union. But the following sketch may give an imperfect idea of the city as it now is; another year, and the ever-varying features of the place, occasioned by improvements and enlargement, will leave the stranger to wander through new avenues and streets, and admire the labours of the architect, of which no record had been made.

The churches of the city, it would seem, claim the leading attention of a Christian writer. A Mussulman describing his own country certainly would begin with the mosques and minarets.

The society of BAPTISTS have recently purchased the church. formerly occupied by the Episcopalians, and will accordingly worship in this house, which is a neat, commodious building for a considerable congregation.

The EPISCOPALIANS, who are numerous and highly respectable, are now erecting a new church.

The PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Occupies a very eligible site on the high ground of the city. It is a large, well-finished building, and surrounded with ornamental trees that have been planted here and carefully pruned. This house was built under the direction of the late Rev. Mr. Giddings, to whose early exertions his congregation was principally indebted for collecting together the pecuniary means of constructing a house which is alike creditable to them and the city. This will, however, shortly give place to a larger and more splendid edifice, better suited to the accommodation of this rapidly-increasing sect of religious people. The pious labours of Mr. Giddings in the cause of Christianity entitle him to the credit of having been the founder of the Presbyterian church of St. Louis. He likewise toiled many years at the head of a grammar-school in this city. His name is borne in respectful remembrance by those who were acquainted with his many virtues, and the unaffected benevolence of his deportment.

The UNITARIANS have nearly completed a large church, on which the skill of the architect will be employed to render it suitable to the great purposes to which it will be dedicated.

The METHODIST CHURCH is a very large, neat, plain building.

The congregation of this sect is numerous, and includes many of the most valuable citizens of St. Louis.

The Catholics of St. Louis are numerous and very respectable, and among them are some of the most wealthy citizens, who were early settlers of the country, and their descendants, and likewise many of the emigrants who have latterly settled here.

The CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL is a large and splendid edifice, which, in the beauty and symmetry of its architecture, would lose nothing by a comparison with any other house of public worship in the United States. A particular description of the cathedral has been obligingly furnished by the Rev. Mr. Lutz, which is hereto annexed :

"The corner-stone of this building was laid on the 1st day of August, 1831. The cathedral itself was consecrated to God, with the appropriate ceremonies and religious rites, on the 26th of October, A. D. 1834, by the Right Rev. Joseph Rosati, bishop of St. Louis, assisted by the bishops of Bardstown and of Cincinnati.

"The length of the whole building is 136 feet; the breadth eighty-four feet; the height of the side walls forty feet; it is roofed with copper. The front of the edifice is fifty-feet high; above this the tower of the steeple, twenty feet square, rises forty feet; then an octagon spire covered with tin, crowned with a brass-gilt ball, five feet in diameter, surmounted by a cross of gilt brass, ten feet high.

"The lightning-rod is seventeen feet higher than the cross, placed according to the directions which Mr. Nicolet, one of the astronomers of the Royal Observatory of Paris, who at that time happened to be in St. Louis, was pleased to give. In the steeple there is a peal of six bells; three of them are small ones. The three large bells, cast in Normandy, make a very pleasing accord. The weight of the largest bell is 2600 pounds; of the second, 1900 pounds; of the third, nearly 1500 pounds. A large clock, made in Cincinnati, points the hours at the four sides of the tower, and strikes them on the large bells.

"The front of the church is of polished freestone, together

with the porch. This is forty feet wide, and consists of four large columns of the Doric order, corresponding entablature, frieze, cornice, and pediment of the same order. The whole frieze is ornamented with the following inscription, the letters of which are raised in bass-relief (basso relievo) from the stone :

IN HONOREM S. LUDOVICI. DEO UNI ET TRINO. DICATUM, A. D. MDCCCXXXIV.

"On each side of the porch there is the following inscription to be seen, both in English and in French: My house shall be called the house of prayer.' Three doors open from the porch into the church; between them and three corresponding windows, three slabs of Italian marble bear the following inscription in gilt letters: Ecce tabernaculum Dei cum hominibus, et habitabit cum eis.' The same inscription is also in French and in English. The text is taken from the twenty-first chapter of the Apocalypse.

"The cornice, with its frieze and entablature, as well as the battlements in front of the church, extend as far as the corners, and return on the sides for twenty feet; and on the battlements, or parapet walls, there are six large stone candelabra, nine feet high.

"The porch is based on a platform, raised above the level of the street about six feet, enclosed in front with an iron railing, which continues down the two flights of steps on each side, and is received by the stone pillars which support the iron gates.

"The inside of the church is divided into three aisles by two rows of five columns each, four feet diameter, twenty-six feet high, of the Doric order, supporting an entablature and cornice of the same order, on which rests an elliptic ceiling divided into eighteen panels, enriched with large centre-pieces. The main aisle is forty feet wide, and the side ones twenty feet. The brick columns are plastered and painted in imitation of marble, and the cornice and frieze likewise, and enriched with medallions and arabesques. Between the columns hang eight superb gilt brass chandeliers, having each eight lamps, which, through

opaque glasses, reflect a beautiful light, sufficient to illuminate the whole church. The side walls, too, are decorated with arabesques and large cherubs, which, between the windows, support the cornice, likewise ornamented. The light is admitted into the church through fourteen windows, eighteen feet high, with circular heads; they are embellished with transparencies representing some of the principal transactions of the life of our divine Redeemer. They are, it is believed, the first specimens of the kind exhibited in churches, and the effect thus produced is truly wonderful and sublime. Two extensive galleries above the front doors are left free for those who have no pews in the church. Under one of them, within an iron railing, are the baptismal fonts; here a beautiful landscape represents the Jordan, and our Saviour's baptism.

"But the most conspicuous part of the church is the sanctuary, at the bottom of the centre aisle, raised by a flight of nine steps above the floor of the church, from which it is separated by balusters of the Corinthian order. The size of the sanctuary is forty feet by thirty. Its sides are adorned with pilasters, surmounted by caps of the Doric order, and painted in imitation of rich marble, with panels enriched with festoons of ears of wheat and vines, emblems of the holy eucharist. The frieze and cornice are richly gilt. The space between the pilasters is occupied by arches, two of which have elegant galleries, one for the use of the choir, and the other for the Sisters of Charity.

"Four fluted Corinthian columns, with gilt caps, support a very rich entablature of the same order, with a broken pediment, in the centre of which, by a transparency in a large elliptical window (fourteen by ten feet), the light is admitted into the church. This large transparency represents in its centre a dove, the emblem of the Holy Ghost, shedding around rays of light. On each side. of the pediment there is the representation of an angel supporting the tables of the old law and of the gospel. The altar-piece, between the four columns, represents the Saviour of mankind nailed to the cross; at his feet, his sorrowful mother, his beloved disciple, and the loving Mary Magdalen. Below, the high altar, with a neat tabernacle, completes the coup d'œil, which, on fes