THE CIRCUS
The company have fitted up the old depôt of the Carrolton rail-road, situated on the corner of Poydras and Baronne streets, as a place for exhibiting feats of horsemanship. As the buildings possess no especial interest beyond these performances, they require no particular description—but as this amusement has an attraction for almost every class of visitors, not to have referred to it might have been deemed an inexcusable oversight. There is a stage attached to this establishment; and farces and the ballet relieve the monotony of the sports of the ring.
THE PUBLIC SQUARES
Although the public squares in New Orleans are neither numerous, nor upon a very extended scale, they are located with good taste, and are exceedingly convenient. The centres of Canal, Esplanade, Rampart and Basin streets have a very considerable space set apart for embellishments. Shrubbery, and other ornaments, are in progress, and they already begin to assume a beauty that does much credit to the city authorities. Nothing is more conducive to health than these pleasant resorts for wholesome exercise. Here the toil-worn citizen, the wearied scholar, and the confined artizan, may breathe the fresh air, enjoy a delightful morning or evening promenade, and catch an imaginary enjoyment, in miniature, of the blessed country.
Washington Square is in the third municipality; is bounded by the Elysian Fields, Great-Men's, Casa Calvo and Frenchmen streets.—Though admirably situated, owing to the distance it stands from the denser portion of the city, it has not yet received those attentions which, at some future day, will render it a beautiful promenade.
Place d'Armes, or Parade Square, is still more prominent, and is embellished with fine trees; but, as it is in the centre of the first municipality, with the public buildings on one front and the levee on the other, it is a matter of surprise that it has not been improved in a style worthy of the inhabitants; who, certainly are capable of appreciating the advantages of such delightful grounds.
Circus Place is below Rampart street, with St. Claude on the rear, and St. Ann and St. Peter streets on its sides. This is the square once known as Congo Park; and is the place where the negroes, in olden times, were accustomed to meet to while away the cares of servitude. Many an old inhabitant can remember when he beheld these thoughtless beings dancing "Old Virginia never tire," or some other favorite air, with such a hearty gusto, upon the green sward, that the very ground trembled beneath their feet. Though the loud laugh, and the unsophisticated break-down, and double-shuffle of these primitive days have ceased, the spot yet remains, with all its reminiscences, as original as ever, with its capabilities of improvement still unimpaired.
Lafayette Square is decidedly the handsomest in the city. It is in the second municipality, and has St. Charles and Camp streets in front and rear, and several public buildings in its immediate neighborhood. It has a handsome and substantial iron railing around it, based upon well laid blocks of granite; is well laid off in regular walks, and is ornamented with beautiful and rare shrubbery, set out with geometrical accuracy on a raised surface, calculated to make it dry and pleasant.
Annunciation Square, in the same municipality, is the largest, and, consequently, may some day become the most elegant in the city. Orange and Race streets are on its front and rear—and facing are some very tasteful private residences.
Tivoli Circle, as its name would imply, is a circular piece of land laid off as a public ground in Nyade, at the head of St. Charles street, and is intended to be ornamented.
THE OLDEN TIME
Antiquity! the olden time! the hoary, venerable past! there is something sacred and soul subduing in the very sound of the words. Like the dying echo of the last tones of the departed, it is full of hallowed memories, and cherished associations, that haunt the inner chambers of the imagination, and linger with a mournful tenderness about the better feelings of the heart.
But what have we to do with Antiquity! They of the old World, who were grey with time and tottering with decay when, but yesterday, they saw us spring into being, laugh at our sometime boast of Antiquity; and well they may, for it is hardly as well substantiated as that of the simple boy who conceived himself the oldest person in the world, because he could not remember when he was born. Yet even we, in the New World, we, of its second or third generation, whose fathers were present at its birth and baptism, even we begin to talk gravely of the olden time, and to sigh and look sad over the melancholy grandeur of the past!
Well, be it so. In these stirring times, an age is shorter, and sooner achieved, than in those of "thesluggish eld." Time is measured by events, and not by revolutions of the sun—by the progress of the mind, not by the slow sifting sands of the hour glass, and the amazing precocity of these latter days makes many ages out of a single century.
But what a vandal spirit is innovation! what a ruthless destroyer is this boasted modern improvement! It sweeps over the land with the energy of a new creation, demolishing and scattering whatever lies in its way, for the mere pleasure of reproducing it in a new and better form. It removes the ancient land marks, obliterates the last traces of ancient power and grandeur, levels mountains, fills up valleys, turns the courses of rivers, and makes all things bend to its iron will.
It works such rapid and magical changes in its headlong career, that few of us are able to point out what has been, or to predict with certainty what will be to morrow. Let us cherish then, with deeper veneration, the few relics that remain of the days of our fathers. Let us reverence Antiquity such as it is. Let the street commissioner, and the improver of old estates—
Spare that ancient house,
Touch not a single brick—
It is almost alone in its sombre dignity, in the midst of younger and gayer edifices, that have swept New Orleans as it was, into the shade of oblivion. Antiquity—I mean, if I may be allowed the Irish figure of speech—modern Antiquity, her countenance grave with sorrow, with here and there a furrow upon her yet ample brow, protests against the desecration of all that was dear and sacred. Standing on the verge of annihilation, with "one foot in the grave," and conscious that her days are numbered, her dissolution nigh at hand, she commands, she implores us to save one memento of the past, one legible souvenir of "the days of auld lang syne." And here it is.
